VOLUME 21 NO.2 FEBRUARY 2021 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees FEBRUARY Should we FORWARDS The first few weeks of 2021 have certainly brought some challenges but there are glimpses of light at the end of rebuild the past? the tunnel. Here at the AJR we have started our The great British historian AJP Taylor once wrote that the western 80th year with good news, in the form of honours for some of our colleagues, allies betrayed Czechoslovakia but Prague survived the war and also some fabulous online events, intact. On the other hand, the allies went to war to defend Poland with many more coming up - see the list on the back page. and Warsaw was almost completely destroyed. It was not just As the days continue to lengthen we these two capitals, of course. Riga and Tallinn were also almost will be doing everything in our power untouched, whereas Danzig and Berlin were devastated by war. to make your days as bright as possible. In the meantime we hope you enjoy reading this issue of the AJR Journal and look forward to receiving any feedback. AJR News ..................................................... 3 The children of the SS Manhattan ................ 4 Letter from Israel .......................................... 5 Letters to the Editor/Looking For ........... 6 – 7 Art Notes...................................................... 8 The Jews of Hungary ................................... 9 One ‘HMD’ opinion ................................... 10 Introducing the Brady Archive .................... 11 An Addiction .............................................. 12 Proud to be German .................................. 13 A ‘Bounced Czech’ ..................................... 14 Memories of a refugee childhood .............. 15 Reviews .............................................. 16 – 17 Obituaries .......................................... 18 – 19 Events ........................................................ 20 Please note that the views expressed Gedächtniskirche, Berlin - before the War Gedächtniskirche - today throughout this publication are not necessarily the views of the AJR. In December, The Jewish Chronicle a dedication to the synagogue’s first published an article by Toby Axelrod rabbi, led to the campaign. “The town AJR Team about a campaign which had just square has been empty ever since,” said Chief Executive Michael Newman been launched in Germany to raise Hamburg’s mayor Katharina Fegebank, Finance Director David Kaye 65 million Euros to pay for the first in a statement of support. “We now Heads of Department Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart full reconstruction of the Bornplatz have a moral obligation to try to heal HR & Administration Karen Markham Synagogue in Hamburg, largely that wound.” Educational Grants & Projects Alex Maws destroyed during Kristallnacht. “There Social Services Nicole Valens are virtually no traces of the synagogue Her statement raises an important AJR Journal on the spot where it stood,” wrote question. Undoubtedly, there is a Editor Jo Briggs Axelrod. But the recent discovery of “wound”. The question is: Is it obvious Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy an old Torah crown, engraved with Continued on page 2 Contributing Editor David Herman 1 AJR Journal | February 2021 Should we rebuild the Yesterday the very furniture seemed to memory or absence, the meaning of reproach you. buildings or whether we should rebuild past? (cont.) Today you take your place in the ruins or keep them as a form of silent that should we try to heal it? Could Widow’s Shuttle.” testimony. it be possible that the best way to preserve the memories of the war and It is a brilliant evocation of the Another great historian who was much the Holocaust are to be confronted importance of “the spaces in between more interested in these questions with emptiness, to face up to the many the houses”, “the streets that no longer was the German-born historian Peter wounds and the devastation they have exist”, “what you have forgotten, what Gay, Freud’s biographer and a leading left? you must forget.” Or perhaps the best historian of 19th and 20th century way to remember is by being confronted Europe. In a fascinating memoir, My One of my favourite buildings in Berlin, by what remains, whether it is partly German Question (1998), Gay (né which I visit every time I go there, is destroyed like the Gedächtniskirche or Fröhlich) describes returning to the the Gedächtniskirche or Kaiser Wilhelm whether it no longer exists at all, but is city where he spent his early childhood Memorial Church. Following allied just an absence. before his family fled from the Nazis. bombing during the war, the original He had returned to Europe three times west Tower has remained standing as a There is somewhere else I always visit before, but couldn’t face going back ruin and is hauntingly named “der hohle when I go to Berlin. My favourite to Germany. Then in 1961 