Sandra Myers
The Beginning of the End: The Exodus from Germany

Sandra Myers - The Beginning of the End The Exodus From Germany

- Sandra, thank you for accommodating us. Over to you.

Visuals are displayed throughout the presentation.

• That’s fine. Good afternoon everybody, and welcome. That’s all I can say. I hope, as Wendy said, it’s not a problem with you being . For those who are listening, it’s lovely to have you here. I’m going to talk today, as you saw, about the beginning of the end and the exodus from Germany. Why I chose the Exodus from Germany, because I thought it was quite a poignant title, given that we have just been celebrating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. And also, if you may have heard, we’re celebrating the beginning of our exodus from lockdown. Although, as I said, it’s nothing compared to what the German Jews actually suffered and went on to suffer. I’m going to just read something from Dante’s ‘Paradiso’ to start off with, and it says, “You shall leave everything "you love most dearly. "This is the arrow "that the bow of exile shoots first. "You are to know the bitter of taste of others’ bread, "how salt it is, "and know how hard a path it is "for one who goes descending "and ascending others’ stairs.” And this is talking… I mean, Dante was exiled from Florence in 1305, and the words are just so poignant because they’re so relevant, even to what I’m going to say. So I’m basically going to be talking about what happened with the German Jewish community from 1933, hopefully, just up until about 1937, 1938. I’m not going to go as far as the Kindertransport, because that’s a whole other story all on its own.

• [Judy] Sorry, Sandra, just sorry to interrupt you, but you are very, very soft. I don’t know if you could maybe speak up a little bit because I’ve had a couple of people who can’t hear you very well.

• I was a bit worried ‘cause I thought I was shouting.

• [Judy] No, no, you’re quite soft.

• Is that better?

• [Judy] Yes, thank you.

• Yeah, no, I was deliberately speaking quietly because it sounded very loud to me. Okay. As long as everyone can hear me, I’m sorry, everybody if you can’t. What I wanted to say is that the entire history of this period is so very complex, and it’s really very hard just to pinpoint one specific reason for the way that the Jews from Germany immigrated, and one specific reason for the countries that they were allowed or not allowed into. So we all know that antisemitism was absolutely at the core of Nazi policy, and fundamental to that was the total economic, political, and social exclusion of the Jews from German life. Now, this started as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933. It was April the first… Oh, he came to power in January, but he started his anti-Jewish boycotts on the first of April. But even before then, the newspapers, both in London and in America, were carrying headlines that said, “The Nazis are beating the Jews. "They’re attacking them in the streets.” So the world really already had access to this information.

And what was happening, of course, is that very few people, they didn’t ignore it exactly, but they thought it was a passing aberration, it wouldn’t go on. So the question that I want to ask, and I don’t expect anyone to have any answer because we’ve thought about it long and hard, is how could a society like Germany, which was modern, it was rational, it was civilised, how could they actually get to the stage where they debased human beings in the way they did? People became morally blind. This was the … Come to the conclusion. But of course, all this happened very gradually. It came under threat… And I said that the life of the Jews in Berlin, and particularly all the way through Germany, came under attack the minute that Hitler came to power. They initiated a boycott, a one day boycott, against Jewish businesses, and the American Congress debated this and decided, in the end, they weren’t going to do anything about it. Why? Because they thought if they took a view against this and initiated a counter boycott, it would aggravate the Germans and it wouldn’t be productive enough, and it would make the situation of the Jews worse. By August the second, 1934, the Nazis had eliminated all political opposition to themselves. And when Von Hindenburg died on August the second, Hitler became total chancellor, controller, of the whole of Germany.

He became the Reich President, which was the head of state. He became the Reich Chancellor, which was the head of the government. And he became the Fuhrer, which was, as we all know, the head of the Nazi party. The following year in 1935, at the annual Nazi rally in Nuremberg, all the rights that had been granted to the Jews approximately 60 or 70 years before were totally revoked. They became… They were stripped of their rights, I’m sorry. They were stripped of their rights. They were no longer citizens of Germany, they merely became stateless subjects. They were forbidden to marry any Aryan or employ anybody under the age of 45, a non-Jew. Worst of all, of course, their economic existence was systematically destroyed. They were forbidden to retain any government office, which effectively meant that hundreds of teachers, doctors, lawyers, and judges were instantly dismissed. The estimated figure was thought to be somewhere in the region of 1,200 people that were affected immediately by this boycott. Some of them did manage to practise slightly longer. For example, the doctors were allowed to continue practising under the Numerus clausus, but that didn’t really help. They initiated a new definition of Jew. So Jews were no longer to be considered by their religion. They were now considered to be Jewish if they had any grandparent who had been Jewish. So regardless of how they identified themselves, they actually were… It was the Nazis who considered them thus. Judy, could we have the first photograph, please, of Frick?

