VOLUME 8 NO. I JANUARY 2008 journal Association of Jeu/ish Refugees

'Peace for our time' rides again

ichael Gonnarty, MP, Chairman they would not support military action of the House of Commons against Germany, even though the German MEuropean Scmtiny Committee, forces in the Rhineland were too weak to distinguished himself recently by saying offer effective resistance. When Hitler that Foreign Secretary David Miliband's marched into Austria in March 1938, the attitude to the new European Treaty British government reacted with supine reminded him of Neville Chamberlain's passivity. And when Hitler began to put declaration that the Munich Agreement of pressure on Czechoslovakia later that year. September 1938 had brought 'peace for our Chamberlain flew to Germany for time'. Prime Minister Chamberlain's ill-fated negotiations, which ended with the betrayal words have become synonymous with his of the Czechs at Munich and the surrender policy of appeasement, which was intended of the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia to preserve peace for Britain by buying to (iermany. Hitler off with concessions, in particular Why, after all, should Britain become territorial ones, at the expense of other, embroiled in European matters? Why, smaller nations. asked Chamberlain, should we risk war for 'a quarrel in a far away country between Accusing a politician of part-Jewish Churchill with Lord Halifax in Downing origin of modelling his strategy on the street, 1940 (akg-images/ulUtein bild) people of whom we know nothing'? appeasement of the Nazis showed a crass Chamberlain here prefigured the Euro- degree of insensitivity. Connarty's remarks for inaction and a hands-off attitude to sceptic rhetoric that decries any alignment also demonstrated a sadly defective grasp events in Europe. of British policy with those of European of history. For the lesson of the appeasement When Chamberlain became prime min­ nations whose languages one cannot period, which reached its height in 1938 and ister in 1937, Britain faced superior German understand, whose capitals one cannot spell, ended definitively only when Britain military power in Europe, as well as having and whose history and culture one knows refused to surrender in May/June 1940 as to commit considerable forces to the defence nothing about. France fell, is not the simplistic Eurosceptic of her imperial possessions overseas. Cham­ Chamberlain's refusal to engage lesson that Connarty seems to draw from it berlain decided that the only strategy positively with other European democracies, - that negotiating with Europeans is always possible in this situation was to make con­ like France and Czechoslovakia, ended in likely to end by making concessions and cessions to Hitler, in the hope of buying time world war. His successor, Churchill, took a thus betraying the national interest. for rearmament - the strategy of appease­ very different line. Churchill was a In reality, the policy of appeasement ment. It was, of course, a fundamental error convinced Francophile; in June 1940 his itself was largely rooted in a distinctly to treat Hitler as if he were an old-fashioned govemment made the remarkable proposal Eurosceptic policy towards events in nationalist who could be bought off with of an indissoluble union between the British Europe, a sad tale of drift and neglect of our limited territorial gains. But underlying and French states, in the hope of keeping European alliances that led Britain to the that failure of judgment was another seri­ France in the war. Any prime minister who catastrophic situation confronting her in ous error: the failure to promote alliances did anything remotely similar today would 1940. Faced with the threat from Germany with European countries that might have be branded a traitor by the Eurosceptic before 1914, British politicians had reacted formed a common front against Hitler while press. with statesmanship, winding up their Germany was still weak. The historic debates in the War Cabinet colonial quarrels with France and Russia so Instead of standing foursquare with in late May 1940, resulting in the decision as to build an alliance with those countries France, the British govemment repeatedly to fight on against Hitler, have been solid enough to withstand German failed to back its principal potential ally analysed in John Lukacs's gripping study aggression. But after 1933, faced with a against Hitler when the latter began his Five Days in May and in Ian Kershaw's renewed threat from the same quarter, the campaign of expansion. When he sent forces Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That National Government, under Ramsay into the demilitarised Rhineland in 1936, Changed the World 1940-1941. Using MacDonald and then Stanley Baldwin, opted the British made it clear to the French that continued page 5, col. 3 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

n 8 November 2007, Siegbert Shakespeare to express his own concerns, Prawer, Taylor Professor Emeritus A fond farewell the most striking was perhaps Freud's use Oof German at Oxford, delivered of figures like Hamlet to reveal his own what he called his valedictory lecture: ambivalent attitudes towards his father, 'Sigmund Freud's Shakespearean Auto­ notably Heine, and formidably erudite and, in his scientific works, of children in biography'. His farewell lecture was an studies like Karl Marx and World general towards their parents. enthralling experience, though tinged Literature, not forgetting The Penguin The panorama included Hamlet, both with sadness for the many colleagues and Book of Lieder and a lecture on the in his loyalty to Old Hamlet, his father, students who gathered to hear it. Yiddish poet A. N. StencI. In recent years, and in his revulsion towards Claudius, the Professor Prawer was born in Cologne he has written, as he puts it, 'three books usurper-father who claims his mother, a in 1925, the son of Jewish parents who on Thackeray and four and a half on film'. revulsion intensified by the consequent emigrated to Britain in 1939. He is the His penultimate lecture, given in 2006 at foregrounding of his mother's sexuality; brother of the distinguished author and London University, was on 'Freud between Lear and the tragedy of his relationship screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who Goethe and Darwin', encompassing no with the modest, loyal Cordelia; Brutus wrote the screenplays for the delightful less than three giants of the world of and Caesar; and, among Freud's real-life Shakespeare Wallah, for the film of her ideas. patients, the troubled feelings of the Rat own Booker Prize-winning novel Heat and Readers of this journal will know Man towards his father Shakespeare's Dust, and for the much admired E. M. Siegbert Prawer from his contributions to adage that the wish is father to the Forster adaptations A Room with a View our letters' page, which have in recent thought was, said Prawer, Freud's and Howard's End, In which last Siegbert years ranged effortlessly from Interpretation of Dreams in a nutshell. Prawer plays a cameo role. Shakespeare to Wilfred Owen. But he was The lecture was a tour de force based Professor Prawer began his career as a also familiar to an earlier generation of on a profound knowledge of the works lecturer in the high-powered department readers: over 40 years ago, AJR of both its subjects and on a range of of German at Birmingham, where Roy Information carried an admiring report on insights that illuminated the way that Pascal had assembled a team that a lecture he had given on the Jewish Freud's thinking reflected, and was included Richard Hinton Thomas, who contribution to German lyric poetry, on shaped by, his reading of Shakespeare. went on to found the department of 17 January 1963 at the Leo Baeck The Jewish dimension was also present, German at Warwick, and W. B. Lockwood, Institute, London. in the form of the uneasy relationship the internationally known expert on In his farewell lecture. Professor Prawer between the emancipated, secularised Germanic languages. Evidently, Prawer reminded us that Freud was given a copy Jews of the Western, German-speaking flourished amidst this group of Marxist- of the Schlegel-Tieck translation of cities, like Freud, and the Eastern inclined left-wingers, for in 1952 he Shakespeare at the age of eight, in 1864, European, Orthodox shtetl world of their published his German Lyric Poetry, a on the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare's forefathers: among all the references to collection of beautifully crafted analyses birth. He then delivered an analysis of the The Merchant of Venice in Freud's of poems ranging from Klopstock to Rilke. role played by Shakespeare in Freud's writings, Professor Prawer found no His output of publications has been writings that was erudite, stimulating and mention of that classic ghetto figure, prodigious and wide-ranging: he has stylish. Ofthe many fascinating instances Shylock. written a number of books on poets. he cited where Freud employed Anthony Grenville

RONALD CHANNING joined the AJR in wishing to work any longer 1994 as editorial assistant to its Saying goodbye on Sundays due to family distinguished magazine editor Richard Three AJR members of commitments, she began Grunberger He came with experience of staff have retired working two days a week at industry, voluntary organisations, journal­ reception. Dee says she has ism, photography spent many happy years ^^^^ Ernie Goldmann, the AJR's part-time and knowledge of working for an 'amazing' ^ Accountant, was born in Upper Silesia. the Jewish com­ organisation and that the AJR 'is truly a Because his father was registered with the munity, as well as dedicated charity that gives its members Jewish Blind Society in requisite literary, all the support and care they need. I will Germany, the family was editing, layout miss all our lovely members with their able to liaise with the and design skills. smiling faces and, of course, all my friends equivalent organisation in Appointed a at the Day Centre and Head Office.' the UK and he, his parents ^ Director of the and his older brother AJR in 1999, in arrived in this country in 0 '^ addition to the 1939 under the auspices AJR Directors executive editorship of the AJR Journal, Gordon Greenfield of the Jewish Blind Society. After the war Carol Rossen Ronald undertook a much wider brief Ernie signed articles with a London firm of which included nationwide development AJR Heads of Department chartered accountants. Having worked at Michael Newman Media and Public Relations of outreach groups, participation in the AJR for eight years, a stint he has greatly Susie Kaufman Organiser, AJR Centre Holocaust Memorial Day, fostering AJR- enjoyed, Ernie is looking forward to a far AJR Journal backed refugee history projects, more leisurely lifestyle. Dr Anthony Grenville Consultant Editor including the outstanding Continental Doreen (Dee) Frankel started at the AJR Dr Howard Spier Executive Editor Britons' exhibition, and supporting ac­ Andrea Goodmaker Secretarial/Advertisements in 1991 helping Sylvia Matus one day a tivities of the Kindertransport. Ronald week at Fairfax Road. Later, she was offered takes enormous pride in his service to the a position at the Day Centre on Sundays Views expressed in the AJR Journal are not refugee community. organising afternoon tea and dinner Not necessarily those of the Association of Jewish Refugees and should not be regarded as such. AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

