1 min read
Poignant passing
There is something especially poignant about the passing of Fred Austin, who has died at 90.
Mr Austin — born Fredi Stiller — led what was by any standards a remarkable life. In 1939, he arrived here as a refugee from the Nazis, with just three words of English. He went on to have an outstanding professional life as an inspirational teacher and headmaster.
But the real poignancy lies in the contrasting fate of his two families. Mr Austin’s mother and sisters were killed in Treblinka, victims of a murderous hatred that led to six million people being killed.
Here, however, he was blessed with a 70-year marriage and four children, all of whom have gone on in their varied ways to enrich our nation.
What adds to the poignancy is the story of one of those children, Ian Austin. Mr Austin resigned earlier this year from the Labour Party, sickened by the institutional antisemitism that has implanted itself in the party. As he put it at the time: “I don’t think I could look my dad in the eye if I stayed in the Labour Party.”
It is a sickening statement about Labour and the precipice over which our democracy is hanging.
We are fortunate to live in a democracy. Fredi Stiller’s family did not and were murdered as a result. But a cancer has entered our politics, a version of the same cancer that led to genocide within living memory. Jew hate is not merely alive in the Labour Party — it is nourished and protected by many in its upper echelons.
There are, of course, many decent people who remain in the party but with every passing day in which they campaign for its leader to become Prime Minister they are choosing to surrender that description.
These are grave times for our politics and they presage even graver times for British Jews should Jeremy Corbyn and his antisemitic allies take power.
Fred Austin’s life reminds us of what is best about our nation. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party reminds us of what is worst.
Now tell us why
Last October, we reported the outrageous decision by the Scottish Law Society to punish Matthew Berlow, a Jewish lawyer who had described the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign as “scummy racists” — an entirely accurate description.
After reading our coverage, Adam Solomon, a London-based QC, took on Mr Berlow’s appeal as a mitzvah, and won.
While it has now done the right thing, the Scottish Law Society still has to explain why it initially sided with racists rather than those who stand up to racism.