AJ R Into rma tio n Volume LI No. 7 July 1996 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss ... A Dickens of Ref}ectior)s on the Israeli electior)s a claim Richard Grunberger, Socialist & The bullet-scarred ballot sensualist C F Flesch, p4 or three hundred years Germans called France into silence. He may well have been a flawed negoti­ Leonora der Erbfeind responsible for a catalogue of ating partner, but to see him upstaged by Hamas in Hellman's Fmisdeeds from burning Heidelberg to occupying this fashion was not to Israel's advantage. •00th birthday, the Ruhr. The French had an even grimmer list of A Fortress Israel policy could, admittedly, work in P8 memories, climaxed by Nazi atrocities during the the short term - but we have seen where the laager Second World War. mentality ultimately landed the South Africa Nats. Yet from 1945 onwards these hereditary enemies One final consideration. The majority of the nine found it in their mutual interest - and in that of million Diaspora Jews know how much they owe to generations yet unborn - to draw a line under the the West's multicultural liberalism. Apprehension past. The result: the birth of the EU, and Europe's that the Jewish State of tomorrow might well not first half century of peace in a thousand years. share those values, will do little to strengthen world­ ^ed-brown Monet, Adenauer and Schuman who wrought wide Jewish solidarity. Russia these epoch-making changes, were farsighted states­ Still - we humans are so constituted that we al­ men with widespread electoral support. Peres, a ways look for the light at the end of the tunnel. So n the presidential statesman imbued with a no less grandiose vision, let us hope against hope that the new administration poll many alas, failed to elicit similar backing. in Jerusalem will 'renege' on their election prom­ I erstwhile The May election in Israel was less a contest be­ ises. It was, after all, their spiritual mentor Zhirinovsky tween head and heart than between rationality and Menachem Begin who confounded all expectations supporters voted gut-feeling. The country always had an intransigent by making peace with Egypt D Communist - a less core of religious and jingoist hardliners. What gave than surprising 'Bibi' victory were floating voters, whose gut reac­ switch. Though tion to the Oslo Accords (stipulating concessions Zhirinovsky's real that triggered more rather than fewer outrages) was father had, like the one of - understandable - panic. Communists' It ill behoves us who daily board buses free of spiritual one Hamas bombs to sit in judgment on Israel's voters. (Marx), been The Diaspora, nonetheless, has a huge emotional Jewish, both parties stake in the Jewish State - which obliges us to ex­ peddled press misgivings about the electorate's decision at a antisemitism. crucial juncture in the country's history. Clearly xenophobia Voting the hardline Right into power simultane­ 's a tiger Yeltsin ously endangers peace with the Arabs and civil peace needs to ride to among the Jews. Coming so soon after the Rabin as­ retain power and sassination it places additional pressure on the though Chechnya, fragile internal cohesion of Israeli society. alas, proved him 'Is this still my country?' sobbed many a left- adept at that, he leaning voter (with kibbutznik forebears who had remains the only laid the foundations of the State) on 30 May. The "Tiajor player question was echoed by Israel's Arab citizens, a committed to 700,000-strong group unconnected with Hamas - reformD or PLO - terror. Peres' defeat also shocked Arafat The Knesset, Israel's Parliament, in Jerusalem AJR INFORMATION JULY 1996 Deportations from Western Europe to Profile Auschwitz began in 1942 and were re­ ferred to in the British press, but the destination of the trains remained un­ Model member known! adeleine Brook, AJR Trustee and Asked by Weizmann and Shertok to Management Committee member, bomb the death camps, Churchill ordered Mgrew up in a Viennese middle- "get anything out of the Air Force you class family - her father was a can and involve me if necessary." Unfor­ manufacturer of clothing accessories - tunately, nothing of significance resulted. and attended the enlightened Churchill's efforts to obtain a joint An­ Schwarzwaldschule. The fact that her glo-American declaration on the mother had Swiss nationality enabled extermination of the Jews were nullified Madeleine, too, to escape to Switzerland by the Americans. In an article for the in 1938, while the father went to Sweden. 