Okay, This was Wilhelm Frick, a very fine looking man. Fortunately, he was tried at Nuremberg and executed subsequently. But he was the one who was responsible for actually drafting the Nuremberg Laws. As I said, even if you, yourself, considered that you were no longer Jewish, you fell under this category if any of your grandparents had been Jewish. This came to include priests, it came to include nuns, it came to include Protestant ministers, and it was called 'racial infamy.’ Perhaps the most famous of these people was a nun by the name of Edith Stein. Could we have the photograph please, Judy? Now, I don’t know if you know who Edith Stein was, but she has subsequently been beatified as Saint Teresa, Benedicta of the Cross. She was the 11th child born into an Orthodox Jewish family, and the favourite of her mother. Ironically, she was the favourite of her mother because she was born on Yom Kippur. For those of you who are listening who aren’t Jewish, that was our day of atonement, and theoretically the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. She converted to Catholicism, and despite the priest trying to hide her, they moved her out to Holland, she was eventually rounded up along with 244 others and she died in the camps in Auschwitz, along with her sister, who had converted to Catholicism with her. She did make a plea to Pope Pius XI, that the Catholic church… I’ve got it here somewhere, but I haven’t got it actually in front of me. Very poignantly and said, “How could a church that believes "in Christ act like this "towards any human being?”

But sadly, it didn’t help her. So let’s discuss the demographics of the Jewish community in Germany at this time. They numbered approximately 520,000, about one percent of the total population. Many were German-born, they were secularly educated, they were middle class, and they were very cultured, by and large. 110,000 Jews fought in the First World War, of which 10,000 actually died. And they considered that when the Nazis came to power, this would protect them from any legislation that was put forward because they considered themselves, first and foremost, valuable and citizens of the Reich, and they had fought bravely for the Fatherland. They thought that this was… Many of them had worn the Iron Cross, and I’m sure that we maybe have listeners whose fathers or grandparents even actually fell into this category. But sadly, it made no difference. The rate of intermarriage was already running at 27… 45%, sorry, by 1927. So the community was really already beginning to assimilate quite seriously. The point I’m trying to make, actually, is that the German Jews really wore their religion very lightly. Whilst they perhaps weren’t religious, they were conscious they were Jewish, but they didn’t think that that was their self-identity. They identified first as Germans.

Approximately 12% of the professorial and educational chairs in the German universities were filled by Jews. And actually, going back to Frick, he was actually a PhD, and I know Trudy has mentioned several times that all of the participants in the Wannsee Conference much later on were young, professionally qualified, and had held doctorates, and Frick fell into that category. Right. So let’s go on from there. The policy of Aryanization, which was the adoption of Jewish-German businesses, right? You know, the sequestering, actually was very profitable for the Germans because they now found themselves in possession of profitable businesses, they had department stores, there was no competition for their jobs. So this actually sounded like a win-win situation for them. When… What can I say? This is where it all starts to get very difficult. They realised, and many of them realised already in 1933, that there was no future for the German community… In Germany for the Jews. Some began to think about emigrating. And between 1933 and 1937, well over 100,000 did manage to emigrate. Obviously, it changed by 1939 because there was the Kindertransport and a lot more Jews tried to get out after Kristallnacht, but there was… A serious difference by that time is that most of them were impoverished, they didn’t have the funds.

Whereas as early as 1933, a lot of the Jews were able to leave Germany with money and were more readily accepted in the countries to which they were going, which sounds a bit harsh but I don’t know about that. A lot of them chose to come to Britain. Many chose to go to Palestine, as it was, especially if they were members of the Zionist organisation. Quite a lot went to the United States. Some went to South America, some went to France, which sadly didn’t work out very well for them. Some went to Argentina. And I know very many of our Canadian listeners have actually commented previously on the fact that the Canadian government did nothing to help the Jews. And I want to say… I’m not defending them, I’m not excusing them, but I want to tell you that the amount of unemployment in Canada at that time, particularly in Quebec, which was highly Catholic, was running at approximately 40%, most of whom were young men. So I can’t say that it was a reason, but it was certainly a rationale behind it. Moving on, the ones who tried to come to England at the beginning of the 1930s didn’t fare too badly. There were certain restrictions on those who were allowed to enter, which I will go into afterwards.