Musings rrom tne departure lounge NEWTONS Leading Hampstead Solicitors ld age a refugee affliction? Not in my English pomp. 'Heraufgefallen' is advise on quite. I have just googled 'old the word that springs to mind. Property, Wills, Family Trusts Oage' and there are approxi­ And, while on the subject of my and Charitable Trusts mately 23 million links. So there must person, I am not growing old graciously. be a lot of it about. But we refugees I do not value 'the gifts reserved for old French and German spoken are defined by age as no others - you age', in T. S. Eliot's bitter phrase. Home visits arranged can't be a young refugee from the Mellowing? Not a hope - not with the Nazis. I suppose the youngsters among odour of antisemitism always in my 22 Fitzjohn's Avenue, us are in their seventies, and the oldest nostrils, even (or perhaps especially) in London NW3 SNB rate a paragraph - or an obituary - in better-class company. the Journal. What occupies my mind and my Tel: 020 7435 5351 Yet there is something special about days is thinking, puzzling about my Fax: 020 7435 8881 our advancing years: we are not just Jewishness. A few weeks ago I re-read dying, we are dying out. Refugees a passage in my mother's diary. 'We don't reproduce their own kind; they ourselves did not belong anywhere', she become extinct. Their offspring are a wrote, in German of course. 'No priest different species. Watch the old lady blessed us, no beggar bowed to us, we looking out of the window of her were alone in a world of strangers. We Hampstead flat and calling to her were Jews, our happiness lay in the JACKMAN - grandson; 'Plantagenet, stop playing family. That was our fortress from which mit dirt!' Or if you prefer to go we observed the world, understood it SILVERMAN COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS upmarket: Sigmund Freud's grandson better than they understood us.' That Lucian transmogrified into Britain's was written by a very young girl in greatest living painter Berlin, pre-Second World War, who had No one of note has celebrated our never seen the inside of a synagogue. I terminal condition in poetry, the proper still feel beleaguered, a hundred years medium for swan songs. Perhaps it is on. too soon to celebrate a shared history, For light relief, I ponder the refugee 26 Conduit Street with so much to make us alike at the balance sheet - not to calculate what London WIR 9TA level of the common unconscious. On we have contributed to English li-fe but the surface, we are as different from whether this country would have been Telephone: 020 7409 0771 one another as any random selection much the same today if we had come Fax: 020 7493 8017 of the population. We have our stars here or not. There can be two entirely and our also-rans, yet I cannot help different answers - for instance, Paul thinking that we are a bit special if only Hamlyn certainly changed the face of for the fact that in addition to luck there British publishing, but would someone is a gruesome element of natural else have done so, if he had not been selection in escape and survival. there first? Entire books have been AUSTRIAN and GERMAN Our 'senior moments' too are Every­ written about the contribution individual I PENSIONS man's and yet different. Infantile immigrants have made in their respec­ regression takes us back not just in time tive fields, but have they changed the but in place; slips of the tongue hark face of the country? What would a PROPERTY back to a vocabulary forgotten or Britain without us look like today? Much RESTITUTION CLAIMS repressed. Ancient melodies surface the same or significantly different? EAST GERMANY - BERLIN strangely twisted: does the song really Would the broad stream of history have go 'Queen, Queen, nur Du allein'? taken a different course, or were we just On instructions our office will English acquaintances don't see it this corks bobbing on the surface? It comes assist to deal with your way. They think us canny survivors, con-, down to how you think history is made. I applications and pursue the sider every one of our stories unique, Do events produce the man, or do men • matter with the authorities worth writing down. The shrewder arise to shape events? I am with Tolstoy among them note that, unlike our Eng­ on this one. For further information lish brethren, we lack a proletariat, that Victor Ross and an appointment among us are - or were - more philoso­ please contact: phers than plumbers. So many of us have done better in ICS CLAIMS this country than they would have done Annely Juda Fine Art 146-154 Kilburn High Road London NW6 4JD where they came from, and that goes 23 Dering Street (off New Bond Street) for me too. Had I stayed in Vienna, I Tel: 020 7629 7578 Fax: 020 7491 2139 Tel: 020 7328 7251 (Ext. 107) would at best have been a minor coffee house wit with a law degree. Yet you CONTEMPORARY PAINTING Fax: 020 7624 5002 AND SCULPTURE should have seen me 20 or 30 years ago. AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

ySjhcrc are those ^museum pieces' exactlt)?

by Ray Fromm

nthony Grenville's article 'Museum been less distressed by their internment Pieces? (November 2007) claims experiences, but for my father these A the authors of a book about my events elicited modest, yet lingering grandfather, Fromms-wie der judische resentment towards the country that Kondomfabrikant Julius F. unter die saved him but nevertheless initially put deutschen Rauber fiel (How the Jewish him behind barbed wire for 18 months. Condom Manufacturer Julius F. Fell Astonishingly, Dr Grenville seeks to among German Thieves) have fallen into accuse the authors of a 'blatant attempt the trap of depicting German-Jewish to elide British and Nazi practice' be­ refugees as 'museum pieces'. cause Ruth Fromm's internment was a Ray Fromm In making this accusation, Dr result of being lumped 'as a kind of Grenville lists spurious arguments. For what happened to the Fromm family. Sippenhaft' - note the authors state example, he castigates the authors, Having researched what transpired 'kind of, by which they do not mean Professor Gotz Aly, a noted German when most of the family arrived here, full-blown Nazi Sippenhaft - into her historian specialising in the Nazi period, it is perfectly understandable for the father Salomon's Category B internment and Michael Sontheimer, a well-known authors to home in on the British status. (For those not familiar with the Spiegel-Magazin journalist, of concen­ government's sometimes reprehensible Nazi word Sippenhaft, there is no direct trating on the internment of my father, treatment of Jewish refugees fleeing translation in English but a definition Edgar Fromm, and his cousin, Ruth here from Nazi-occupied countries. Dr may suffice here, i.e. a form of collec­ Fromm, without 'the balancing context Grenville may well shrug off what tive responsibility whereby family of 60 years of post-war settlement'. occurred then and patronisingly state, members are liable for the misdeeds of What this 'post-war settlement' actually for instance, that Ruth Fromm 'was, their relatives.) Unlike Dr Grenville, who means is unclear, but in case Dr Grenville unfortunately, just one of a number of has not bothered to ascertain the true has missed the point of the book - and Jewish refugee women' to be interned. facts of the matter, the authors were it regrettably seems that he has - it is For Ruth Fromm though, in Holloway able to establish in interviews with Ruth about how my grandfather built a vast Prison for two months, the situation Fromm that it was because of her business empire in Germany from noth­ was sufficiently traumatic for her to go immediate kinship with her father ing and then had it confiscated, first by on a hunger strike. My father too, at Salomon, who by Ruth's own admission the Nazis, then by the GDR Communists. that time only 20 years old, was, for had conducted himself somewhat arro­ The book describes the mechanics the rest of his life, somewhat affected gantly at the internment tribunal of Aryanisation in painstakingly by having been shipped to Australia and hearing, that her own internment fate researched detail and thereby affords mistreated by a largely antisemitic Royal was sealed. Salomon had previously an interesting, informative insight into Navy crew and captain during his been a British citizen but had given up one aspect of the workings of the Nazi passage there on the infamous Dunera. his British nationality on his return from machine. Its narrative also focuses on Granted others may in retrospect have I Continued on page fT)

^Lifelong Impressions^: A majoT Tetrospective by Milein Cosman

he Austrian Cultural Forum is to Gallery, the V&A and the British birds, in particular the Swinging host a major retrospective of the Museum. She is also known for her Monkey (mid-1990s). T work of the German-born Jewish drawings which appeared in the Radio Pinpointing examples of Milein artist Milein Cosman. The exhibition, Times in the 1940s-60s. Currently, her Cosman's work, I am inspired by two entitled 'Lifelong Impressions: drawings of renowned musicians are on wartime scenes: Shelter in the Blitz Paintings, Prints and Drawings by Milein display in the Wigmore Hall restaurant (1941), which shows Belsize Park Cosman', will be presented by the area. underground station, and a picture Jewish Museum and hosted by the The exhibition spans over six decades from The Eagle and Child (1942), which Austrian Cultural Forum from 9 January of prolific output, ranging from prints depicts soldiers in an Oxford pub. 2008, moving to the Hampstead and drawings to oil paintings and 'Lifelong Impressions: Paintings, Museum at Burgh House in April. watercolours, and includes portraits of Prints and Drawings by Milein Born in 1921, Milein Cosman arrived distinguished cultural figures such as Cosman' can be seen at the Austrian in England in 1939 to study at the Slade Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, T. S. Eliot, Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, School of Art, then based in Oxford. She Iris Murdoch, Thomas Mann, Edith London SW7, from 9 January to 26 later moved to north-west London, Sitwell, W. H. Auden, Barbara Hepworth March 2008. Admission is free. For where she has remained. She was mar­ and Martin Buber further information, please telephone ried to the Austrian-born musician, writer, There are many pictures of Austria; Dina Wosner on 020 8371 7371 or visit teacher and broadcaster Hans Keller. opera-lovers will particularly delight in www.jewishmuseum.org.uk Milein Cosman's work is represented the drawings of leading singers from Ann Rau Dawes in numerous public collections here and the Vienna State Opera. Nature-lovers Ann Rau Dawes is co-curator of the abroad, including the National Portrait will admire the drawings of animals and Milein Cosman Exhibition AjR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008 Theft