'JC he wrote that "Jews bear the brunt In Zurich she attended a commercial of suffering"; with his support, 4,500 college and obtained a business diploma. Jewish children were helped to escape Due to the Swiss phobia about refugees Madeleine's involvement in the work from the Balkans. overcrowding the labour market she first of AJR steadily intensified. After the Churchill called for Allied punishment had to work semi-illegally (at a sanato­ opening of the Paul Balint AJR Day Cen­ of war criminals specifically for their per­ rium for psychiatric patients) but was tre she assumed responsibility for secution of the Jews. He wrote to Foreign eventually allowed to look after refugee provisioning and running the shop in Secretary Anthony Eden of "the most hor­ children under the aegis of the Red Cross. Cleve Road. Her main contribution to the rible crime committed in the whole The postwar years took her to Sweden Association, though, has for many years history of the world" whose perpetrators and the USA, where she worked for a been connected with the annual concert. should be put to death. travel agency. In the early 1950s she mar­ She has helped with the sale of tickets - Revisionists have asserted that Church­ ried a fellow refugee and took up domicile and especially of advertising in the con­ ill's prescience and protests were not his in the UK. They had a son, and after some cert brochure (a key source of revenue). own - rather those of the Jews who paid time she became a rep for a firm making In this endeavour she displays a charm him to express them. Sir Martin Gilbert's rhinestone buttons. She involved herself in and enthusiasm capable of thawing the evidence substantiates the contrary. From community work as a member both of resistance of the most curmudgeonly po­ 1940 onwards Churchill refused to make WIZO and of AJR. tential advertiser. Characteristically, she peace with Hitler and mobilised every Widowed in the early 1970s, she married would not even let the recent onset of ill­ effort to defeat Nazi Germany and bring Henry Brook, becoming the stepmother of ness interfere with her work for the 1996 to justice those who had committed such the writer Stephen Brook (of The Club concert. We wish her a speedy recovery. unparalleled crimes. fame). DRG D Ronald Channing The Wiener Library's ship in May 1940, Churchill came under AJR & the Wiener Library Bernard Krikler Mennorial Lecture pressure from Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and others to open negotiations joindy present Churchill and the with Hitler. He rejected their advice and ruled out any accommodation with Hitler, 'The Voyage of the Holocaust thereby avoiding Britain falling into the St. Louis' trap of 'Vichy' satellite status. ir Martin Gilbert adduced ample Contrary to the Foreign Office position Sunday 14 July 1996 proof of the consistency with which, that Jewish concerns were purely admin­ at 4pm from 1932 onwards, Churchill both istrative matters, Churchill ordered all S Harkness Hall.* publicised and condemned Nazi items of Jewish interest to be put in his I Birkbeck College, Malet Street, persecution of the Jews. despatch box. Despite British reverses in LondonWCl Having witnessed persecution in Ger­ Europe, North Africa and the Atlantic in many "solely on the grounds of race", 1941, Churchill assured Chaim Weizmann Director Maziar Bahari & survivors Churchill warned of the danger to Polish that the British White Paper restricting will take part in an informal Jews in Parliament and pleaded for mini­ Jewish immigration to Palestine would discussion mal immigration restrictions to be placed not be put into operation. That same year on refugees from Europe. He described Churchill commended a "Jewish state in Tickets:£5 (£3 concessions) German Jews as "stripped of all power", Western Palestine" to the War Cabinet. incl. refreshments declared a "foul and odious race", and Hitler's invasion of the USSR in June Apply to:Administrative Secretary, subjected to every kind of persecution. He 1941 brought SS killer squads into action. Wiener Library, actually spoke of the "blotting out" of Despite German messages being de­ 4 Devonshire Street, London WIN 2BH German Jewry. crypted at Bletchley Park, only a fragment Tel: 0171 636 7247 Immediately on assuming the premier­ of the scale of the killing was revealed. AJR INFORMATION JUL/ 1996 A Dickens of a claim drunk, would throw punches at fellow writers (e.g. Albert Camus) or policemen. JACKMAN• adness, it is said, is to genius near Refugee-descended Tom Kempinski re­ allied. Lord Byron was certainly fused to have his plays staged in Israel, 'a £ SILVERMAN Mknown as 'mad, bad and racist state on a par with South Africa'. COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS dangerous to know'. And now the Hilde Spiel returned to Austria twenty Journal of Clinical Psychology reveals years after the war partly because she felt that literati - poets, playwrights, snubbed by her London PEN colleagues novelists - are generally madder than Stephen Spender and John Lehmann. members of the general public. Back in Vienna fellow Remigrant To substantiate its thesis the Journal Friedrich Torberg, a staunch anti-Com­ pinpoints the degree of derangement of munist, promptly started a vendetta 26 Conduit Street, London WIR 9TA individual writers on a scale from one to against her for advocating the lifting of a Telephone: 071 409 0771 Fax: 071 493 8017 SIX - and gives Evelyn Waugh top rank­ ban on Brecht's plays.