VOLUME 4 NO. 9 SEPTEMBER 2004 Hid journal ^^H^l mi ^ Association of Jeu/ish Refugees Auto-suggested victimhood In 1928 Hitler drew deafening cheers from Cannot their citizens see that the his listeners with the subsequently oft- cumulative unification of Europe has repeated mantra 'Jahrzehnte lang war rendered any repetition of that doleful Deutschland der brutalsten scenario virtually impossible in future? Unterdriickung preisgegeben' (For And cannot the electorate, particularly in decades Germany was subjected to the Poland (whose numerous peasants still most brutal oppression). He made this use more horse-drawn ploughs than utterance precisely nine years after the so- tractors) comprehend that only further called diktat of Versailles, which, though integration into a common market will harsh, did not compare in severity with the The European Parliament, Strasbourg remove the inertia, as well as the customs treaty of Brest-Litovsk Germany had have gained as much currently among the barriers, not to mention the farming previously imposed on Russia. Left as among the Right in British politics. subsidies in consumer countries, that Nothing has greater potential for lashing The Green Party's campaign against stand in the way of progress? an audience into a frenzy than the genetically modified crops portrayed Six million Poles - half of them Jews - suggestion that they have been victims of British consumers as victims of the were killed under Nazi occupation. How history. Slobodan Milosevic never tired of machinations of big firms like Monsanto, to can their heirs fail to welcome a new reminding his audiences of an event that which the government is in hock. The transcontinental order which makes their occurred 600 years earlier: the Turkish Greens, likewise, charge ministers with powerful - and previously ever- victory over the Serbs at the Battlefield of subservience to the road lobby and the fast threatening - neighbours to the West the Blackbirds in 1389. In a similar spirit, food industry. stress their European rather than their the Irish still invoke 'the curse of The far-left Respect Party concocted German identity? Cromwell' fully three and a half centuries two disparate victimisation myths. On the Despite a host of such questions, to afterthe massacre of Drogheda. one hand, they depicted the working class which there seems to be no logical answer, Victimhood takes different forms. At victims of exploitative bosses and a the numerical evidence points to Drogheda all inhabitants were killed, government bent on privatisation; on the underlying steady progress for European whereas the Turks 'contented themselves' other, they projected themselves as integration. First there were six, then with wiping out the Serb nobility on the defenders of the Muslim community from nine, then fifteen - and now we are battlefield. While some victimhood is officially fostered Islamophobia. twenty-five! genuine, many forms, especially in the But at least in the UK both the extreme This positive reading of an infinitely present climate of opinion, are auto- right and left-wing parties failed to secure complicated situation can be further suggested. The elections after the representation in the European substantiated by what appears to be enlargement of the EU showed that there Parliament. This contrasts with the negative evidence. It is this: if one were to were groups in every one of the 25 situation in recent accession states like the tot up all the newly elected Euro MPs who member states convinced that their own Czech Republic and Poland. In the former go to Brussels intending to sabotage the country was being fleeced for someone the Communists made a partial comeback; EU, it would amount to a far from else's benefit. Paradoxically, this sense of Poland, with an abysmally low voter negligible total. But they cannot injury was particularly deep-seated among turnout, has sent a block of anti-abortionist collaborate effectively - as evidenced by the East European newcomers to the ultra-Catholics and unabashed Jew-baiters the separatist Belgian Flemish Party's Union who had been queuing for years like pig farmer Leppert to Strasbourg. disdain for the French nationalism of to get in. In the case of the Czechs and Poles we Le Pen. But even in Britain, which allegedly has have two countries, which, having So, although the recent Europe-wide the most sophisticated electorate in disappeared from the map of Europe for elections engendered ample cause for Europe, the impression that Brussels centuries, were reborn in 1918 and two alarm - not least among Jews in Poland, exists merely to damage the national decades later endured, in rapid succession, France and the UK (where the BNP polled interest to the advantage of sleazy war, Nazi occupation, dismemberment, 800,000 votes) - we need not