everal years ago, the International got even that money!' Commission on Holocaust Era My sister Lea went crazy when she SInsurance Claims (ICHEIC) pub­ first saw the swastika stamp next to my lished a list of German Jews who may mother's signature. I was equally have had insurance policies they had to enraged - not at the swastika but at my abandon, either because they were mother's signature: 'Amalie Sara forced to flee Germany to avoid Nazi Kanner'. My mother didn't have a persecution or because they were un­ middle name, but she signed with one. able to escape and were dragged off I understood at once. I knew the Nazi to concentration camps. In still other decree. Men without a middle name cases, Jews were forced to sign their were forced to adopt the middle name policies over to the Nazis. Israel; women were assigned the name The list was published on the internet Sara. and was the talk of my community of Sara is the mother of the Jewish North London Jews who were Holocaust people. It is an honourable name. But survivors or their descendants. We, Eva Kugler it was not part of my mother's name. particulariy those over the age of 60 She was not Amalie Sara. Looking now without computers, phoned friends and younger sister became a hidden child, at this signature, I could feel the humi­ asked them to ask their children or while my elder sister and I joined a liation, as she was ordered not just grandchildren to check the list for our Kindertransport. where to sign, but how. She would have names. Then, unexpectedly, we received a been conservatively dressed, presum­ I logged on to the internet and, in second letter, addressed by name this ably wearing a hat, because in those almost no time at all, found my father's time. Father's insurance policy had been days women always wore hats when name on the list. I don't know why I found. The records showed 'the they went out, the hat perhaps adding was surprised. My father was, after all, surrender value was paid to him on June to her diminutive height. But in spite a successful, modern businessman with 19, 1939'. That couldn't be right. My of her immaculate outfit and her ability a young family - a person who would father was no longer in Germany on to maintain a benign expression to hide sensibly buy insurance. But neither of that date. But this was specific. It was her rage, she could not have stopped my parents had ever mentioned own­ about us. It was an acknowledgment the rush of blood that would have ing an insurance policy. It was never in black-and-white. It was the Nazis coloured her face as she signed. included in the list of items the Nazis saying, 65 years later, 'We did this to Eva Kugler stole from our family which my mother you. We stole what was yours.' would at times recite with great anger. Soon a third communication arrived When I had secured an application - a photocopy of a document headed •PEACE FOR OIR TIME', form from the AJR, I phoned my two RQckkaufsquittung. This re-purchase re­ sisters in New York. We agreed that the ceipt proved the existence of an actual present-day terms, one might say that the youngest of us. Lea, would be the life insurance policy that my father had arguments of Lord Halifax, the Foreign claimant. Our application was posted taken out. It also explained the contra­ Secretary, who advocated negotiations with in November 2003. diction in dates. On June 19, 1939 it Hitler using Mussolini as intermediary, For two years nothing happened. was my mother who had been forced were essentially Eurosceptic: to achieve Then, in August 2005, we received a to sign the agreement, giving away more tolerable peace terms, Halifax was prepared standard letter from an official of ICHEIC. than 1,000 Marks. It was all arranged a to disengage Britain from Europe, Addressed to 'Dear Claimant', the letter few days before she, my sisters and I explained that some claims were impos­ left Germany. The proceeds of the policy conceding German dominance over the sible to validate due to the ravages of were paid into a blocked account in the Continent, and to concentrate on Britain's war and the passage of time, but that Dresden Bank in our hometown of role as a non-European power, by preserving we had provided sufficient information Halle, so mother never got the money. her overseas empire. Even if she had, she couldn't have kept for the Commission to conclude that Churchill, by contrast, refused to the 'individuallsj' named in our claim it. A Jew leaving Germany was permit­ abandon the European role. He made 'possibly held some form of insurance'. ted to take out of the country no more For these situations, the Commission than 10 Marks - in our case, 40 Marks London the headquarters of the democratic had created a humanitarian award cat­ for mother and three daughters. That forces fighting to liberate Europe and the egory and offered us $1,000. paltry sum was nowhere near the in­ seat of European governments in exile, the A standard letter yes - but one that surance payout of 1,147.84 Marks. Free French, Poles, Czechs, Dutch and sent money. My share of $333 sat in a This was a repetition of another others, a coalition of the free peoples of New York bank. The money meant occasion on which the Nazis had forced Europe. AJR members in particular have nothing to me. It seemed to have my mother to sign. I remembered the cause to be thankful that it was Churchill, nothing to do with our family. It was rage with which she recounted how she not the champions of appeasement and unrelated to the trauma of Kristallnacht had been forced to sign over my father's and the family's flight to France, where store to the Nazis for a paltry sum, less disengagement from Europe, who held my parents were interned in half-a- than a tenth of its true value, and then power in the summer of 1940. dozen concentration camps and my concluding the story: 'Of course, I never Anthony GrenviUe AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

8PS??S5!BS^?^^^^SSB5SS^IS^S?^ The event began after dark in a small church, where Mr Pacholski described the significance of Kristallnacht and the catalytic role I had played in getting the lETTERS^ The Editor reserves the right town to remember its pre-war past. to shorten correspondence Prayers were said by the bishop and, in submitted for publication Hebrew, by the man from Szczeczin, and messages of support were read out from an Austrian journalist and writer (Ute Hoeschele) whose family had lived in the town before the war, as well as from me. The marchers then solemnly proceeded to several former Jewish sites, now marked THE YOUNGEST KINDERTRANSPORT Sir -The youngest 'Kind' was four months with monuments of one kind or another REFUGEE? old, according to Bertha Leverton's - the synagogue, the old cemetery records. I actually met her, and spoke to Sir - Re Erika Klausner's letter 'The (rededicated two years ago and her, last summer in Hyde Park. youngest Kindertransport refugee?' containing my great-uncle's grave stone (December), according to the vague rules (Mrs) Annette Saville - see photograph), and what used to be for permitting children to come to Britain London NW4 the 'new' cemetery, now within the from December 1938 till the outbreak of Technical University. This was the third war, children were supposed to be over KRISTALLNACHT COMMEMORATED annual march; the weather was five. I know of two three-year-olds and IN KOSZALIN reasonable for once but there was snow two babies who arrived at Harwich. One on the ground. of the former was Leah Roth from Borken. The Poles were clearly not responsible She came a few weeks before the war, for Kristallnacht and its aftermath, yet aged three, with her sisters Hilde, seven, they feel it appropriate to remember the and Friedchen, five. Today, she is Leah Traub and lives in east or north-east event as a warning to future generations. London. She has nine children and 45 Such acts of remembrance do occur all grandchildren. I saw her again, as an adult, over Poland and it is important for us to when we held a reunion in London for our acknowledge and welcome this. former refugee hostel (Windermere) in the Significantly, as you will know, Warsaw is summer of 1989. We were told that at the to have - at last - a Holocaust museum. last minute the parents sent Leah instead Leslie Baruch Brent Emeritus Professor oftheolderbrother, as they feared England The marchers on reaching the 'old' Jewish would not be orthodox enough for the cemetery. In the foreground is the gravestone London N19 of Leslie B. Brent's great-uncle David Baruch, boy. Remarkably, Leah's father survived, a which was found lying in the nearby stream changed and physically damaged man; the and, after a period in the local museum, was WHO IS A JEW? mother, older brother and two tiny Roth returned to the newly re-consecrated Sir - Mr Phillips should have read my very cemetery. In the background is the cypress siblings perished. Another friend is Ruth planted three years ago adjacent to the large brief discourse 'On Being or Not Being a Schwiening (nee Auerbach), who came memorial rock with its plaque written in Jew' with a little more attention to detail. from near Breslau on the KT aged three. Hebrew and Polish (photograph by courtesy of Z. Pacholski) I clearly state that the question as to who Today she lives in Market Bosworth, is and who is not a Jew is not a value-free Leicestershire. Sir - I would like to draw your readers' judgement: it depends on who asks the question and who answers it. Although I The two babies mentioned above were attention to an event that occurred in am not quite sure what he means by 'been twins - Susi and Lotte Bechhofer - whose Koszalin, Poland, on 15 November - brought up in the Jewish way of life' desperate mother had put them on a train especially as, judging from previous (Hassidic? secular?), I am quite happy to leaving Munich in a basket/cradle. correspondence, there are still some who accept the paternal line as equally valid for Fostered by a Welsh Baptist minister and are unwilling to recognise that the Poles being Jewish - but then, I am also ready his wife, they knew nothing of their are undergoing a profound change of to accept 'Jews for Jesus' as being Jews. origins. Lotte died as an adolescent. Susi, attitude. Hitler would not have disagreed with either living in Rugby today, heard by chance a To commemorate Kristallnacht, a proposition. Conversely, and I said so broadcast in 1989 about the KT She candlelight march was organised, and explicitly, if the answer depends on wondered, then investigated. The BBC this was attended by some 140 people, Halachic Law, then neither would qualify. helped her trace her origins. You can including 30 youngsters from a local Mr Phillips refers vaguely to a 'Muslim imagine the shock that the rest of us did school. The organisers were Henryk race'. If he means the Islamic Umah, then, not have to go through. I am glad to know Romanik, a Catholic priest, poet and local genetically, Jews are a 'race' by analogous Susi - an extraordinary woman. historian, and Zdzislaw Pacholski, a definition. If, on the other hand, as I professional photographer I have known Ruth L David believe, race is defined by the DNA these two for seven years and they have Ames, Iowa, USA molecule, then Mr Phillips and I may be been responsible for other events that I of the same race; our Ethiopian fellow- have written about in the past in our Sir - I believe I was younger than Erika Jews, however, are not. Klausner as I arrived on 20 April 1939 at Journal. They have become good friends the age of 2 years, 10 months, my third of mine. Present, too, were the mayor's Harold Saunders birthday being 17 June. wife, the head of the Jewish community Manchester We always look forward to the AJR in Szczeczin (formerly Stettin), the local magazine - such a well-informed and bishop, a poet living some 100 km away AMSTERDAM STRIKE REMEMBERED interesting read. and, significantly, several members of the Sir - On 25 February 1941, under German Helga Lazarus (nee Singer) local Jewish community who normally occupation, a strike took place in London N3 keep themselves to themselves. Amsterdam protesting against the brutal AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

