The Cup and the Sword Imploding Empire Trevor Phillips P 16
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AJ R Info rma tion Volume UII No. 8 August 1998 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss ... AGM report Reflections on the link between soccer violence and politics Ronald Channing P3 Walter Benjamin and Judaism jane Edwards p 13 The Cup and the sword Imploding Empire Trevor Phillips p 16 Re-run of 1936? orld Cup football is - to coin a mixed made good its human and material losses from Hit n Ancient Greece metaphor - a double-edged sword. On ler's war, Nazism holds a marginal attraction. It the Olympics W one hand it intermingles multitudes in feeds on the populi.st desire for a man in uniform I provided cherished goodnatured rivalry; on the other it provides an whose sword will cut through the Gordian knot of periods of peace outlet for bloodcurdling xenophobia. This year the contemporary problems. amid warring city first di.scordant note was struck by English soccer Like German Francophobia, Ru.ssian power wor states. The modern hooligans. Drunk, destructive and sporting Cross of ship has deep historical roots. The Tsar gloried in Olympics were St George tattoos, they reminded the French that 'if the tide of autocrat - which is a pejorative term in meant to serve the it wasn't for us Engli.sh you'd be krauts. the We.st - and was venerated as such by the Ortho pacific ideal Apart from inculcating history lessons, their main dox Church. (By coincidence, the Russian-Orthodox worldwide - yet aiin, however, was simply to wreak havoc for its Church has recently resorted to the Nazi practice of the 1936 Games own sake. burning books it considers subversive.) boosted the German soccer thugs are differently motivated. Elsewhere parts of the Slav world are so overshad warmonger Hitler. They came to France hellbent on attacking dark owed by strong men - Croatia's General Tudjman, Football, a skinned Kanacken (i.e. North Africans as substitutes Serbia's Milosevic, Slovakia's Moczar - that genuine sport designed to for their usual Turkish victims back home). But in democracy still struggles to be born. The worst auto sublimate aggression, addition to hating all non-Whites, they are also crat of all is President Lukashenko, the mini-.Stalin of presents the same viciously anti-French. This Francophobia is a sur Belarus. The West's withdrawal of ambassadors from contradiction. World vival of the Nazi mindset. To Hitler France was the Minsk - incidentally, the former site of a Nazi death Cup hooliganism is Erhfeind (hereditary enemy) which had humiliated camp - is as needful a measure as the deployment of only one facet of it. the Germans from the burning of Heidelberg police again.st soccer hooligans D Another is the through the Napoleonic effect of a team's Wars to the Versailles Treaty performance on and the Occupation of the national morale. Ruhr. After England's 1966 victory, for instance, If vestiges of Hitlerisiii UK emigration become manifest amon;^ figures dropped. today's Germans, it is - however reprehensible - This year's not totally surprising. Bui prodigious Croat when the same thing hap- team viewed football as an extension of pens among Russians, it is War (of which they not merely bizarre, but ab- have considerable .solutely perverse. To Hitki experience). To see the Slavs were inferior be the arch-xenophobe ings, only one degree l^resident Tudjman above the Jews; their very gloat over their name denoted slaves victory could put a (which they actually be politically informed came under Nazi rule). person off football Yet we find that in today's for ever D Russia, which .still hasn't AJR meninvn attendii.ig this year's Annual General Meeting in Luiulon. (See report page 3)- AJR INFORMATION AUGUST 1998 wearing a headscarf, bundled up in list: "You've only got a small family!". I A 'mixed' marriage something like a shawl. just couldn't bring myself to say anything, I'm married.to an "English" Jew - there, (such as "have you ever heard of Adolf he thought of "English" Jews as I've admitted it! We both see some differ Hitler?") nor that my paternal grand being different to continental Jews ences between our families, which mother had been one of ten siblings, Tcomes from Jews themselves. fascinate us. "Continental" Jews seem to their families either murdered in concen There is nobody imposing definitions value more worthy leisure pursuits - tration camps or scattered to North from outside. classical music and art exhibitions are a America, South America, South Africa, Those who came to Britain in the thir better way of spending the time than Canada, Israel and no doubt other places. ties caught up with "English" Jews who going to the cinema or just