yet assume Eurocrats is widespread. mass executions and, finally, forcible that the EU project is running into Curiously enough, myths of victimhood Sovietisation. the buffers. AJR JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 2004 Can Levys Heinrich Stahl House sale levitate as well? Proceeds to benefit survivors and refugees Richard Grunberger Ronald Channing Heinrich Stahl House, the Otto Schiff reparations from Germany and was a The award of the Orange Prize for Housing Association's (OSHA) combined charity with OSHA until Fiction to Sandra Levy for her novel residential home on The Bishops 1984, is to receive £4 million over three Small Island raises a tantalising Avenue in Hampstead, which was years, WJR having a legal entitlement possibility. Could it be that the novelist, closed in 1999 after having provided to part of the proceeds. These funds who is of pure Afi-o-Caribbean stock, shelter and care for Holocaust survivors will support community-building adopted the pseudonym Levy as a for more than 40 years, has been sold projects and provide care for deprived tribute to the extraordinarily talented for £16.25 million. After protracted children and othervital welfare services tribe of that name, just as the Chilean negotiations, OSHA's Trustees finally for Jewish communities in Ukraine, the poet Neftali Reyes called himself Pablo obtained planning permission from the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Argentina Neruda in homage to the Czech writer London Borough of Barnet for the and Bulgaria. Jan Neruda? building of a development of flats on By the tribe of Levy, incidentally, I the Heinrich Stahl site which maximised *A separate fund is to don't mean the priestly caste of Ancient its value. Israel - equivalent to Hindu Brahmin - The proceeds of the sale are to be be established which but their celebrity descendants from used to provide care for victims of Nazi Nobel Prize winners (the persecution, including refugees, and will make grants to pharmacologist Rita Levi-Moncalcini, for Anglo-Jewry. A substantial share of other UK charities the physiologist Otto Loewy) the proceeds will be received by Jewish downwards. Care and World Jewish Relief, enabling undertaking similar Some Loewys Germanised their them to continue with projects that work in the UK, name to Loewe, and, after emigration, meet needs in the UK and abroad. Anglicised it, as was the case with Jewish Care, which now manages undoubtedly Frederick Lowe, composer of My Fair OSHA homes, is to receive £10 million Lady. (A propos of smash hit musicals, for a new residential care facility for the including the AJR' the title of Hello Dolly showcases elderly, where victims of Nazi Thornton Wilder's fictitious persecution will receive priority, and to In addition, a separate fund is to be matchmaker Dolly Levy.) help fund their Holocaust Survivors' established which will make grants to But it is the Levys ending in 'i' who are Centre in Hendon. OSHA entered into other UK charities undertaking similar really the pick ofthe bunch. Since Italian partnership with Jewish Care in July work in the UK, which will undoubtedly Jewry was a small community, some of 2000, since when Jewish Care has include the AJR. The Otto Schiff them even belonged to the same family. managed OSHA's three remaining Housing Association has been the Primo (This is a Man) Levi, Carlo homes on The Bishops Avenue: specialist provider of residential (Christ Stopped at Eboli) Levi and Natalia Osmond House, Leo Baeck House and nursing care and sheltered housing in (Voices in the Evening) Ginzburg were Balint House. While OSHA will retain the UK for Jewish refugees from Nazi first or second cousins. No less the ownership of the properties, it is persecution for more than 50 years. deserving of mention is a duo of double- formally handing over to Jewish Care all OSHA is a wholly separate legal entity barrelled Levi-Strausses. aspects of care at the homes. and entirely independent from the AJR, Claude, a French-born anthropologist, World Jewish Relief, successor to the although chairman Andrew Kaufman and AJR Charitable Trust trustee Frank wrote The Cooked and the Raw; the Central British Fund, which established Harding sit on its Council. other, a Bavarian immigrant in gold-rush Heinrich Stahl House with postwar California, invented hard-wearing trousers now known globally as Levis. AJR Journal Finally, there is the Levi who changed Richard Grunberger Editor-in-Chief JACKMAN • his name (and nationality). Italian-born Ronald Channing Executive Editor Ivo Levi left Italy with his Mussolini- Howard Spier Editorial and Production e SILVERMAN AJR Journal, Jubilee House, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS hating parents as a toddler, grew up in Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middlesex