Nazi treatment of Jews. The strikers were conditions. The settlers belong to the Kach tell anyone about all we did, it leaves public transport and other municipal group. Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 them speechless with admiration. Firstly, employees, workers in shipbuilding and Muslims praying in the Hebron mosque, that we did it all and, secondly, how steel, large stores and many shops and belonged to this group, whose members clever the organisers must have been to offices. Public transport in Amsterdam the Israeli Government considers fit it all in! How true! was halted for a whole day. The next day, terrorists. When you come to plan next year's other Dutch cities joined in. More details Peter Prager event, how about Liverpool, City of are to be found at http:// llford, Essex Culture! I can see there is going to be lots wvvw.februaristaking.nl/english.html going on and I think it would make a Please come and join me at the annual MISSING THE POINT splendid holiday. High time that the commemoration of these events, just Sir - Guy Bishop's apocryphal anecdote Londoners travelled north - and a bit west after 4 pm on 25 February 2008 at the (December, Letters) about my grand­ as well, don't you think? Jonas Daniel Meijerplein, very close to the father, Julius Fromm, unfortunately Dorothy Fleming Waterlooplein Metro station, Amsterdam. misses the point and does not make any Sheffield The mayor, the Israeli ambassador and sense as it stands, for the correct trans­ Dutch Jewish groups will be there. Old lation of Reklamationen is 'complaints', wmmmimmimmmmmmmmmmmimm and frail visitors will be looked after. not 'advertisements' (Reklame). Thus the Nothing like this strike happened large group of children with which my Leo Baeck Housing Association Ltd where we came from, which makes it all grandfather is supposed to have been the more important for us to join in seen refers to faulty condoms, not to any Clara Nehab House honouring those Dutch heroes. For more marketing of the product he invented. Residential Care Home information, contact me at Whilst on the subject of faulty or burst All single rooms with en suite [email protected] or at condoms - something that obviously bath/shower Short stays/Respite Skinner 58, Nea Chora, Chania 73100, never happened with a genuine and 24 hour Permanent Care. Large Frommser-my grandfather would invari­ Crete, Greece. attractive gardens. Ground Floor George Landers ably shift such unfortunate occurrences Lounge and Dining Rooms. Crete on to the competition, when he said, Lift access to all floors. Easy access equally apocryphally, 'Die Konkurrenz soil to local shops and public transport. platzeni' It is hoped your readers will understand the dual meaning of Enquiries and further information please contact: ANNA ESSINGER The Manager, Clara Nehab House 'platzen'. 13-19 Leeside Crescent, London NWII ODA Sir -1 was delighted to see the piece about Phone: 020 8455 2286 Anna Essinger in October's journal. Anna Ray Fromm "^ . Essinger was a relative of my dear late London NW7 husband. He used to tell me about her school. I didn't realise she was so well NORTH AND SOUTH SPRING known or I would have paid more Sir - I would like to thank everyone attention! involved in the three-day trip to London GROVE Mary D. Essinger in November Special thanks must go to 214 Finchley Road Leicester Susanne Green and Barbara Dresner London NW3 Dorrity for their hard work and the professional manner in which they London's Most Luxurious AFTER ANNAPOLIS organised it. RETIREMENT HOME Sir - Peace negotiations between Israel The choice of venues was well • Entertainment - Activities thought out - from the tour of the Bevis and the Palestinians are bound to take a • Stress Free Living Marks Synagogue to the tour of the long time and it is therefore necessary • 24 House Staffing Excellent Cuisine to take some small steps to alleviate the Jewish East End. We were shown things • Full En-Suite Facilities sufferings of the Palestinians, particularly too humorous to mention, with a tour the 30,000 Palestinians who live in the guide so knowledgable and full of Call for more information compound of Hebron ruled by the Israeli enthusiasm about his subject, and a or a personal tour army. Its main street, Shuhuda Street, is lovely lunch, eaten on the go, from 020 8446 2117 reserved for Jews only, i.e, the 700 Rinkoff's bakery. or 020 7794 4455 settlers who live above the town. When we had gathered our breath, we [email protected] Palestinians must climb with ladders on were taken to Belsize Square Synagogue the roofs to get into their own homes. for a first-class dinner and a talk by the My daughter Alison was in Shuhuda vivacious and straight-talking Anna Street on a study tour and, when she Raeburn. There was a trip to see the WANTED TO BUY entered the market, she wondered why Wallace Collection of fine art. On our last there were nets above the streets: the day, we were taken to the /^R Centre for German and settlers regularly throw rubbish, stones a very tasty lunch (thank you, chef!) and and bottles from their homes onto the a very moving Kristallnacht service by English Books market and the nets prevented the Rabbi Rodney Mariner. Thank you all Bookdealer, AJR member, rubbish from falling onto the stallholders concerned! welcomes invitations to view and and Palestinian shoppers. Mrs Sabine Barton purchase valuable books. Yehuda Shaul is a religious Jew who, Mrs Ruth Eisikovits on a visit to this country, told me that Liverpool Robert Hornung 10 Mount View, Ealing when he did his military service in Hebron London W5 IPR he took off his yarmulka because he didn't Sir - Just want to thank Susanne (and all Email: [email protected] want the Palestinians to see that a concerned) once more for the splendid Tel: 020 8998 0546 religious Jew could tolerate such time you gave us in London. Whenever I human and less beatific; ab-eady her face and presence seem to be evolving into the REVIEWS next century. The colours, particularly the gilding, are luminescent and in more The standard text for the than one example - particularly Neroccio history of Pankow Jewry de'Landi's portrait of a young JUDISCHE LEBENSWEGE - EIN noblewoman, whose hair is a near-white KULTURHISTORISCHER STREIFZUG halo and whose downcast eyes typify her DURCH PANKOW UND ost of us think of Renaissance NIEDERSCHONHAUSEN art and Florence in one breath. by Inge Lammel We forget beleaguered Siena, ed. by Forderverein ehemaliges M Judisches Waisenhaus Pankow e.V., whose endless battle against its more die Vereinigung der Verfolgten des powerful neighbour generated its own Naziregimes und den Bund der paler, softer reflection of the Renaissance. Antifaschisten Pankow e.V. Renaissance Siena: Art for a City, at TeetzlBedin: Hentrich & Hentrich, the National Gallery (NG) this month, 2007, 397pp. paper, ISNB 078-3- brings 1(X) works on loan from private and 938485-53-8, 24.80 euros public collections across Europe and his book, by the historian Inge America together with the NG's own Lammel, to which a number of collection of Sienese art. Among its Tothers have also contributed, greatest artists are Francesco di provides a vivid and poignant, as well Giorgio and Domenico Beccafumi, as a detailed and well-illustrated, description of the life and fate of Jews names which, alongside Lorenzo in these two adjacent suburbs of Berlin. Rustici, Arcangelo Salimbeni and German (Lower Rhine), Tobias and Sarah on An amalgam of two earlier books, it has Francesco Vanni, remain relatively their Wedding Night, about 1520 been amended, enlarged and brought © V&A images / Victoria and Albert Museum, London unknown. up to date. Beccafumi was regarded as a Sienese as a feminine ideal of modesty and beauty Inge Lammel came to Britain in 1939 Giotto. While Florentine contemporaries - you could be forgiven for thinking that on a Kindertransport, and returned to like Fra Bartolommeo and Michaelangelo this exotic Mediterranean city is the Berlin in 1947 to study Musikwissen- worked with strong colour, his work, original home of blonde ambition. schaft at Humboldt-Universitat. She has lived in Pankow, which used to be in though more subtle, is asonishingly mod­ The light of the Renaissance is the DDR, ever since. She established and em, sometimes almost Impressionistic. reflected in German stained glass in directed the Archive for Workers' Songs The exhibition, sponsored by Banca another NG show, Art of Light: German at the Academy of the Arts, played a Monte dei Paschi di Siena, covers the Renaissance Stained Glass, until 17 prominent role in Pankow's anti-fascist volatile period beginning with the February, sponsored by Freshfields organisation, and has published a coronation of the Sienese Pope Pius II in Bruckhaus Deringer. This is a first for number of books, most of them con­ 1458 and evokes a lost Renaissance. Yet the NG, which maintains that the best cerned with Jewish life in Pankow. Sienese art forms a civic map of a city Renaissance stained glass often Pankow remains home to an unusually large number of doctors, which, imder constant Florentine threat, superseded contemporary painting. artists and intellectuals, and it is hardly tumed inward. Many of the Gallery's fifteenth and early surprising that before the Second There are many busy, narrative sixteenth century artists were also panel World War they should have included paintings whose gestural style typifies the painters. The exhibition focuses on three a great many Jews. It is thanks largely Renaissance: saints and sinners form a artists of the period: Albrecht Diirer, to Inge Lammel's careful and persistent backdrop for depictions of the Virgin Hans Baldung Grien and Jorg Breu. research and the resulting books that Mary, the patron saint of Siena, credited The first two worked together in the life and fate of many of the Jews of Pankow have been remembered and with having saved the city from foreign Freiburg creating new windows for the cherished. This book is the culmination aggressors from the thirteenth century up cathedral. of these endeavours. It will be of interest to the Second World War. Their loyalty The use of coloured glass flourished in not only to Berliners or ex-Berliners but is reflected in many luminescent works. (Germany and Northern Europe from the to anyone with an interest in German- The Virgin theme developed in the twelth century, using Old and New Jewish life. In his introduction, Dr H. fourteenth century, indicating a Testaments as natural source material. Simon describes the book, which is rediscovery of classical myth or legend: From the Liesborn and Mariawald written in lucid German, as the standard text for the history of Pankower Jewry. the Sienese Virgin guides ships to calm Abbeys, we can see eloquent scenes from waters, yet retains her pale and saintly the life of David, and Esau relinquishing The book does indeed cover much ground and the reader is treated to a status right up to the end of the fifteenth his birthright, as well as the more kaleidoscope of fascinating and not century, when she begins to appear more conventional aspects of Christ's life. always well-known facts. Jews settled

