AJ R In Jo rma tio n Volume LIV No. 12 December 1999 £3 (to non-members) King-sized burgher Looking back on 1999 ayors of s end-of-decade years go the current one rent German legislation). capital compares in importance with 1989, which The Anglo-American complement to Holocaust M cities often ,saw the collapse of the Berlin wall and the denial is isolationist revisionism. This school of send out messages A end of the Cold War. 1999 in its turn witnessed the 'thought' contends that since Hitler had no hostile that resonate expiry of the convention according to which a designs on Britain or America, Churchill and beyond municipal government's ill-treatment of its own subjects was Roosevelt alike were warmongers who dragged boundaries. The viewed as legitimate exercise of national sovereignty. their respective countries into a ruinous conflict in antisemitic Kosovo and East Timor (in their different ways) which no vital national interest was at stake. Burgomaster exemplify the cost of enforcing the startlingly new In the UK isolationist revisionists like AN Wilson Lueger, darling of notion that universal human rights override national and Prof. J Charmley disseminate their toxin from the Viennese, governments' scope for villainy within the territory the citadels of Canary Wharf and the groves of aca­ undermined under their jurisdiction. Decisive UN action in Timor deme. Their US counterpart, Pat Buchanan, is Emperor Franz has already had a salutary knock-on effect on Indo­ considerably more upfront: he has taken to the hus­ Josefs humane nesia itself. By contrast NATO's earlier and tings with his America-first message yet again. A notion of a precedent-setting Kosovo campaign has yet to trig­ past contender for the Republican nomination, who Habsburg state that ger a corresponding eruption within Serbia proper. accuses Jews in public life of owing greater loyalty was home to all his Volatile South-East Europe and SE Asia are thus to Jerusalem than to Washington, Buchanan is subjects. appreciably more becalmed - and civilised - areas currently manoeuvring to become presidential Conversely, than they were a year ago. The same, by and large, candidate of the Reform Party. Jerusalem's Teddy applies to the Middle East, where Ehud Barak's All in all, as we say goodbye to this last relatively Kollek inspired relaunch of his predecessor Yitzhak Rabin's policy benign decade of a uniquely horrible century we hope while Likud has elicited positive Jordanian and Palestinian re­ have much to be thankful for - but we must keep formed the national sponses in the shape of a clampdown on Hamas. the unsleeping, ever-lurking monster of xenophobia government. Nor is Although only self-deluding optimists would dis­ always in our sights D an anti-Blairite count the possibility of future Mayor of London setbacks to the Oslo process, beyond the bounds the Middle East, too, appears of the possible. To significantly less combustible Londoners than last December. pondering their It is in Europe that newly choice we offer this emerging faultlines have re­ obiter dictum from vealed hitherto unsuspected Ken Livingstone: fragilities. In the enviably "What England did prosperous heart of the conti­ to the Irish only nent the Austrian and the appears less brutal Swiss electorate have each than what the propelled a dangerous right- Nazis did to the wing demagogue to a position Jews because it of power. While Haider oper­ ^as drawn out ating inside an EU-member over eight state maintains a shrewdly centuries' D calculating silence on Jewish matters, Christoph Belcher in r.The AJR wishes EU-shunning Switzerland has '^'l its members openly endorsed Holocaust a Happy AJR Chairman, Andrew Kaufman, meets Osmond House residents denial (which constitutes a (^nanucan enjoying their tea at the Home's official opening. (See page 7) criminal offence under cur­ AJR INFORMATION DECEMBER 1999 cerned: together with several other emi­ Profile grated communal activists he founded the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain. Founding father's After the war Eva returned to the fash­ ion trade and in 1948 she married a dutiful daughter Viennese fellow refugee employed in the owadays the term community travel industry. Alas, their married lif^ service denotes a soft alternative was dogged by tragedy from early on. N to prison, but in focusing on Eva Their first two children fell victim to the Trent, nee Breslauer, we need to resurrect Tay-Sachs syndrome (a condition con­ its original meaning. The ideal of com­ fined to Jews, just as Sickle Cell Anaemia munal service has been a Breslauer is to Afro-Caribbeans). Subsequently they family tradition for three generations. adopted a daughter, tragically fated to die Eva's grandfather and father alike were of cancer in early middle age. lawyers actively involved in Jewish