VOLUME 20 NO.12 DECEMBER 2020 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees LOOKING BACK The Year Our lead article looks back twelve months. But we are also inviting you to look back over 75 years of the AJR Journal and be part of our commemorative issue next in Review month – see page 3. The history books may well look back at 2020 as the start of Other highlights this month include a preview of two new memorials which are a pandemic. But as we reflect on the past twelve months it is being developed to honour two British important to realise there have been many other highlights, some icons of the Kindertransport (pages 10 & 11) and a light hearted look at the origin exciting, some sad. of Jewish names (page 9). Nostalgia is also at the root of our article on continental cooking (page 12) while the husband of one member was so inspired by a book review in our October issue that he has now written about his own father’s history. We hope you enjoy this final issue of 2020. News ............................................................ 3 Kristallnacht commemorated ........................ 4 Letter from Israel .......................................... 5 Letters to the Editor ................................ 6 – 7 2020 saw some excellent new TV dramas related to the Holocaust and Jewish refugees Art Notes...................................................... 8 The Name Game .......................................... 9 Icons of the Kindertransport ............... 10 – 11 Continental Cooking .................................. 12 First, there are those distinguished Jewish home in Vienna, one of three children of Put off travelling for life ............................. 13 refugees we have lost this year. The literary Béla and Lotte Horovitz. He was soaked Looking for................................................. 14 critic George Steiner died in February. in classical culture and her parents were Unlocked thanks to Lockdown ................... 15 He fled from France to America in 1940 deeply involved in Viennese music and Reviews .............................................. 16 – 17 Obituaries .......................................... 18 – 19 before settling in Britain in the 1950s. His art. Her father co-founded the famous art Events ........................................................ 20 Viennese father, he wrote in his memoir, publisher, Phaidon, which was transplanted Errata, “embodied, as did every corner of to Britain when the family left Austria in our Paris home, the tenor, the prodigality 1938. Elly Miller later ran Phaidon with her Please note that the views expressed and glow of Jewish-European and Central husband Harvey and they then founded throughout this publication are not European emancipation.” “German Harvey Miller Publishers. At her Shiva necessarily the views of the AJR. metaphysics and cultural criticism,” Steiner a publishing colleague said, “Who else wrote, “from Kant to Schopenhauer and has worked with Gombrich, spoken with AJR Team Nietzsche, the classics of German-language Toscanini as a young girl and knew Thomas Chief Executive Michael Newman poetry and drama… crowded the shelves Mann as a family acquaintance?” Finance Director David Kaye of my father’s library.” This was the cultural Heads of Department Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart world that formed Steiner. In later years, Romek Marber, who died in March, was HR & Administration Karen Markham his greatest contribution as a critic was to best known for designing the covers of Educational Grants & Projects Alex Maws introduce so many central European writers Penguin books. Born in Poland in 1925, Social Services Nicole Valens and thinkers to post-war Britain. he was deported to the Bochnia ghetto, AJR Journal but survived and came to Britain in 1946, Editor Jo Briggs The publisher, Elly Miller, who died in where he was reunited with his father and Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy August, grew up in a similarly cultured Continued on page 2 Contributing Editor David Herman 1 AJR Journal | December 2020 The Year in Review A German film of Judith Kerr’s ever-popular Another fascinating family story is Thomas children’s classic, When Hitler Stole Pink Harding’s The House by the Lake, which (cont.) Rabbit opened the UK Jewish Film Festival was recently republished as a children’s brother. He went to art school and later on 5 November. It is directed by Caroline picture book, beautifully illustrated redesigned the Penguin crime series, giving Link, one of Germany’s best-known by Britta Teckentrup. Bryan Cheyette, them a distinctive new look. directors. She won an Academy Award for published his book on the history of The Best Foreign Language Film for Nowhere in Ghetto in the Very Short Introductions A critic, a publisher and a graphic designer, Africa (2001), which tells the story of the series published by OUP. It lucidly these three cultural figures represented the life in Kenya of a German-Jewish family, describes different kinds of ghetto from range of interests of Jewish refugees who the Redlich family, who emigrated there early modern Europe to Nazi