8 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

In Pankow, which was still a village in ('von den Nachbarn geachtet, von den and the Boys' Orphanage, which the seventeenth century, relatively late, Nazis zerstort' (respected by the receives detailed attention as a major mainly in the second half of the nine­ neighbours, destroyed by the Nazis)): educational institution under several teenth century. An exception was one the title and the family photograph say directors. The last director, Dr Kurt Daniel Itzig, who was banker to it all. What is clear is that the Jews of Crohn, made his mark as an Frederick II and was rewarded for Pankow had a great variety of exceptionably caring man who refused services rendered with permission to professions and skills and that some to leave his boys and was eventually establish a business in Pankow in 1761. were lucky, whilst others paid the deported, together with his wife and By 1910 the Jewish population num­ ultimate price for their Jewishness. young daughter, to Theresienstadt and bered 1,100 and prominent buildings In Part III, Inge Lammel reviews the later to Auschwitz. Crohn died but included a brewery, the Garbaty cigar­ impact Nazi Germany had on German happily his wife and daughter (the latter ette factory, and the Jewish Boys' Jews, from the organised boycott on now living in Israel) survived. Other orphanage. The large building of the 1 April (!) 1933 of Jewish shops, doc­ institutions described include the orphanage survived the war, was totally tors and lawyers to a succession of laws Madchenhaus (girls' hostel) Pankow, renovated some ten years ago by the curbing the freedom of Jews, prevent­ the baby and infant nursery, an old Cajewitz Foundation (director and mov­ ing professionals from practising, to the people's home for the deaf, and a ing spirit: Professor P-A Albrecht) and book-burning on 10 May 1933 and the children's home run by the Furst sisters. is, astonishingly, still known as 'the Nuremberg laws that gave the per­ Finally, we are given a description of former Jewish orphanage'. secution some sort of 'legality'. This life in Pankow after 1945, as told by One learns a lot about a wide variety inevitably led to the forcible acquisition Professor Ernst Hoffmann. The book is of small Jewish businesses and of the property of Jews in Pankow (and well indexed and exhaustively refer­ prominent lawyers and artists, and elsewhere), the creation of 'Juden­ enced. Dr Lammel is to be congratulated there are biographical sketches of a hauser' following Kristailnacht, the on providing us with a document of number of individuals, from the painter 'cleansing' of schools of Jewish chil­ considerable historical importance. Doris Kahane, who survived internment dren, and, with relentless inevitability, Leslie Baruch Brent in the Drancy detention centre in Paris, to the deportations and killings. Once to the jazz trumpeter and band leader again, Inge Lammel documents all this Sigmund Petruschka-Friedmann, who with names and other details. emigrated to Palestine in 1938. One will Other chapters consist of eye-witness Seeking recognition of find a list of doctors, with their Pankow accounts of Pankow Jews who survived wrongs done addresses, and a minimal estimate of and of non-Jews who risked their lives BADDIEL AND THE MISSING NAZI the number of Pankow Jews who hiding or protecting friends and perished (at least 600) in the Holocaust BILLIONS neighbours. Included here is the BBC1, 14 November 2007 or survived it (some 60), with another extraordinary story of the Pankow 40 who survived underground and 80 policeman, one Wilhelm KrCitzfeld, who n this excellent documentary, David who were protected by virtue of being heroically prevented the Nazis from Baddiel said he feared the accusation only partly Jewish. A significant chapter burning down the synagogue in I'Jews are always trying to get money.' is devoted to the religious life of the Oranienburgerstrasse, an action in Yet not for a moment did I believe his Jewish community and its synagogues, which he was supported by his superior fear of antisemitism was as paramount including the Betsaal of the Boys' officer Willi Steuck, also a resident of as he claimed. I think he was looking orphanage (in which I had my Pankow, who was executed barbarically for a peg on which to hang his film barmitzvah in 1938), and to the Jewish in the last days of the war. Consideration and the spectre of antisemitism schools and other institutions. is also given to Catholic 'non-Aryans' and seemed the perfect reason for telling Part II of the book describes in great their families living in Pankow. his story. detail the life and fate of a number of Part V recounts the participation of How on earth can the demand for families, the information having been Pankow Jews in the anti-Nazi resistance. the return of stolen property be a cause gleaned from diaries and painstaking Some were killed, but others survived of antisemitism? The Nazis stole from interviews. As well as telling us about with the assistance of non-Jewish the Jews - a figure of $150 billion is the carefree years of family life before Germans. Again, Inge Lammel helps us quoted. At long last, the countries 1933, they inevitably include heart­ to remember some of the forgotten which backed them, particularly rending accounts of survival in heroes. In Part VI she describes the Germany and Austria, have had to concentration camps and in other dire November pogrom and its aftermath, return their booty to their rightful circumstances and of the fragmentation partly seen through the eyes of those owners. West Germany, thanks to of families. One such account is that of who survived the war, and the Adenauer, was reasonably fair from the the Jedwab family, of which David (a deportations. With touching devotion start. But Austria wouldn't admit its prominent member of the AJR's she lists (in 15 pages) the names of the guilt for nearly 50 years. It is now Kindertransport special interest group Pankow Jews who were murdered or paying some compensation, if only 15 until his death a few years ago) was a driven to their deaths, together with per cent of what it should be. The Swiss contemporary and on whose addresses, transport numbers, dates banks would undoubtedly have got recollections this account ('Reise in die and destinations. The remainder of the away with the theft of every Jewish Vergangenheit des David Jedwab') is book deals with Jewish social wartime account but for the good based. It is all very poignant, for institutions in Pankow, including the works of some American lawyers. As it example the account of the Jany family Lehrlingsheim (school for apprentices) Reviews continued on page 10 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

RF^VfKWS continued from page 9 is, they stole 80 per cent of the money but only until the Germans occupied Ingenious thriller held in Jewish accounts. Austria. In 1938 he was arrested: going THE LAST TESTAMENT Baddiel also dealt with the difficult to the local police station to see if his by Sam Bourne issue of the looting of art works belong- Austrian passport was still valid had Harper, 2007, 576 pp., £6.99 ing to Jews. If ownership could be brought him to the attention of the paperback proved beyond reasonable doubt, some Gestapo. He survived imprisonment in eace in the Middle East? Yes, this countries were willing to hand back the Dachau and Buchenwald, encountering is the backdrop for Sam Bourne's stolen works - the United States and the among prisoners there Max and Ernst P new thriller. Following on his United Kingdom, in particular Some, von Hohenberg, sons of Archduke Franz best-selling The Righteous Men, Bourne however, still have paintings hanging in Ferdinand, whose murder sparked the dives in with the leaders of Israel and their galleries. (When I visited the First World War the Palestinians about to sign a Hermitage in St Petersburg, my guide Reaching England in 1939, Gerd permanent peace agreement. This is would not enter one particular room, swapped his refugee status for entry preceded by a rally in Tel Aviv's Rabin saying all the paintings in it had been into the Pioneer Corps. He thought a Square, where Israel's prime minister looted from Jews.) miracle had happened when his pay lost his life. But the euphoria of the Equally difficult, as Baddiel pointed rose from 6d to 14s. After a sojourn in occasion is blunted, not by the out, is dealing with Poland. At the end Kitchener Camp and still wondering if assassination of fictitious premier of the war, the Communists national­ he was a 'real' soldier, he had to leave Yaacov Yariv but by the gunning down ised all property in Poland. Why, asked France fast in 1940 when the Germans of a right-wing activist approaching him the Poles, should the Jews receive com­ arrived. Weymouth presented quite a - armed, it turns out, not with a gun pensation when millions of others contrast. He describes a pleasant but a bloodstained letter wouldn't? Why, I ask, shouldn't they? seaside town where people gave the This seminal scene, entitled 'Tel Aviv, The programme makers wanted me soldiers ice cream and sweets. It was Saturday night, several years later', is to give them my views on the Inter­ hard to believe there was a war on. preceded by an intriguing prologue, national Commission of Holocaust Era Gerd soldiered on until 1944, when 'Baghdad, April 2003', depicting the loot­ Insurance Claims (ICHEIC). Of course, he was suddenly discharged as being ing of the museum of antiquities. The many of the Jews who died had life surplus to requirements. Jobs were mysterious link between these two events insurance policies which remained un­ scarce and he spent over a year washing forms the ingenious nub of the story. paid. Of course, ICHEIC was a toothless dishes in Joe Lyons while publishing If the killing of the renowned archae­ organisation which did little for occasional articles. His story about his ologist Shimon Guttman rallies the Holocaust survivors and their heirs. But dish-washing days, 'One and Eight an anti-peace camp in Israel, their Pales­ the reason I refused to take part is that Hour', appeared in an Army magazine. tinian counterparts are incited by the I didn't wish to give one aspect of the In 1945 he attended the first UN murder, not long afterwards, of the Nazi crimes more importance than any Assembly for World Review, a Hulton Palestinian archaeologist and national­ of the others. publication, after which it was straight ist Ahmed Noun With the prospects for Baddiel's example of how the loss of back to dishwashing. peace rapidly receding, it is time for the his grandfather's factory in Konigsberg Gerd enjoyed a successful career as entrance of Maggie Costello, a 30- was compensated with £700 - enabling a freelance journalist, contributing to something former star negotiator his family to buy new curtains! - says it many German publications. He became resident in Washington. Brought in, all. When it came to the Nazis stealing a showbiz columnist, interviewing such ostensibly, to shore up the peace proc­ from the Jews, the thieves prospered. personalities as Sophia Loren, Eartha ess, Maggie meets Guttman's son Uri Little wonder that at the end of the pro­ Kitt and Maurice Chevalier, whom he and the two are drawn together not gramme Baddiel concluded he didn't questioned about singing for the Nazis. only by mutual attraction but as part­ care what the antisemites thought about Chevalier's answer was: 'What would ners in a search for the source of his Jews seeking restitution. It isn't just fi­ you have done?' father's message. It soon becomes ap­ parent, amid a plethora of further nancial compensation that we want: it's In the late 1950s Gerd was killings and the torching of the ancient recognition of the wrongs done to us. approached to translate the memoirs Bet Alpha synagogue in a northern kib­ Peter Phillips of Herman Goering's widow. Being a butz, that Shimon Guttman had Jew and a camp survivor, he was something important to convey. surprised to be asked, but he decided A professional job to go for it. The memoirs were initially A pattern emerges in Maggie's mind: rejected but they eventually appeared since all the murder victims are connec­ GOODBYE YESTERDAY in the USA and England. In her Berlin ted to a study of the past, it is in the past by Gerd Treuhaft flat, Mrs Goering told the author how that Guttman's secret must lie. Con­ Book Guild Publishing 2006, 174 pp., much she had suffered during the last versely, it is technology that points her £16.99 hardback year of the war His comments are not and Uri in the right direction since orn to an Austrian-Jewish mother recorded. Guttman was also a technophile and par­ and fostered by a wealthy Berlin Though this book is a very professional tial to computer games. The nearer the Bcouple, Gerd Treuhaft obtained job, as befits an experienced journalist, two young people get to the heart of their Austrian citizenship documents in 1934 it unfortunately lacks passion. quest, the more their lives are in danger thinking this would protect him. It did. Laraine Feldman In this eminently readable novel, sus-

10 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

REVIEWS continued The new shoes pense is built up through the absence by Charlotte Gringras of a chronological structure. A chapter Dedicated to all the people whose story this is entitled, say, 'Jerusalem Tuesday 10.45', My cold feet do not even touch the floor - Now I try to stop the drips which soak the so I sit here, swinging my skinny little legs; smart may be followed by another set a few I look down and notice tears, plopping shoeholes; I bite my lip, grip the table, blink minutes or a few hours earlier. As well unbidden onto the shiny leather of my shoes, hard as creating a sympathetic and well- brand new shoes that Mutti had bought me and stare: my stare pierces the crowd, parts when she sent me off, days-like-years ago. rounded heroine. Bourne is adept at the throng unleashing the person who will choose me, depicting plausible political scenarios, Where have they come from, those tears? the boy with with chapters devoted to the machin­ Why now, while sitting on this table, wanting brand new shoes. I see a two-handed wave to be brave and not a baby - NOT a baby. ations of the Israeli cabinet and the US above I am four and a half years old at Waterloo, the crowd; the hands say out loud,' Hans, consulate and scenes featuring the my name pinned on my coat, a crying child come here!' 'usual suspects' - the extremists on both waiting, anxiously, for someone to claim me. She hoists me to such a height above her, sides who contribute to the mayhem. that with My feet didn't touch the floor in the carriage my tear-distorted sight, I cannot even see The exposure in the denouement of on the children's train where Mutti left me the floor. the 'least expected' of the villains is with lots of other kids but alone and lonely. Not as alone as she was when I last looked - These old memories cling to the octogenarian highly gratifying, while the conceit at the on the platform, weakly waving, slowly that is me; heart of the novel is no less than inspired. shrinking, visions grow sharper all the time, yet, again I The long-awaited finale - a fusion of drenched by my tears on the window pane, cannot see. drenched by the heavy rain and a sorrow hope and irony - is an intimation of the so profound she was bent under its weight. idealism of Bourne's journalist alter ego, Charlotte Gringras wrote this poem while undertaking research Jonathan Freedland. for a PhD on the lives of Kindertransport members Emma Klein BUTTERFLIES AND BULLETS - Published by UPSO It concerns my childhood spent on the run in Nazi Germany. It is, in particular, of Jewish interest. ISBN 978 1 84 375 273 8. Available at Waterstone or any good bookshop - Laura Levy

