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Journal Association of Jewish Refugees VOLUME 8 NO.2 FEBRUARY 2008 ^^IH journal Association of Jewish Refugees All Our Yesterdays - the 1960s h, the Skties! Sex, drugs and rock PFLMCHN. Everything has changed, I have 'n' roll, all enveloped in a heady haze changed, everything will be as you want it. Aof reefer smoke. 'If you can Let us discuss things. Please telephone' remember the Sixties, you weren't there.' (March 1968) would have been inconceivable Seriously speaking, though, the Sixties were in a personal ad ten years earlier. a decade of fast-moving change, during One of the most striking features of the which entire areas of British society decade's rejection of established authority underwent a fundamental transformation. was the satire boom of the early 1960s. How did the refugees from Nazism react to Following on from the revue Beyond the the 'decade of revolution'? After all, they had Fringe (1960), in which Jonathan Miller, mostly arrived in Britain in the late 1930s; Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett the society into which they had integrated made their names, a wave of savage political and with which they had become familiar satire found expression in the magazine was that of the Second World War, late Private Eye (founded 1961), with Gerald 1940s austerity and the cosy consumerism Scarfe's cartoons, the television show That The Beatles: 'Abbey Road' of the 1950s. The explosion of youth culture, Was the Week That Was (1962/63), of radical anti-establishment politics and of took little interest in fashion, commented on presented by David Frost, and the Soho club challenges to authority and convention the shortness of skirts, an indicator of new The Establishment, where the political and across the board, exhilarating though it was, freedoms that did not escape its (male) social establishment was mercilessly would have aroused mixed feelings in them, correspondents' eye. In October 1961, the lampooned. as it did in the over-30s generally. arts column written by PEM (Paul E. Reviewing the refugee performer Agnes Britain in the 1960s famously became Marcus) referred to the film Victim, in which Bemelle's 1963 one-woman show at The known as the 'permissive society'. As Philip a young barrister is blackmailed over a Establishment, in which she sang songs by Larkin put it sex began 'between the end of homosexual liaison; the reason for the report Brecht and other writers of the 1920s, AJR the Chatterley ban [1960] and the Beatles' was that the film had a refugee cameraman, Information's Egon Larsen saw London as first LP [1963]'. The decade saw social Otto Heller, but PEM made a point of call­ rapidly catching up, in theatre and satire, inhibitions loosened and social taboos lifted, ing the film 'the courageous Rank picture vsnth the Berlin of the 'Roaring Twenties'. The a relaxation in attitudes to sexual behaviour, [Rank was the distrfbutor of the.film] comparison between the cultural ferment of including the legalisation of abortion and starring Dirk Bogarde'. Victim is often seen that decade in Germany and the 'Swinging homosexuality, the liberation of individual as the first British film to treat the subject Sixties' in Britain, both remarkable for their lifestyles from the sometimes oppressive of homosexuality seriously and sympa­ exuberance, innovation and impatience with conformity of the 1950s, and the toleration thetically, a sign of the more liberal established authority, was to become routine: of activities previously condemned as attitudes that would lead to its legalisation interviewed on the BBC in 1968 before the immoral or anti-social. AJR Information is in 1967. first night of the musical Cabaret, which full of valuable information about refugee The new frankness about sex in the probably did more than anything else to attitudes, behaviour and lifestyles during the permissive society enabled Frank perpetuate the image of Berlin in the late Sixties, which are otherwise well-nigh Wedekind's sexually explicit play Spring Weimar years, PEM inevitably found himself impossible to reconstruct 40 years later. Awakening (Friihlings Erwachen) to be asked to compare Berlin's 'golden years' in The revolution in fashion that was so performed for the first time in London, at the pre-Hitler period with the London of the central a part of the Sixties image brought the Royal Court Theatre, with the refugee 'Swinging Sixties'. a riot of colour, energy and innovation to actor Peter Illing, as PEM noted in June 1965. One of the younger refugees, the the monochrome cityscapes of post-war A new note of openness also crept into some distinguished filmmaker Karel Reisz, bom Britain. It also heralded an era of liberation, of the advertisements in the personal in Ostrava in 1926 and one of the Czech- especially sexual liberation, symbolised by columns of the joumal: an expression of Jewish children rescued by Nicholas Winton, the miniskirt; t\tn AJR Information, which