AJ R Info rma lio n Volume D/No. 8 August 2000 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss... Upper and lower case liberals Richard Grunberger p3 England's glory and shame Authoritative study with flaws Anthony Grenville p4 he glory of England does not reside in Euro certainty that it wouldn't affect her ratings. 2000 goals but in gaols empty of political A similar gut feeling of plainspoken Englishness Chairman's annual prisoners for the last three hundred years. also predisposes millions in this country against report pl6 T The shame stems from the fact that many young watching foreign films because they require subti­ Englishmen would dismiss Magna Carta and Habeas tles. In the case of grand opera, popular alienation Satanic Corpus as 'foreign' and therefore automatically has social as well as racial sources. Covent Garden is soubriquet beneath contempt. perceived as a playground of the rich, and arias are ifty-five years How did it happen that the cradle of democracy (nearly) always sung in foreign languages. after its which 60 years ago saved the world from Nazi This sense of Englishness is a double-edged demise the barbarism has since spawned a tribe of savages who sword. On the one hand it generates healthy patriot­ F crave regular orgies of alcohol-fuelled destruction ism - in the Great War Britain managed without Third Reich still inspires nostalgia in with foreigners as the preferred target? conscription for two whole years - but on the other sick minds. Alan To some extent there is a causal connection be­ it produces mindless xenophobia. The xenophobic Clark named his tween Liberty and the taking of liberties.(Thus the mindset makes all continental Europeans targets for Rottweiler bitches British authorities balked at their German counter­ patriotically justified aggression. after Leni parts' policy of confiscating the passports of But there can never be sufficient international fix­ Riefenstahl and the suspected football hooligans). In this country liberty tures to absorb the free floating aggressive energy pilot Hanna Reisch, has also traditionally been equated with the absence that bubbles up every Saturday around football sta­ the Soho bomber, collected Nazi of 'big government', i.e. of a large bureaucracy over­ dia and pubs up and down the country. It is a memorabilia, and seeing all aspects of national life. One of the problem to which politicians, educationalists, clergy­ now Dr Chenajerai consequences of this was that the authorities only men and community leaders need to give urgent Hunzvi, who glories began to set up a state-funded nationwide system of attention if parts of our big cities are not eventually in the nickname elementary education towards the end of the nine­ going to turn into no-go areas on weekends D 'Hitler', is setting the teenth century. pace in Zimbabwe. Until then most educational provision for the Hunzvi's satanic 'lower orders' had come from the diverse churches soubriquet is (diverse being the operative word because ever undoubtedly intended to strike since Henry the Eighth the crown had failed to pre­ fear into the hearts vent the growth of churches rivalling the of local opponents. 'established' Church of England. Elsewhere, though, The Church of England was rurally based, and it can only provoke when the Industrial Revolution created a huge pro­ hollow laughter as letariat the urban masses needed a newly founded showing a Black church - Methodism - to missionise and educate Would-be instigator them. Even so the level of schooling among the la­ of anti-white race bouring masses remained abysmally low, and the War clothing himself in the lurid aura of eventual involvement of the state in education pro­ the ultimate 'White duced too little too late. supremacist. Could Regrettably, even when most of the 'rude Hunzvi's image- mechanicals' (in Shakespeare's phrase) stopped be­ makers really ing illiterate, their taste remained stubbornly resemble Louis non-literate. It is hard to conceive of university-edu­ Right to left, AJR Chairman Andrew Kaufman, Vice- Farrakhan in their cated French (or German) TV personalities calling Chairman &• Hon. Treasurer David Rothenberg and Hon. ignorance of Hitler's Moliere (or Goethe) 'dull as ditchwater' - as Carol Secretary Eleanor Angel reviewing the past year's progress views on Blacks? D at the Annual General Meeting (see report page 16X Vordermann recendy did Shakespeare in the blithe AJR INFORMATION AUGUST 2000 AJR Annual General Meeting Profile OSHA assurances shley Mitchell, Chairman of the Frank Bright Otto Schiff Housing Association orn Franz, or Frantisek, Brichta in A(OSHA), who addressed the AGM 1928, Frank Bright was the only on the impending OSHA /Jewish Care child of a Czech father and German merger, revealed that support for the B mother living in Berlin. Thanks to father's merger on the Council of OSHA had been Czech nationality, the family was able to unanimous. He emphasised that whilst travel more freely than Jews with German Jewish Care would take over the nationality, but emigrated to Prague in management