Information Volume XLV No. 9 September 1990 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss . Reflections on the eve Profile: Sir Hermann Bondi p. 2 Repentance, Prayer, Beneficence Review: Carl F. Flesch's book p. 3 n last year's editorial for the High Holy Days we due to impaired health or advanced age, are Tax aid for gifts recalled the C^omte de Mirabeau's words on the incapable of taking care of themselves. /;. 10 I eve of the French Revolution 'History has too It was for that purpose that the AJR originally often recounted the actions of nothing more than initiated the setting up of the Homes and the wild animals . now we are given hope that we provision of social service support programmes. are beginning the history of man'. Now, several decades later, we are engaged in a Thar editorial itself appeared on the eve of a major fundraising effort to upgrade these revolution - in Fastern Furopc — which rekindled institutions and services to a level commensurate expectations that Mirabeau's hope might at last be with contemporary needs. fulfilled. The £4 million AJR Residential Care Appeal has Whether this will, indeed, be the case is very now been running for over half a year. We have iinich in the balance. In the meantime we still live made a good start, which is gratifying, but the out the last phase of history shaped by the actions response has not been uniform throughout all of wild animals. We, who have come together in sections of our membership. We attribute this not the Association of Jewish Refugees, were fortunate so much to a lack of generosity as tp enough to have survived the most ferocious misconceptions based on false impressions. Just as predator without permanent injury to body or there is a notion that all Jews are rich prevalent in mind. This imposes certain obligations on us - the society at large, so many in our community appear chief being to provide succour for our fellows who. persuaded that there is no such creature as a poor refugee in need. Would that it were so! In the real world, alas, the situation of many elderly refugees is not far short of pitiful - even in material terms (!) - and it behoves the rest of us who have been spared such a fate to dip our hands deep into our pockets. Quite candidly, if our appeal falls on deaf ears the essential improvements adumbrated in connection with our fundraising drive will remain ciphers on a drawing board, and the neediest members of the refugee community will not have their needs met! Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish Calendar, approaches. The prayer for that day states that 'in confessing our transgressions we are reminded that Repentance, Prayer and Beneficence will avert the evil decree'. The commentary thereto in the Soncino Chumash runs thus 'Fasting in itself is not the fulfilment of the Divine command and purpose of the Day of Atonement. Teshuvo, tefillo and tsedoko - these can change the whole current of a man's life and destiny and lead to perfect atonement." Let us therefore, over the forthcoming Days of Awe, recall the commandment and be beneficent! AJR INFORMATION SEPTEMBER 1990 SBn. HW, H^L. « Contrasting tycoons Profile That happened to be the year of the Anschluss — signifying that Hermann Hermann Abs, a leading West German Bondi's coming to Britain resulted from banker is on the 'watch list' denying him Expanding universe 'puir rather than 'push'. entry to the United States because, as head Even so — and despite a near-vertical of the Deutsche Bank during the Third take-off into the world of mathematical Reich, he played a central role in the scholarship - he did not avoid the aryanisation of Jewish businesses. common fate of refugees, i.e. internment. Berthold Beitz, chairman of the Krupp He was taken to Canada, where in a Foundation, has been honoured as a camp on the Plains of Abraham he taught 'righteous gentile' by Yad Vashem. As Maths to fellow internees, and waited 15 head of the Beskides oil company in months to be released. Soon afterwards he Nazi-occupied Poland he saved 1,500 commenced research at the Admiralty Jews from certain death at Belzec by Signals Establishment. From work on claiming they were indispensable for his naval radar he eventually switched to enterprise. D aerial radar - the latter in a barbed wire entanglement on the summit of Snowdon. Anti-racist vigil One of his wartime colleagues was Fred Hoylc, who subsequently achieved a The daughters of two martyred heroes of worldwide, if controversial, reputation the 1956 Uprising, Imre Nagy and Pal with his Steady State theory of the Maleter, joined leading politicians of the expanding universe. Bondi worked with new Hungary, including Prime Minister him in the area of astrophysics for a Jozsef Antall, in mounting guard at the while, but abandoned cosmology in the