feelings as intimate as 'MARTITA continued on page 2 AjR JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2008 ALL ()1:R YESTKKDAYS - THE 1960s continued from page 1 made a fihn that accurately reflected the refugees adapted to Elvis Presley, Buddy timeless, putting everything that was mood ofthe mid-1960s, Morgan: A Suitable Holly and others in the first wave of fleeting, easy, "with it", superficial in its Case for Treatment (1966), memorable for American pop singers of the 1950s, it seems place i.e. nowhere.' the gangling, anarchic performance of David to have been left to their children, born The use of the currently fashionable term Warner as the main character. But Reisz had during and after the war, to revel in the 'with it' (in the sense of being attuned to the come out of the British New Wave cinema newly exciting British pop scene, where the latest modish trends) left no doubt that the of the late 1950s and early 1960s, having Beatles and Stones gave way to the Kinks target here was 1960s culture. Reviewing an already directed a seminal work of cinematic and the Animals and The Who - remember exhibition of paintings by Inge Sachs, a post­ social realism, Saturday Night and Sunday 'Talking 'bout My Cieneration'? - and to the war arrival from Berlin, in 1968, Rosenberg Morning (1960, with Albert Finney), and heavy rock of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and again signalled his reservations about the produced This Sporting Life (1963, with Ten Years After. A 'Stairway to Heaven' novel formulations of the day, even as he Richard Harris). Reisz went on to make indeed for a generation that believed itself used them himself: 'There is something - to films like The French Lieutenant's Woman; to be recasting the world. But the Second use the fashionable jargon - psychedelic it was left to a non-refugee New Wave Generation in Britain produced no figure about her work', he said, with an almost director, Lindsay Anderson, to make the comparable to Daniel Cohn-Bendit, 'Danny audible gritting of his teeth. classic British film about rebellion against the Red', son of Jewish refugee parents from May 1968 was famously the month in authority, //... (1968, with Malcolm Germany and one of the leading figures in which student radicalism came to a head, McDowell). the French student movement. with the student revolts that broke out in One area where Sixties culture In tmth, the refugees, like most of the Paris and other Westem cities. Earlier that apparently failed to impinge strongly on the older generation in British society, looked year, the refugee writer Egon Jameson gave refugees was pop music - perhaps because on at the explosion of youth culture from a a lecture to Club 43 with the title 'Auf die they were already too old, even those who distance, with a mixture of Barrikaden, ihr Greise!' ('To the Barricades, had arrived as children before the war being incomprehension and somewhat derisive Old Men!'), a clear jibe at the slogans of the past 30 in 1963 and around 40 in 1970. That humour. The obsession of 1960s culture student revolution. Jameson's lecture, as made a difference at a time when the with fashion, its ability to create ever-newer PEM observed, brought out the element of generation gap was particularly wide, when and more outrageous trends, seemed to conflict between the generations: 'His attack youth was particularly determined to make them ephemeral, insubstantial, infatuated on today's overrated youth received an its own independent, insubordinate voice with its own trendiness. When Alfons enthusiastic reception from his audience.' heard and when young people were Rosenberg wrote a piece for AJR What was emphasised here was not the particularly heedless of their elders' Information in 1968 to mark the eightieth idealism, spontaneity and desire for change authority - 'trau keinem uber dreiBig* ('don't birthday of the Czech-bom refugee Bmno of the student activists, but their empty trust anyone over thirty'), as German Adler, who, under the pseudonym Urban rhetoric and the radical gesturing that student radicals declared. Roedl, had published studies of such literary passed for a political strategy. The I have read every issue of AJR figures as Matthias Claudius and Adalbert refugees' attitudes to radical left-wing Information in the 1960s from cover to cover, Stifter, he stressed that these were intensely politics will be the subject of my next and have found hardly a single mention of private writers, immune to the fads and article. the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. While fashions of their time: 'They were in a way Anthony Grenville tmS9S.my»^i^^.-'> AJR welcomes new AJR Directors Gordon Greenfield Head of Social Services Carol Rossen he AJR is delighted to welcome sistant Clinical Dir­ AJR Heads of Department ector of the Raphael TMaisie Holland as its new Head of Maisie Holland Social Services Social Services.
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