he returns Zahn”, “the hollow tooth”, a mutilated street is Fasanenstrasse, also in west to his childhood homes (none of which remnant of what was once a beautiful Berlin. There is my favourite German have survived). What he expects is church on the Ku’damm. The original café, Café im Literaturhaus, beautiful a kind of Proustian moment, that he church was built in the 1890s, just a few in summer or winter, a converted belle will be flooded by memories of his years before the Bornplatz Synagogue in époque villa, one of Berlin’s loveliest childhood. But instead, there is a kind Hamburg. spots for Kaffee and Kuchen. A few of anaesthesia, a lack of memory. “My buildings along is the Käthe-Kollwitz- past,” he writes, “was proving to be a The church was badly damaged in Museum, home to one of Germany’s mosaic with central pieces missing.” 1943. A debate about what should be greatest modern artists. But these done with the remains of the church are not the only reason I always go A mosaic is a picture made up of ran on until the late 1950s. Following to Fasanenstrasse. It was where my fragments and as he describes the few pressure from the public, it was decided mother and uncle grew up before they memories that come back to him, they to incorporate the ruined tower into fled to Britain with their mother as are all of fragments, of things broken, the new design. The new church was refugees in 1938. Now nothing remains wounded or grotesque: an “idiot who consecrated in December 1961, largely of the once beautiful house. It was wandered the streets of northern Berlin restored but also still partly mutilated, completely destroyed during the war. …. A stunted creature with a gigantic a reminder of what had happened It has now been replaced by the truly head, awkward gait, and slavering during the war. There was no attempt to hideous Börse Berlin AG (or Berlin Stock mouth”, “the torso of a headless pretend the church had not been badly Exchange), one of the ugliest modern chicken”, a photograph of “a German damaged. It was party restored but not buildings in Berlin, which conveys no soldier dreadfully wounded in the First completely. The ruins were part of its sense of the extraordinary history of the World War but still living even though history, symbolising the larger history of city, let alone of my family’s history. half of his face had been shot away.” Berlin and Germany. He then goes on to describe “the ruin of As AJP Taylor pointed out, much of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Church, a “torso”, In his great poem, A German Requiem, Warsaw was destroyed during the war, “fragmentary remains”. Everywhere, published twenty years later, in 1981, including the neighbourhood where my Gay’s imagery is of fragments, James Fenton wrote, father grew up. Nothing remains from mutilation, things broken. his childhood. None of the buildings “It is not what they built. It is what they he knew, none of the people he knew, What draws Gay to these images? knocked down. not one member of his family. Much Perhaps it is something about his It is not the houses. It is the spaces in of central Warsaw has been beautifully childhood which was irreparably broken, between the houses. restored, but not the Jewish quarter. A despite his hugely successful career. It is not the streets that exist. It is the few places remain: The Jewish Cemetery How true is this for other refugees? streets that no longer exist. at Okopowa Street, some blocks of flats Is there something profoundly untrue It is not your memories which haunt you. near Waliców Street, Z’elazna Street and about rebuilding synagogues, churches, It is not what you have written down. Grzybowski Square, and a synagogue whole neighbourhoods which were once It is what you have forgotten, what you near Grzybowski Square. destroyed? Perhaps we should face up must forget. to a painful truth, that the past was What you must go on forgetting all your See: http://upload.wikimedia.org/ broken and destroyed, and shouldn’t be life. wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Warsaw_ rebuilt in its entirety. “It is not the streets And with any luck oblivion should that exist. It is the streets that no longer discover a ritual. Taylor was interested in the ironies of exist.” You will find out that you are not alone modern history. He was a great historian in the enterprise. but he was not terribly interested in David Herman 2 AJR Journal | February 2021 AJR HONOURS The AJR is delighted to congratulate two colleagues who have received awards in the Carol Hart Anthony Spiro Queen’s New Year Honours. Carol Hart, AJR’s Head of Volunteer and Anthony Spiro, AJR Trustee and Joint Germany, while the AJR provides Community Services, receives an MBE President of The Wiener Holocaust Library, comfort, friendship, social care for services to the Jewish community is awarded an OBE for services to Holocaust and financial support to its refugee during the Covid-19 pandemic.