Memorial matters
George Rooker (Letters, October 12) says the proposed Holocaust National Memorial Centre is inappropriately sited opposite Parliament since it would ascribe a measure of guilt upon Britain and should instead be erected in countries that participated in the Holocaust.
Is he not aware that, in May 1939, Chamberlain’s government received parliamentary approval for its infamous “MacDonald” White Paper?
This White Paper— in contradiction of the mandate — restricted Jewish immigration in Palestine, thereby sealing the fate of millions of Jews incarcerated in mainland Europe?
Had Britain permitted increased Jewish immigration rather than limiting it to a meagre 15,000 a year for five years, the Holocaust may have been partially or even completely averted.
Undeniably, we owe a debt of gratitude to Britain, which courageously spearheaded the fight against Nazism, but parts of our history, however unpalatable cannot be undone or airbrushed to suit present sensibilities.
The memorialisation of the Holocaust near the seat of Parliament is apposite — both as an act of contrition on Britain’s part and a recognition of Britain’s vital role in defeating the grotesque regime that created this atrocity.
Melvyn Lipitch
London W14
While the proposed Holocaust Memorial is disagreeable aesthetically, George Rooker’s contention that, because Britain stood against the Nazis, it bears no responsibility in relation to the Holocaust, is offensive.
Before and during the war, Britain was the mandatory power in Palestine (at its own request), and was obligated to facilitate the immigration of Jews to Palestine to encourage its “close settlement” by them in order to build up the Jewish National Home, (as instructed by the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, ratified by the League of Nations).
Successive British governments did exactly the opposite — frustrating Jewish immigration and encouraging illegal Arab immigration.
It was the “iniquitous” 1939 White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine to a mere 15,000 annually, a step taken in response to Arab demands, that was directly responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jewish deaths at the hands of the Nazis.
It is a matter of historical record that Britain betrayed her legal obligations, and could have saved those Jews trapped in Europe, but chose not to.
Stephen Green
London NW6
There was no Holocaust in Florida, Washington, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne San Paulo or numerous other places which have Holocaust memorials.
The unique Holocaust, the cause of death of not only 6 million Jews but also millions of others that were considered to be subhuman by the Nazis, was the greatest crime committed by man against man in history, needs more than an exhibition in museums.
Where does Mr Rooker get the notion that it is “offensive to many British people”?
Referring to the planed designed as a “monstrosity” is offensive to those of us who studied the short of list of ten designs in the architectural competition.
It was chosen by a large majority as the ideal design for this memorial and learning centre.
The chosen location is perfect in every way.
It is central in the capital of our great nation for inhabitants, visitors and tourists alike. It already hosts a number of memorials celebrating freedom, including the Buxton Memorial which marks the abolition of slavery and French Sculptor Auguste Rodin’s Burgher of Calais.
It will be standing next to the Mother of Parliaments where, 80 years ago, a Bill was passed to allow the Kindertransport scheme to come into being just a few weeks after Kristallnacht when the WJR (CBF at that time) wanted to do something to save children from the Nazi oppressors and allowing the first train to leave Berlin and arrive at Liverpool Station on 2nd December.
Harry Bibring BEM
Bushey Heath, Herts
Big Jewish belonging
Jonathan Boyd (JC October 12) argues cogently that “Jewishness doesn’t really sit in the category of a ‘religion’… It is also a civilisation, an ethnicity, a culture, a heritage, a nationality.”
Why then does the JPR no longer support including “Jewish” as an ethnicity in the next census?
This is all the more important for us in Scotland, where the religion questions asks “What… do you belong to?” (whereas the English census asks “What… are you?”), so even religiously observant Jews in places where there is nothing to belong to have to respond that they belong to nothing.
How much more so all those ethnic Jews, cultural Jews, Jews by heritage, who, as Boyd says, “are statistically less likely than religious Jews to belong to community organisations”. Since, as he says, they do identify in other ways — ethnic, national and historical — they count as part of our community, so we need the ethnicity question to count them.