statue of Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest. mid-1950s. The demonstration was called by the Hcriihiiiii Hiiiidi h.R.S. Since then he has pursued an academic Raoul Wallenberg Society in protest at career and occupied key posts in such desecration of Jewish graves and a rash of f the recurring waves of important agencies as the European Space antisemitic graffiti. D immigration into Britain, the Research Organisation and the Natural OCentral European one of the Environment Research Council. He has Reading matters 1930s was, it is widely agreed, the most also worked as Chief Scientific Officer, 'valuable'. What is not agreed is who Marga Minco, a Dutch-Jewish writer, Ministry of l^efence. The MoD among Hitler's refugees deserves credit for distilled her experiences as the solitary appointment prompted a question in having made the singly greatest survivor of her family in An Empty Parliament as to why no British-born contribution to this country. The Trustees House. The novel, which sold an scientist had been given the job; this. Sir of the Imperial War Museum had no astonishing half million copies in Holland, Hermann told me when I interviewed him doubt on that score. At the has now been published in English by in the Master's Lodge of Churchill Museum-sponsored reunion of prominent Peter Owen. D College, Cambridge, was his only personal ex-enemy aliens on the 50th anniversary experience of British xenophobia in 50 of internment earlier this year, they made years! He considers the academics and Expressis verbis Hermann Bondi, FRS, guest of honour. In civil servants he has always mixed with The Conference on Security an'd his 'acceptance' speech Sir Hermann quite devoid of prejudice - but does not Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), meeting observed wrily that in the 1940s he had hold the same sanguine view of members in Copenhagen, has unequivocally been put behind barbed wire not once, of the legal profession. condemned antisemitism, and called for but twice: first as an enemy alien, and As regards Jewish matters he is rather measures to combat it. In previous legal then, shortly afterwards because he was detached. Though keen on genealogical documents antisemitism was habitually doing top secret war work. research - the family name derives from covered by such general terms as 'racism' Vienna-born, Hermann Bondi had the Sephardi translation of Yomtov — he or 'persecution on religious grounds'. D grown up in a Jewish middle-class family, lacks a strong sense of Jewish identity. In the son of a scientifically inclined fact, his commitment to Humanism (he is For accidental tourists physician and a mother with strong anti- President of the British Humanist religious convictions. He showed amazing Association) predisposes him to a view of The New York office of the Deutsche aptitude for Maths early on, 'swallowing' all religions as divisive. At the same time Zentralc fiir Tourismus has issued a an introduction to Calculus at 12, and he esteems the Jewish tradition because of brochure entitled 'Germany for the Jewish answering questions designed for a two- the high value it places on education. Traveler'. The 40 page brochure contains hour exam in a fraction of the time. At Education is, in fact, the centre of Sir a summary of (ierman-Jewish history, 17, convinced that a course at Vienna Hermann's universe. Having just seen his addresses of Jewish institutions in the University would offer him insufficient autobiography - Science, Churchill & Me, BRD and a list of places of Jewish scope, he applied for a place in Pergamon Press, £17.50 - through the interest, from the site of Belsen to the Cambridge. He entered Trinity College as press, and on the threshold of retirement, former residence of the Kissinger family at a fee-paying 'commoner', but within a he is full of plans for the future, many of Fiirrh. n year was a scholarship-assisted 'scholar'. them pedagogical. D R.G. AJR INFORMATION SEPTEMBER 1990 Reviews granted by the children of famous people, Schnabel-Flesch-Piatigorsky Piano Trio is not least the equally famous friends who discussed, but inevitably left unexplained. visit the house, but also, as the title All this is well documented with carefully Monument to a '. and do you also play the violin^' selected letters, but the author's sense of indicates, the assumption by well-meaning humour, which gave much pleasure earlier famous father acquaintances that children 'ought' to in the book, finds little room here. follow in their parents' footsteps. D Marianne Ehrenberg ri Carl F. Flesch '... UND SPIELST DU Many pertinent questions are asked by AUCH GEIGE?' Der Sohn eines the author: Why is it taken for granted beriJhmten Musikers erzahit und blickt that a soloist plays from memory? Why is Warsaw hinter die Kulissen.