WHERE ARE THOSE MUSEUM PIECES' EXACTLY? mnt /nun hfi'ic I

England to pre-war Germany. This it formed an explicit part of a social or torians portray Continental Jewish refu­ counted against Ruth Fromm. In pur­ political programme', but that 'moder­ gees as museum pieces, although this suing his argument and possibly in an ate indulgence in social anti-Jewish hobby-horse ultimately displays rather attempt to exonerate the British authori­ prejudice was so widespread as to be lame legs. It is even sadder that neither ties, Dr Grenville then points out that unremarkable.' It consequently does he nor the AJR Journal considered the Salomon was never interned, conven­ not strike me as wrong for Aly and publication of a proper book review, iently omitting to mention why, Sontheimer to show the effects of this particularly as my family's story mirrors although the reason (medical) is men­ 'anti-Jewish prejudice', or is Dr Grenville that of German history in the first half tioned later in the book. Furthermore, affronted that it should be precisely of the twentieth century and German the authors fully concede that British German authors who point out this Jews' ultimately tragic place in it. internment policy should not be fact? If so, is Dr Grenville not suffering By contrast, the book has been equated with Nazi policy towards Jews from the same lack of Vergangen- extraordinarily well received in Germany when they explain that internment heitsbewaltigung he accuses the with considerable attention from the policy was eventually changed through authors of displaying? It's alright for mass media and the German quality democratic protest: 'One ofthe impres­ British historians to point out such press, both of which - unlike the AJR sive characteristics of British democracy matters but not for German ones! Journal - have seen fit to give it proper is that, even in wartime, criticism is Dr Grenville's arguments become reviews. In Britain too, this interesting, permitted.' Where there should there­ ever more spurious when he highlights instructive story was considered impor­ fore be any 'attempt to elide British and the fact that Sontheimer interviewed tant enough to feature in the recent Nazi practice' is not clear my father 'over a good whisky', some­ BBC1 documentary Baddiel's Search for Whatever Dr Grenville may say about thing he would never have mentioned the Missing Nazi Billions. With the book how wonderful the British reception for had the tipple been a German schnapps. currently being translated into English Continental Jews was - in part, it was, Yet in writing this, Sontheimer merely for publication in New York in early ot course, if one thinks of the conveys the conviviality of the occasion 2009, interest in the story has now also Kindertransport - at the time there was without attaching any importance - as crossed the Atlantic. In Julius Fromm's also an undercurrent of antisemitism, Dr Grenville regrettably does - to the own backyard though, i.e. in the very particularly among the British establish­ beverage's provenance. How anyone journal serving those people from ment, even though this should not be can deduce that drinking British, in whom he came, it is being practically compared with the virulent variety of preference to German, spirits somehow ignored other than to feature in an ar­ Nazi Germany In her excellent Whitehall casts someone as a stereotypical ticle meant to justify a rather tenuous, and the Jews, Louise London highlights museum piece defies belief. Such argu­ highly subjective theory about German the ambiguity of British policy towards ments are not serious. historians. In the light of this, I venture Jewish refugees; in particular, she men­ The sad thing about Dr Grenville's to suggest that Dr Grenville and the A//? tions that 'in Britain, prejudice against article is that it allows him to exercise Journal have done their readership a Jews was considered unacceptable, if his hobby-horse about how German his­ disservice.

II law has been changed by more recent enactments exacting higher penalties. Martin Kapel

llford members spellbound Speaking on the history of the Jews in England since Disraeli, the Jewish Museum's Suzanne Alexander held an excellent attendance spellbound. South London: Susie Shipman An unusual Barmitzvah Next meeting: 9 January HGS: The history of Jazz Over 20 of us enjoyed a talk by Alf Keiles on the Jewish influence on Jazz. We learned, among many other things, that above; 'Agony Aunt' Anna Raeburn the first flat record of any kind was pictured with John Silbermann at Belsize Square Synagogue dinner made by a Jewish firm in 1903. below: AJR members are shown round Laszio Roman the Max Stern Restitution project at the Next meeting: Mon 14 Jan. Eva Ben Uri Gallery Blumenthal, 'History of the Royal Free' (See also Letters, p. 7)

The Norwich Group Ltd AJR Director Gordon Greenfield, left, and No fewer than ten of us met for lunch Walter Woyda at South London 'Barmitzvah' with the nosh brought from as far as Party Great Yarmouth in one direction and Over 30 of us celebrated our Barmitzvah the fleshpots of Wembley in the - 13 years since members south of the other. Myrna told us about the river set up the first AJR social group. accident which had caused the death of Ably led by Ken Ambrose, Chairman for one of our members, Tony Plessner, who 10 years, a Planning Committee over­ was knocked off his bike by a negligently saw inviting speakers, arranging opened car door Frank Bright refreshments and looking out for the Next meeting: 18 March welfare of members in the area. Walter Woyda, a founder member and unoffi­ Wembley KT discussion one candle and musical entertainment cial Chairman since Ken's retirement, Following an exceptionally interesting by Naomi Hyamson (Mezzo Soprano) welcomed everyone. Myrna Glass discussion about the Kindertransport, and Harold Lester (Piano). In 2008 Next meeting: 10 January Myrna talked about practical matters meetings are to be held on the last such as getting to meetings. Looking Tuesday of each month. David Lang Pinner: History of the Jews of Spain forward to the next meeting ... Next meeting: 29 January Patricia Brickman gave us a well Laura Levy researched talk on Spanish Jewry under Next meeting: 23 Jan. Social Get- Reliving army days in Edgware the Romans, the Visigoths, the Muslims, together Some 30 of us listened to Dr Helen Fry the Christian Church until the speak about her new,book The King's Expulsion, and the return of the Jews Brighton & Hove Sarid: 'Jesus the Jew' Most Loyal Aliens. Many in the audience in modern times. She ably answered In a very interesting talk. Rabbi Vivien relived their army days during the questions from a large audience. Silverman pointed out that Jesus Second World War Felix Winkler Walter Weg (Yehoshua) was born and died a Jew. Next meeting: 15 Jdn. Jerry Lewis, 'The Next meeting: 10 Jan. Helen Bamber, The founding and spreading of Board of Deputies' 'Survival of the Next Generation' Christianity should be attributed to Paul of Tarsus and his Hellenistic Herts: The Wiener Library Hendon: Nostalgia for Vienna influence. Ceska Abrahams Some of us had assumed the Wiener coffee houses Next meeting: 21 Jan. Abbegail Slavin, Library had originally been in Vienna, Otto Deutsch told us entertainingly 'Heroes and Heroines' and we were surprised to learn from about his family's weekly visits to the Howard Falksohn that it was in fact coffee house on Saturdays and their Glasgow pre-Chanukah social named after Alfred Wiener (1885- weekly visits to Heurigen in Vienna's We enjoyed a truly festive occasion with 1964), started in Germany, and opened Grinzing suburb on Sundays. Shirley Bennett - husband Peter on gui­ in London on 1 September 1939 - Annette Saville tar - singing a medley of favourites with known at that time as the Jewish Next meeting: 28 Jan. Abbegail Slavin, gusto. In Susanne's absence, Eileen Central Information Office. 'Nancy Wake - the "White Mouse"' Brady held the fort and Erna Grace Ruth Tuch delighted us with an account of her re­ Next meeting: 22 Jan. 'Safety in the Leeds HSFA: 'Hate Crime' cent AJR London visit. Jonathan Kish Community' Neil Franklin, Head of West Yorkshire's Crown Prosecution Service, told us that Cleve Road: First anniversary East Midlands lunch social until ten years ago there was no celebration An autumn lunch social attended by 17 legislation distinguishing hate crime We enjoyed our first anniversary of us in a member's house was unusu­ from any other sort of crime, but the celebration, which included a cake with ally enlivened due to a prospective