Ephraim Borowski
Director,
Scottish Council of Jewish Communities
Jewish Hospital
In his article on the London Jewish Hospital JC, October 5), the late Michael Freedland mentioned the opposition from 1902 by the Anglo-Jewish “Cousinhood” to the project, and I have found in the Hartley archive in Southampton a letter from Claude G Montefiore in January 1912 to a Dr A G Levy of the London Jewish Hospital Association (formed in 1907) stating: “I am absolutely unable to support the proposed Jewish hospital.”
I have not identified the role of Dr Levy. Montefiore was a generous donor to a wide variety of Jewish and other charities, so his emphatic refusal regarding the LJHA was uncharacteristic, but it fits with Michael Freedland’s comment. A detailed account of the origin of the LJH, up to its opening in 1919, was written by Gerry Black in the Transactions of the JHSE XXIII pp337-353.
Bryan Diamond
London NW3
Old times at Oldhill
The Oldhill Street road sign in the piece on parking (JC, October 12) calls to mind my own schooldays at Tyssen Primary. Go to a shiva in NW London or Hertsmere and you can almost be guaranteed to meet someone else who did, too.
The street was the shopping centre for the mainly Jewish community, albeit quite different from the ultra Orthodox community there now.
Schlagman the butchers; Dick Sugarman’s sweet shop; Danny and Leslie’s barbers; Solly the greengrocer; Benny Bard the chemist, who my father knocked up at midnight with a prescription for me, at six years old with a fever.
Oh, and the grocer whose name I can’t recall. A friend and I were passing and heard him and a customer talking Yiddish. Said friend decided to join in by calling out Kisch mir in tuchas and was chased up the road.
Tyssen’s school population was at least 80 per cent Jewish. In my 11-plus class of 43 there were perhaps 4 or 5 who weren’t. Our teacher, the wonderful Miss Mary Neligan, a tiny Irish Catholic who shlepped every day from Mill Hill to Stamford Hill, got 90 per cent of us to grammar school. No assistant, no parent volunteer — just her with two 11-plus groups, one taking the exam that year, one the following. I never had a better teacher.
We closed early for Shabbat and completely for all the High Holy Days, when the classrooms were used for youth services, the mighty Egerton Road New Synagogue having no space.
Of course we all went to Cheder at Egerton Road, three nights a week after school and on Sunday mornings. What else would you do? No telly, mobiles, art class, swimming, gym, horse riding...
I’ve yet to meet anyone who felt deprived. We knew nothing else.
Barry Hyman
Bushey Heath, Herts
Anti-Zionism is real
I have never encountered a whiff of antisemitism, either in my youth or in adulthood. I have led a vibrant professional life as a criminal lawyer for 30 years mixing across a full social spectrum; at the top the intellectual elite down to criminals who were “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
I have however experienced hot-tempered, vicious anti-Israelism. Every grizzly attack on Israel and Zionism to me is an indirect attack on Jewish identity. I believe if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister it could lead to catastrophe for the Jews of Britain.
Recently, I discovered with delight, Lord Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, The Wild Gazelle, Oh! Weep For Those and On Jordan’s Banks particularly warmed my heart as historic utterings from a great poet pulsating with Zionism and a love of Israel.
On a visit to London last week, I dropped into the Jewish Museum. In 2003, Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman, then aged 92, led a day trip from Manchester to Auschwitz-Birkenau. From the minute we arrived, with frantic energy, he described his experiences in that hellish place. Leon sadly passed away some years ago but his heroism and memory are preserved with his own exhibition at the Jewish Museum telling his Holocaust story.
On sale in the bookshop is his autobiography An Englishman in Auschwitz. Jeremy Corbyn should pay a high- profile visit to the museum and pick up a copy.
Marsha Myers
Barrister at Law
Manchester