of the homes, they would 1938 when Frank's father's employer - a remain the property of OSHA. Jewish bank - was 'aryanised'. He gave a further assurance that OSHA With two and a half years' German residents would not be moved to other (Jewish) primary school education behind Jewish Care homes. Subject to specified him, Frank attended the Jewish school in conditions, funds loaned to OSHA by the Prague where, along with children of AJR for refurbishment and essential main­ refugees first from Germany, then Austria tenance would become repayable from and finally the Sudeten, he stayed until it the proceeds of the sale of either closed in mid 1942. The school had no Heinrich Stahl House or Eleanor facilities and only long, uncomfortable Rathbone House. wooden desks; restrictions on life for Jewish Care Chairman, Malcolm Dagul, Jews made it a far from normal experi­ acknowledged the special continental ence. At 14, and with little education, character of the OSHA homes. He wished Frank had to find work and secured a job to ensure that AJR members volunteered at Prague's largest Jewish cemetery as an to visit OSHA residents, particularly as apprentice gardener. many had no family of their own, unlike In July 1943, Frank was sent with his residents in other Jewish Care homes. parents to Theresienstadt where he Frank Bright pursuing his interest in wartime auiatio" Special guest speaker Dr Elisabeth worked as a locksmith (Bauschlosser) Maxwell, initiator and Chairman of the apprentice making keys, repairing and Frank did what he knew best, working as international conference 'Remembering fitting locks and even making prams for a toolmaker; he also attended evening for the Future 2000', later held in London German babies. From one of his extremely classes gaining various civil engineering and Oxford, discussed the importance to gifted room-mates, he learnt trigonometry diplomas. His first break came in 195^ future generations of the transmission of and calculus, knowledge which stood him with a job offer with the Ministry o' the experiences of Holocaust survivors. in good stead three years later in his Works in London. He was naturalised i'' UMK 1952 and married in 1955. See also page 16 evening studies in London. In September/October 1944, during the After eight years of evening classes ano last clearance of the ghetto, Frank and his emigration to Canada, Frank became ^ AJR Information Personnel parents were transported to Auschwitz- civil engineer, returning to Britain an^ following employment opportunities ^l' Richard Grunberger Birkenau where his parents perished on Editor-in-Chief arrival. Within a week, he was one of a over the country from Hemel Hempstead group picked to work in a factory pro­ to Weston-Super-Mare. In 1988, he move^l Ronald Channing with his wife Cynthia and their t^o Executive Editor ducing aluminium propellers in the northern Sudeten town of Friedland (now daughters to Suffolk where he has sinc^ Marion Koebner lived, retiring in 1994. Staff Reporter in the Czech Republic) where he re­ mained until liberation by Russian troops Not one to relax, he is now fully occ^' Andrea Goodmaker on 9 May 1945. His desperate material pied pursuing ongoing Holocaust-relat^ Departmental Secretary & Adver^sing Co-ordinator needs ignored by the liberators, Frank claims, keeping alive the memory ° Gloria Tessler found a bicycle and rode to the border of those who did not survive the Holocaust' Arts Correspondent the Protektorat where the local Czech searching for fellow camp inmates, '^^ Dr Anthony Grenville railway staff laid on a train for him to ing to editors and mentoring postgradua' Historical Researcher travel to Prague. students of the Holocaust. Coincident^ Katia Gould Between August 1945 and May 1946, he has it that the family home is built o Editorial Adviser worked as an apprentice toolmaker in the what was a wartime airfield. Paintings ^ Gerta Regensburger & Lionel Simmonds Sudeten but, without family and with no Lancasters, Spitfires and other classic vva Proof Readers prospects, he came to London with the time fighter planes in his study attest an abiding interest in aviation, stemrniP^ AJR Information, I Hampstead Gate, help of distant relatives there who ob­ la Frognal,London NW3 6AL tained a visa for him and offered to from his appreciation of the work of tf" Tel: 020 7431 6161 • Fax: 020 7431 8454 accommodate him on arrival. Having RAF pilots and crew during Worid War H- e-mail: [email protected] secured a work permit after six months, D Marion Koebt^^' AJR INFORMATION AUGUST 2000 tual refugee-populated Hampstead 'the Upper and abode of evil gods at whose negligent disposition Iris seemed to be.' Even more NEWTONS lower-case liberals telling is Bayley's phrase 'Canetti was a Leading Hampstead Solicitors iberal-minded Jewish refugees like Dichter - not just a poet, but a master Elias Canetti, the Times wrote spirit of literature - who possessed Iris 22 Fitzjohn's Avenue, L recently, played a large part in the like a god while his wife was present in London NW3 SNB cultural life of postwar London.