12 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

Varied agenda at Bristol/Bath It was interesting to hear about Bettina Paul Balint AJR Centre Cohn's trip to her pre-war boarding 15 Cleve Road, London NW6 school in Germany; Dr Fred Morgan Tel: 020 7328 0208 talked about Otto Hess and his daughter's search to find people who AJR LUNCHEON CLUB knew him; and David Hackel told a Wednesday 16 January 2008 funny story about his school days and 11.45 am for 12.15 pm his teacher Marx. Dana Silbiger Dr Laoise Davidson 'Songs of the Safadim' Wessex Exbury Gardens outing Naomi Hyamson, Harold Lester plus First Not only had Myrna Glass made all the Please be aware that members should not Anniversary birthday cake at Cleve Road arrangements - her route planning was automatically assume that they are on the party Photo: Charlotte Lang Luncheon Club list. It is now necessary, on receipt such that members living nearer to the of your copy of the AJR Journal, to phone the Gardens were able to join the bus out­ Centre on 020 7328 0208 to book your place. member meeting a KT friend of some side their homes, saving much travelling 60 years ago. Also, we were delighted strain and time. G. M. Ettinger to meet the AJR's Esther Rinkoff. KT-AJR Bob Norton Kindertransport special Radlett: History of Jews in interest group England North London: 'What is Art?' Monday 7 January 2008 Our second meeting was an extremely Alan Howard showed us examples of Alex Faiman interesting talk by the Jewish Museum's classical and modern art, pointing out 'Russian Jews in China: 60 Years Suzanne Alexander on the history of the the aspects that distinguished these of Trials and Tribulations' Jews in England from 1066 to the works as 'art'. His parting piece of KINDLY NOTE THAT LUNCH present time. Eric Newman advice was that any pictures in our WILL BE SERVED AT Next meeting: 16 Jan. AJR Hon homes should be there because they 1.00 PM ON MONDAYS President Ludwig Spiro Reservations required give us pleasure regardless of whether Please telephone 020 7328 0208 they might eventually make our ADDITIONAL MEETINGS Monday, Wednesday & Thursday grandchildren rich! Kent 15 January 9.30 am - 3.30 pm Hanne R. Freedman Oxford 22 Jan. Tu B'Shevat Party Next meeting: 31 Jan. Philippa Bernard, PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CENTRE IS 'Queen Elizabeth I's Jewish Doctor' 'DROP IN' ADVICE SERVICE V_LVJ3CU UrM IUC3UMT9 Members requiring benefit advice please telephone January Afternoon Entertainment Linda Kasmir on 020 8385 3070 to make an AJR GROUP CONTACTS appointment at AJR, Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Tue 1 CLOSED Bradford Continental Friends Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL Wed 2 Cole Burns Lilly and Albert Waxman 01274 581189 Thur 3 Norman Hoskins Brighton 8i Hove (Sussex Region) Mon 7 KT LUNCH - Kards & Games Klub Fausta Shelton 01273 734 648 Liverpool Tue 8 CLOSED Bristol/Bath Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Wed 9 Tony Parkins Kitty Balint-Kurti 0117 973 1150 Manchester Thur 10 Midnight Sunset Cambridge Werner Lachs 0161 773 4091 Mon 14 Kards Si Games Klub Anne Bender 01223 276 999 Newcastle Cardiff Walter Knoblauch 0191 2855339 Tue 15 CLOSED Myrna Glass 020 8385 3077 Norfolk (Norwich) Wed 16 LUNCHEON CLUB Cleve Road, AJR Centre Myrna Glass 020 8385 3077 Thur 17 Victor Munro Myrna Glass 020 8385 3077 North London Mon 21 Kards & Games Klub Dundee Jenny Zundel 020 8882 4033 Tue 22 CLOSED Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Oxford Wed 23 Tina Oberman East Midlands (Nottingham) Susie Bates 01235 526 702 Thur 24 Laurie Forte Bob Norton 01159 212 494 Pinner (HA Postal District) Mon 28 Kards & Games Klub Edgware Vera Gellman 020 8866 4833 Tue 29 CLOSED Ruth Urban 020 8931 2542 Radlett Edinburgh Esther Rinkoff 020 8385 3077 Wed 30 Patsy Peters Fran^oise Robertson 0131 337 3406 Sheffield Thur 31 Roy Bias Essex (Westcliff) Steve Mendelsson 0114 2630666 Larry Lisner 01702 300812 South London Glasgow Lore Robinson 020 8670 7926 Claire Singerman 0141 649 4620 South West Midlands (Worcester area) Hazel Beiny, Southern Groups Co-ordinator Harrogate Myrna Glass 020 8385 3070 020 8385 3070 Inge Little 01423 886254 Surrey Myrna Glass, London South and Midlands Hendon Groups Co-ordinator Edmee Barta 01372 727 412 020 8385 3077 Hazel Beiny 020 8385 3070 Temple Fortune Susanne Green, Northern Groups Co-ordinator Hertfordshire Esther Rinkoff 020 8385 3077 0151 291 5734 Hazel Beiny 020 8385 3070 Weald of Kent Susan Harrod, Groups' Administrator HGS Max and Jane Dickson 020 8385 3070 Gerda Torrence 020 8883 9425 01892 541026 Esther Rinkoff, Southern Region Co-ordinator Wembley Hull 020 8385 3077 Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Laura Levy 020 8904 5527 KT-AJR (Kindertransport) llford Wessex (Bournemouth) Andrea Goodmaker 020 8385 3070 Meta Rosenell 020 8505 0063 Mark Goldfinger 01202 552 434 Child Survivors Association-AJR Leeds HSFA West Midlands (Birmingham) Henri Obstfeld 020 8954 5298 TrudeSilman 0113 2251628 Ernest Aris 0121 353 1437

13 AjR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

FAMILY ANNOUNCEMENTS HOLOCAUST Deaths MEMORIAL DAY SERVICE ARE YOU ON A LOW Kay Betty (nee Weil), bom Filrth 8 July 'Imagine ... remember, reflect, react' INCOMEANDINNEED Please join us for a 1914, widow of Manfred from Berlin, died Holocaust Memorial Day sen/ice OF HOMECARE HELP? peacefully at home on 24 November. at 2 pm on Thursday 24 January 2008 AJR might be able to offer you IvOvingly remembered and missed by her at BelsJze Square Synagogue, London NWS financial assistance for cleaning, son Tony and daughter-in-law Rita. During the service, to be conducted by gardening and caring. Classified Rabbi Rodney Mariner, AJR members will light Members who might not memorial candles and Kaddish will be recited. otherwise be able to afford Bob Gale of Watling Street, Radlett seeks There will also be a talk on the theme for homecare please contact: Chess partner. Please contact Esther Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, 'Imagine ... remember, reflect, react' Estelle Brookner, Secretary Rinkoff at AJR on 0208 385 3077 if you are by AJR member Lilian Levy AJR Social Services Dept interested. Light refreshments will be provided after the service Tel: 020 8385 3070 As space is limited, please return the enclosed if 0 BAECK HOUSE reply slip by Friday 11 January 2008 to AJR Head Office & OSMOND HOUSE SWITCH ON ELECTRICS Offering expert residential and nursing care Rewires and all household for refugees and survivors of the Holocaust. AJR TRIP TO ISRAEL electrical work I 24-hour empathetic, knowledgeable care MARCH 2008 PHONE PAUL: 020 8200 3518 I En suite facilities At the request of our members^ the Mobile: 0795 614 8566 I Activities & outings AjR are arranging a lo-day trip to k Shabbat & festivals celebrated Israel ne.xt March For more information This will be a fantastic opportunity FillarCare call Jewish Care Direct to travel in a group and enable you to Quality support and care at home on 020 8922 2222 visit places such as Jerusaleniy the MoTth^ Tel Aviv and Lake Kinneret Hourly Care from 1 hour - 24 hours in partnership with the Otto Schtff Housing Association The group are planning to stay at the Live-In/Night Duty/Sleepover Care 4-star King Solomon Hotel in Convalescent and Personal Health Care JEWISH CARE Netanya on a half-board basis Compassionate and Affordable Service

OSHA Charity Registration Number 210396 Please note that there will be walking I^ofessional, Qualified, Kind Care Staff Jewisti Care Charity Registration Number 802559 involved and it is important that you Registered with the CSCI and UKHCA are able to walk independently If you wish to go on this tripy Call us on Freephone 0800 028 464! please fill in the form enclosed with Studio 1 Utopia Village (^oti^i^^ Home Care this issue of the Joumal Care through quality and 7 Chalcot Road, NWl SLH professionalism Celebrating our 25th Anniversary LEO BAECK ACACIA LODGE 25 years of experience in providing the HOUSING ASSOCIATION Mrs Pringsheim, S.R.N. Matron highest standards of care in the comfort For Elderly, Retired and Convalescent of your own home BUNGALOW TO LET (Licensed by Borough of Bamet) GOLDERS GREEN AREA • Single and Double Rooms. LARGE LOUNGE AREA, • Ensuite facilities, CH in all rooms. BEDROOM WITH FITTED WARDROBES, • Gardens, TV and reading rooms. BATHR00IV1 WITH SHOWER, • Nurse on duty 24 hours. • Long and short term and respite, FULLY FITTED KITCHEN/DINER including trial period if required. 24-HOUR CALL BELL SYSTEM Between £400 and £500 per week FOR FURTHER INFORMATION 020 8445 1244/020 8446 2820 office hours 1 hour to 24 hours care AND VIEWING CONTACT 020 84S5 1335 other times DAVID LIGHTBURN 37-39 Torrington Park, North Finchley Registered through the National Care Standard Commission ON 020 8455 2286 London N12 STB Call our 24 hour tel 020 7794 9323 v\/ww. colvin-nursing.co.uk Sometimes life is easier LEO BAECK HOUSING 7^ ASSOCIATION LTD with a little bit of help ANA SHELTERED ACCOMMODATION ANA Nursing can provide professional carers ONE BEDROOM FLAT TO LET SITUATED NEAR SWISS COTTAGE and nurses to help with any of your needs. LOUNGE • BEDROOM WITH FITTED WARDROBES 24 hr service, 7 days a week, Personal care, • BATHROOM WITH SHOWER Respite care, From 1-24 hours • FULLY FITTED KITCHEN call us on: • RESIDENT WARDEN • CAMDEN CARE LINE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION 020 8905 7701 AND VIEWING CONTACT DAVID LIGHTBURN ON 020 8455 2286

14 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

Obituary Rachel Hastings (nee Ancona), 1920-2007 he death of Rachel Hastings, in the drudgery and the bombing raids, Rachel died 'pianissimo' in a still, minor key, but Marie Curie Hospice, recalled the suffered a breakdown. her life gave out a pulsating spirit of light Tyears 1943-45, when her faith and In 1943, seeking refuge in Ferrara, Rachel that flooded all who came within its beam. identity also had to 'die', and be hidden from was given shelter in an evacuated Jewish She leaves two proud sons, Albert and Fascist and Nazi rule. house by Umberto Antolini, an electrician Gordon, his wife Margaret, and two beloved Soon after Rachel's birth in Aleppo, employed by a touring ballet with which she grandchildren, Jennifer and Fiona. Syria, her father, a banker, moved his family had worked. She learned from him that her Albert Hastings of nine children to Jerusalem for religious sisters had been sent to Auschwitz. Her and financial reasons. Here, Rachel, still a 'saviour' was to be recognised as a y wife and I knew Rachel Hastings little girl, lost her mother. Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem. as a staunch attender of the The 1929 Arab uprising prompted their In 1945 Rachel returned to the family MLiverpool AJR group. At times, she father to transfer his family and business home in Milan, which she found occupied brought her ailing sister to the meetings and to Brussels. In Brussels, Rachel's talents by strangers with her belongings stolen by members admired her for the way she looked unfolded: her flair for languages - English 'neighbours'. after her. and French - her gift for dance and music, Rachel's final displacement occurred in Our personal friendship with Rachel was and a taste for practising her culinary skills 1947. Working as an interpreter for the reinforced by the fact that we were the only at family meals, assisted by her French British Air Force, she found stability with two from Liverpool to be invited to St stepmother 'Tante Esther'. Norman, an English private who 'shipped' James's Palace on Holocaust Memorial Day Rachel's father relocated his business to her to Liverpool. Here, the Jewish-Christian 2005, Rachel as a 'Survivor in Hiding' and I Alexandria but, with the failure of his dimension to her existence emerged yet as a 'Liberator', having worked in banking interests, she was transported yet again, to settle a mixed marriage. She Theresienstadt during the typhus epidemic. again, this time to Milan, where in 1938 an applied her gift for languages to teaching Rachel was a great help to me due to my unsuccessful bid was made to include her French and Italian, her love of cuisine to impaired mobility. in the US immigration quota for New York. nourishing a sacred family cluster, and her Rachel was petite, always smiling and She tumed inwards, rehearsing her beloved wonderlust to rambling through Merseyside uncomplaining, and ready to give help ballet at night in occupied Fascist quarters. until the age of 85. where needed. Her walk was light-footed, In 1940 she and her sisters, Olga and Vicky, Asked where she came from, Rachel betraying her ballet-dancing career. She will were drafted for work in a box-making would always reply in her melodious be fondly remembered by her friends. factory. Unable to withstand the menial 'foreign' accent that she was F"rench. She Eric Strach