eating fish I didn't really know where to start. had come from Poland and Russia one or and chips. "You know" said a relative of "English" Jews, having been here a two generations earlier, and maybe the mine, "they just go out and enjoy them while, have had more generations to latter seemed a lot more at home, having selves!" A discovery - leisure time can be establish their particular religious rites. carved out their own Jewish niche here. for sheer enjoyment, it need not be to The first shiva I ever attended was for a Their grandparents may have travelled improve the mind! relative of my fiance. On hearing where through Germany on their migration We've also witnessed some alarmingly we were off to, my father said he had decades earlier, and as Ostjuden were thoughtless remarks. When we were en never been to a shiva. "Does no-one ever sometimes not made too welcome - by gaged, we were invited by my aunt - die in this town?" asked my fiance. My emancipated German Jews. Some years lovely woman, did a lot of charitable father thought that most amusing, but ago, my family were driving west from work - who laid on a super tea. "Person then looked thoughtful - maybe the Czechoslovakia into Germany, and I had ally" she said over the smoked salmon whole institution of the shiva had a strange experience at a motorway serv sandwiches, apropos of nothing, "I can passed him by. Or maybe, when one is ice station. We were parked next to a only take English Jews one at a time". My painfully aware of relatives who were Moslem family all travelling in a fiance mused on this inexplicable remark murdered, whose death was unmarked dormobile and a young woman in a and decided to say nothing and eat an by any sign of respect, it's very difficult headscarf was watching us. I remem other sandwich, having mentally to participate in a mourning ritual for bered my father saying his family had bracketed her with another relative who anyone else. come to Berlin from the east, probably had asked us: "Are you getting married We're all English now, aren't we; i hundreds of years ago. I suddenly on a Saturday or a Sunday?" maybe it just feels good to remember and thought, my equivalent then would have On his side of the family, a relative had have pride in one's original culture. looked like this woman, travelling west. exclaimed over a discussion of the guest D Hazel Steii\ Within days of the wedding he was in Journalism has always been a favourite Profile terned, but speedily joined the Pioneer sideline of his. Though published in the Corps. Transferring to the Royal Engi Statesman and the Literary Review, he neers in 1943 he was assigned to knows he cannot compete with his A varied career Movement Control, where preparations daughter Carol Angler, who writes for n the eighteenth century European for the Normandy landings were made. The Independent. She has also produced Jewry numbered barely in excess of a The powers that be then seconded him a life of Jean Rhys and is currently en I million. Subsequent improvements in to Intelligence to do German interpret gaged in a biography of Primo Levi. hygiene and nutrition greatly boosted ing and edit a camp newspaper for DRC numbers; some families thrived and POWs. became veritable dynasties. Postwar he moved his young family to One such were the Brainins, who went Canada and began to deal in Life Insur Fidelio at Somerset House from Byelo-Russia to Vienna and estab ance. Being a 'political animal' he also The Austrian Government marked its lished themselves as furriers and in the joined the left-of-centre National Demo accession to the Presidency of the textile business. Jussi Brainin was born cratic Party - a far cry from his Betar European Union in grand style. H after the Great War and, having attended upbringing - which put him up as their transmitted Fidelio live from the Vienna a textile trade school, left for Hudders- prospective parliamentary candidate State Opera to the capitals of all l5 field in Yorkshire to acquire additional against one Pierre Trudeau, who went on member states. skills. In this way he escaped the to become Canadian Prime Minister. (In In London the transmission was showo Anschluss. compensation Jussi was appointed Aus on Wednesday 1 July on a 42 sq metre He then switched to marine insurance trian Vice-Consul in Montreal). screen in the great court of Somerset and moved to London. Here he met and In the late 1970s the Brainins House to an audience of over 3,000- did spare time journalism for Vladimir recrossed the Atlantic and settled not far Big-screen technology is constantly im Jabotinsky, the rightwing Zionist (and from Oxford, where their daughter was proving; both the sound and picture 'spiritual father' to Begin and Netanyahu).