Germany and came to Britain in the mid-20th century. in 1938 to escape persecution in Nazi the black ‘ghettos’ in 1960s America. The They came from Paris, Vienna and Poland. Germany. Her new film movingly tells the Spectator called Rosie Whitehouse’s recent Others, like the distinguished inventor and story of the Kemper family, closely based on book about Holocaust survivors, The philanthropist, George Weisz, who died in Kerr’s own family, and their experience of People on the Beach, “A gripping story of March at ninety, came from Budapest. leaving Berlin in 1933 and passing through human drama and historical seriousness.” Switzerland and Paris before eventually 2020 also saw a number of cultural settling in Britain. The film is beautifully Finally, Holocaust Education, a subject close highlights. BBC 2 celebrated Holocaust shot, but too often deviates from the book. to the AJR’s heart. Karen Pollock, Chief Memorial Day with a moving drama- Anna’s father looks nothing like Alfred Executive of the Holocaust Educational documentary, The Windermere Children, Kerr, who was fifteen years older than the Trust (HET), was awarded the MBE in about the rehabilitation of a group actor playing him. There are numerous the Queen’s Honours List, Olivia Marks- of young Holocaust survivors. The scenes which are added in the film and Woldman, Chief Executive of the Holocaust extraordinary story of Ludwig Guttmann, scenes from the book which are removed. Memorial Day Trust, was awarded the the German-born neurologist who started Too often, the dark tone of the book (and OBE and, most recently, Sir Ben Helfgott the Paralympic Games, was retold in the especially the later books in the trilogy) was awarded a Pride of Britain award Netflix documentary, Rising Phoenix. And, is replaced by the soft-lit interiors of the for his work helping fellow survivors and in a very different vein, Amazon Prime film and the sunlit Alps, which have never educating younger generations about the showed the first series of Hunters, with looked more beautiful. Holocaust. Al Pacino. The drama tells the story of a group of Nazi hunters living in 1970s New It has also been a good year for books Marks-Woldman’s grandfather, Leon York who discover that Nazi war criminals on refugees and the Holocaust. Some of Blumenkehl, came to Britain from Poland are alive and causing mayhem in post- the more interesting books include The in the early 20th century, leaving behind Watergate America. Jews, The Holocaust, and The Public: The many family members who would later be Legacies of David Cesarani, co-edited murdered in the Holocaust. “He arrived,” Tom Stoppard’s play Leopoldstadt won by Larissa Allwork and Rachel Pistol, she said, “penniless and friendless yet built Best New Play in the Olivier Awards. a tribute to the late David Cesarani, a a new life and created a community of While it presents a central European leading Holocaust historian, author of the friends in the UK. For his granddaughter to Jewish milieu, the playwright said it was posthumously published, Final Solution. receive this honour is a further symbol of “not autobiographical”. “It’s so far from Philippe Sands followed his astonishing the diversity and richness of British life.” being the story I lived through,” he told an book, East West Street (2016), part family interviewer from The Jewish Chronicle. “It’s memoir, part Holocaust history and part It is a good note on which to end this a lot to do with being Jewish, knowing you history of ideas, with The Ratline: Love, review of 2020. We have lost many leading are Jewish, acknowledging you are Jewish, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi cultural figures, but there has also been so acting like you are Jewish...or not. And Fugitive. The book tells the story of Otto much to celebrate this year, in almost every that’s the area where I felt I was looking von Wächter, Nazi war criminal and area of British life. inward rather than outward.” fugitive, and how his son could never come to terms with his father’s dark past. David Herman In her biography, Tom Stoppard: A Life, published in the autumn, Hermione Lee described Stoppard’s experience as a child refugee from Czechoslovakia, who fled with his parents to Singapore in 1939 and grew up in post-war Britain. benuri.org It was only much later in his life that Stoppard began to engage with issues of DISCOVER loss and belonging, writing plays about The three strands of our Arts and Health Institute Czech dissidents, 19th century Russian intellectuals in exile and the Jewish quarter pioneering new ways of working with older people of Vienna, though perhaps his experience of childhood trauma was more evident and those living with dementia at benuri.org in his screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. THE FIRST FULL SCALE VIRTUAL MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTRE 2951_BU_AJR_120X60_No2.indd 2 14/11/2020 21:42 2 AJR Journal | December 2020 Get onto DIAMOND Hundreds of AJR members who could be eligible for Homecare support in the future could significantly speed up the process at their time of need simply by registering their details now.