Search Notices

Did you live in Berkshire or Buckingham­ Klara Koch (nee David), b. Nieder published in 2008 by Helios Verlag, shire before, during or after the war? If Wollstadt 19.05.1883, came to Manchester Aachen. Documents and photos will be so, please call me, Rabbi Jonathan Romain, in 1939. She lived in the German-Jewish treated in confidence and returned on 01628 671 058 or email me at home at 7 Amherst Road, Fallowfield from promptly. Please contact urgently Hans- [email protected] I am writing a history 1950 to her death in 1958. Any info about Dieter Arntz, Hasenhecke 16, D-53881 of the Jews in the area, particularly those her friends there or her husband or son Euskirchen, tel (0)2251 61900, or email settled with local families after coming to Eugen Koch, born 1.11.1906 died aged 17, [email protected] the UK on the Kindertransport or those pis to Prof Miriam E. David at evacuated from London during the Blitz. [email protected] My father Walenty WIdIa was born I am writing a book on what German and 19.02.1900 in Zabierzow, Poland. The son Austrian refugees did in the British Forces I require information for a book on of Andrzej and Katazyna, he and his wife from the end of the war until their Kristallnacht in the Eifel region: Anna lived in Warsaw. He was last seen demobilisation. Many returned to Germany Euskirchen, Mechernich and Kommern, 20.08.1944, then was probably transported for de-nazification work etc. If you served Kail, GemiJnd, Schleiden, Blumenthal and to Sachsenhausen or Neuengamme. If you in the British Forces then as an 'enemy Hellenthal and surrounding area. Personal have any info about my father or my alien', pis contact me ASAP: Dr Helen Fry, reminiscences of contemporary witnesses relatives, pis contact me, Pawel Plodzik, on 38 Temple Gardens, London NW11 OLL. are requested for the volume, to be [email protected]

ARTS AND EVENTS DIARY - JANUARY Mon 7 Gerald Holm, 'Sibelius (d. 1957) B'nai B'rith Jerusalem Lodge, 8.15. Tel Tom from 5.30 pm. Lecture co-sponsored by and his Symphonies' Club 43 Heinemann on 07973 137 718 AJR Mon 14 Ralph Blumenau, 'The Roots of Mon 21 Prof Michael Alpert, 'Jews in the Mon 28 Dr Charmian Brinson, "The Last German Democracy' Club 43 Spanish Civil War' Club 43 Citadel of Free German Research and Learning in Europe": The Freie Deutsche Wed 16 Prof Ginette Vincendeau, 'Au Tues 22 8th Annual Glasgow University Hochschule in Wartime Britain, 1942-46' Revoir Les Enfants: Personal Memory and Holocaust Memorial Lecture: Lawrence Club 43 National History', R/mTalk, Wiener Library, Douglas (Professor of Law, Jurisprudence 7.00 pm. Tel 020 7580 3493 and Social Thought at Amherst College, Club 43 Meetings at Belsize Square Massachusetts), 'Shattering Nuremberg: Synagogue, 7.45 pm. Tel Hans Seelig on Thur 17 Lodge Meeting at Kenton The Holocaust and the Law's Response 01442 254360 Synagogue Hall. Baroness Miller of to Atrocity' Western Infirmary Lecture Hendon MBE,'Life in the House of Lords', Theatre, University Place. 6.15 pm; Tea Michael Newman is away

15 AJR JOURNAL JANUARY 2008

LETTER FROM Newsround ISRAEL Gravestone of Hannah Senesh moved to Israel The gravestone of Hannah Senesh, who para­ The spirit of romance is not yet dead, it chuted behind Nazi lines to help rescue Jews from her native Hungary, has been moved would seem - not even in Israel from a Budapest cemetery to her former home on Kibbutz Sdot'/am. Hannah Senesh n this age of cynicism and computers, involves singing and an address of some was caught and executed in Budapest at the when the younger generation seems kind, culminating in the ceremonial age of 23 and was originally buried in an to have lost its sense of innocence and torching of a prepared inscription made unmarked grave in Budapest that was dis­ I covered by her mother after the fall of the seems no longer to retain any romantic of wire and jute. Of course, for safety Nazi regime. Her remains were moved to ideals, the following incident serves to reasons the inscription is set at a height Israel's Mount Herzl cemetery in 1950. confound the pessimists. It constitutes a which ensures that none of the Torah returned to Cologne telling illustration of the lengths to which participants is at risk. Considerable community one young man was prepared to go in thought, planning and energy goes into A Torah damaged during Kristallnacht has order to propose to his lady love in the the preparation of these occasions, which been formally presented to the Jewish most original and memorable way. My serve to heighten social cohesion and community of Cologne after it was restored in Jerusalem. Gustav Meinertz, a German teenage granddaughter, who is active in augment members' identification with the Catholic phest, risked his life to rescue the Israel's Scouts, was a participant in - but organisation. Torah from the synagogue and hid it under not the object of - this incident, so I can One bright spark (pun intentional) who the Nazis. After the war he returned it to the city's vestigial community. vouch for its veracity. is active in the movement thought up a In common with other youth move­ plan to use this device to propose to his Wiesenthal Centre launches ments, the Scouts in Israel play a girlfriend, Moran. In the strictest secrecy, 'Operation Last Chance' prominent role in the lives of Israel's and with the co-operation and hard work Thousands of Nazis thought to be still hiding in South America are the target of youngsters. The movement, which is of about ten junior youth-leaders, an the Wiesenthal Centre's 'Operation Last apolitical and strives to inculcate values inscription was prepared in the course of Chance'. According to the Centre, the South of independence, social awareness and several hours one Friday. That evening, American phase will probably be the last major effort to locate and bring to justice responsibility, provides a framework when everything was ready, the young Nazis in hiding scattered around the world. which unites young people who live in the man invited Moran out and suggested that same area by bringing them together for they eat at a nearby restaurant. On the Auschwitz survivor joins Polish government weekly meetings, as well as fostering con­ way, one of his tyres developed a Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 85, an Auschwitz tacts between youngsters from different 'puncture'. The car came to a halt at the survivor and Yad Vashem 'Righteous social and regional backgrounds at camps side of the road and the two young people Gentile', has been appointed state secretary and outings held during the school holi­ got out, supposedly to attend to it. responsible for Poland's relations with Germany, Russia and Israel. Bartoszewski has days. By doing this, it cuts across ethnic At that moment, the young man went been Poland's foreign minister twice since and cultural barriers to forge a common down on one knee and held out the ring the demise of Communism. bond among the many different segments he had prepared in advance, the signal Jews relieved by Chavez defeat of Israeli society. The vast majority of its was given and the torch was set to the The defeat of Hugo Chavez's referendum members are of school age, though some inscription, which read 'Moran, will you has eased Jewish fears in Venezuela. of its paid officials and functionaries are marry me?' Moran looked up and got the According to a JTA (New York) report, over half of Venezuela's Jews have left the somewhat older, having completed their message. With tears of joy in her eyes, country since Chavez came to power, while military service. It goes without saying she accepted the proposal. the regime's close ties to Iran and occasional that there are close contacts between The youngsters who had worked to antagonism towards Jews have prompted Jewish and Arab scouts in Israel, as well many others to make provisional plans to prepare the inscription also shed tears of leave. The Venezuelan Jewish population is as between the movement in Israel and joy as they emerged from their hiding currently estimated at 9,000-14,000. its sister-movements in other countries. place and congratulated the young couple. Volunteer organisation It is customary for the movement in Ever practical, they lost no time in launched in New York Israel to mark important milestones, such expressing the hope that in due course 'Volunteer', a project designed to assist as Independence Day or the induction of they would also be invited to the wedding. homebound Holocaust survivors in New a fresh intake of nine-year-olds, with a I must confess, there were tears in my York, has had its first meeting with an attendance of over 60 people. Volunteers rally involving the entire local eyes, too, when I heard the story. aim to make weekly visits to Holocaust membership. The rally itself generally Dorothea Shefer-Vanson survivors in their homes, providing them with companionship and assistance.

Published by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL Telephone 020 8385 3070 Fax 020 8385 3080 e-mail [email protected] Website wvvw.ajr.org.uk

16 Association of Jewish Refugees SERVING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS AND REFUGEES NATIONWIDE www.ajr.org.uk

Holocaust Memorial Day Service

'Imagine... remember, reflect, react'

Please join us for a Holocaust Mennorial Day service at 2pm on Thursday 24 January 2008 at the Belsize Square Synagogue, 51 Belsize Square, London NW3

During the service AJR members will light memorial candles and Kaddish will be recited.

There will also be a short talk by AJR member Lilian Levy on the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, 'Imagine... remember, reflect, react'.

Light refreshments will be provided after the service.

- Space is limited - To reserve a seat please complete the detachable form below and return it to AJR, Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL by Friday 11 January 2008.

Detach here

Full name:

Address:

Phone number:

I would like to reserve. . seats for the Holocaust Memorial Day service at the Belsize Square Synagogue on Thursday 24 January 2008.