In 1965, feeling that her full-time pres­ matters. ence was no longer required at home, In 1933, when the Nazi takeover spelt work. This consisted of helping to pre­ Eva became a volunteer befriender' with the end of Dr Walter Breslauer's legal pare meals for 450 staff and patients at Camden Council. Four years later AJR practice, he became secretary of the Ber­ University College Hospital in Gower opened Eleanor Rathbone Hou.se and .she lin Jewish community. He also moved Street. Henry Moore's Tube Shelterers still joined the House Committee that liaised 13-year-old Eva from her previous school reminds her of the scenes she witnessed with the wardens, organised events and to a Jewish one to shield her from gov­ on her journeys to and from work in visited residents (Eva has kept up hei ernment-decreed classroom antisemitism. those days. weekly visits - with short intervals - for In 1936 the family emigrated to London, Dr Breslauer had meanwhile written a thirty years!) where Eva enrolled at Hornsey School of book on International Law of Private Nowadays, approaching eighty, she also Art. Inheritance and found part-time employ­ acts as a telephone befriender' for Jewish At Hornsey she didn't quite blossom ment as a bookkeeper with the Jewish Care. Together with her husband she is into an artist, but became a competent Board of Guardians. In addition he did still active in Amnesty International. De­ fashion designer. She found employment something of really great moment as far spite all the tragedies in their lives the in the rag trade', later switching to war as the refugee community was con­ couple have retained their joie de vivre U basic care costs, any addition to maintain British POWs seek Residential home's OSHA's necessarily high standards having to be met from the Association's own lim­ compensation change of plan ited resources. OSHA also has to respond British POWs who worked as Nazi slave- labourers are bringing legal proceedings c-inrich Stahl House, a residential to the expectation that standards of ac­ against the German government for un­ and nursing home in north commodation and care offered by their paid wages. Lav^ers working for sonie London built for and especially residential and nursing homes will re­ H main among the very best and stay ahead 3,000 surviving soldiers claim that a share dedicated to the care of victims of Nazi of the £2.2bn compensation already of­ persecution in their later years, is not to of rising national standards. fered to German, American and Soviet be replaced with a new development. In reaching their decision, OSHA had POWs should be awarded to the British This decision by the Otto Schiff Housing also to take into account the inevitable in lieu of payment and personal injuries Association revises their previous plan, decline in the numbers of those belong­ suffered. The current deal of £200 p^^ announced earlier this year, to build new ing to the refugee generation, as well as worker is described by some British accommodation in another location in government legislation favouring the pro­ POWs as insulting. preference to undertaking the renovation vision of support services for the of the present building and the long-term care of the elderly in their own modernisation of its facilities. homes. The sale of Heinrich Stahl House, OSHA's current refurbishment and J- JACKMAN• which stands on a valuable site on one maintenance programme for other homes of north London's most prestigious roads, in the group is due to be completed next **• SILVERMAN year. Residents of Heinrich Stahl House is, however, to go ahead. OSHA's Coun­ COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS cil of Management has chosen to and their families have been reassured by consolidate the Association's operations the chairman, Ashley Mitchell, that no- and redirect funds realised from the sale one will be asked to move to an to complete the development of other alternative home without full considera­ homes in the group, repay loans and se­ tion of the suitability of all the options. cure the future of the Association. (Further enquiries may be directed to 26 Conduit Street, London WIR 9TA In the current situation, local authority Tony Shepherd, OSHA Chief Executive, Telephone: 0171 409 0771 Fax: 0171 493 801? funding for residents fails to cover even on 0181 731 7374). D Ronald Channing AJR INFORMATION DECEMBER 1999 account of Maidanek death camp written Profane and sacred by an emotionally disturbed Swiss non- Jew. And now we have the temporary NEWTONS emembrance Sunday confirmed the closure of the Crimes of the Wehrmacht Leading Hampstead Solicitors impression that year on year the exhibition by its organisers because a R number of people wearing pop- small percentage of the photographs dis­ 22 Fitzjohn's Avenue, P'es in their buttonholes diminishes.