But the community here in England were very conscious of what was already happening, and I’m just going to tell you a couple of books were written, one in particular by Norman Bentwich, who was actually the barrister and legal academic… He was the attorney general, appointed by the British, to Mandatory Palestine. He was an ardent Zionist, and he published a book called “The Refugees from Germany.” There was another book written, “You and the Refugee,” which was written in 1939, which suggested that the refugees who came to various parts of the world, particularly England, should be free to seek employment, which is something I will discuss afterwards. Little more was written about this, extraordinary enough, until the government archives were opened in 1970. And several of our really great Holocaust historians wrote extensively about this, particularly Martin Gilbert and David Cesarani, neither of whom are with us, sadly. But David Cesarani, I knew personally very well because he was my mentor when I was at university, and he was an amazing gentleman, and we’re really sad to have lost him. They had various views. Tony Kushner, for example, who I think is still with us, wrote “The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination,” which said that Britain only looked out for their own self-interest.

Another historian, Bill Rubenstein, wrote “The Myth of Rescue,” which said how generous Britain was, and “there was nothing more that "the Allies could have done "to have helped the Jews.” He also criticises the other historians, I mean, obviously, I mean, they all have to have a critique of each other, as being ahistorical, because nobody could have predicted what was going to happen in the Holocaust. And I think this is fair criticism because nobody could have imagined in their wildest dreams what was going to happen. I don’t think any of us have any doubt as to what more could have been done. We know a lot more could have been done. And I’ve got a very interesting quote, if I get time, I will read it to you, by Walter Mondale, that was written in the 1970s as a result of the Evian Conference. But we all know that hindsight is a wonderful aid, and I think that what they did at the time, probably, was what everybody thought was right. And I don’t know, what would we have all done? So basically, there was no international consensus on the agreement between the world leaders to aid refugees. Britain had actually tightened their immigration policy after the Aliens Act of, I think it was, 1904 or 1905. Although, they had been very welcoming to refugees from religious persecution, the criteria changed here where they now didn’t stipulate any difference between whether people were coming for economic reasons, or religious reasons, or persecution reasons, and this is quite significant actually.

Eventually, the Evian Conference, which I mentioned briefly, in 1938, was really a token gesture. The world obviously realised by then that things were really, really bad in Germany. And Roosevelt convened the Evian Conference… Well, I shall tell you my thoughts. I believe it was a distraction to camouflage the apathy of the Americans. You don’t have to agree with me on that, but the fact was that nothing happened as a result of the Evian Conference. 32 countries attended, 24 voluntary organisations attended, and there were 200 journalists there as well. Chaim Weizmann himself declined to attend. Golda Meir was invited merely as an observer. And the worst part of it all, in my view, was that the United States and the British, and I hold them just as much responsible, had a tacit agreement before the conference. The British were aware that the Americans were not honouring their immigration quotas. And in return for that, the Americans agreed not to put the question of Palestine at all, or settlement in Palestine, on the agenda of the conference. And in fact, the British delegate, Lord Winterton, I think they called him… Winterton took the whole situation so lightly that he spent most of his time playing golf at the course in Evian. And if anyone’s been there, it’s a beautiful golf course, but I actually don’t think he was there for that reason.

So let’s go back to what was happening in 1933. The most comprehensive account, I think, was written by Dr. Louise London in 1990 about… No, maybe a bit more, maybe 25 years ago. And she clearly details the complexity of government policy during that period, and of the continuous interlinked themes. She maintains that the British government at that time did not look on the refugees in a humanitarian way, but only in their own self-interest, Britain’s own self-interest. And she’s highlighted, and I think quite perceptively, three or four themes that run through British government papers at that time, and they’re talking about a precedent, they’re talking about sovereignty, they’re talking about individuality, and they’re talking about temporary. So I would add to those two things, I would also add money and I would add Palestine. The British were very frightened that although they had accepted their share of immigrants previously, it wasn’t a British tradition, they were arguing. Now, there was a fear of setting a precedent because any relaxation… They emphasise any relaxation of the laws would be just for a one-off. So they introduced the concept that any immigrant coming to the Britain was to be on a temporary basis. They were going to give them a strict time limit to stay here with the view of them moving onwards. They also said that each case would be considered on its merits, and there was a lot of restriction on this. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. So what was happening in Palestine now, and why did I say that money and Palestine were important? Palestine was very much in the forefront of Britain’s concerns. They were frightened on two counts. First of all, they were worried about upsetting the Arabs, predominantly, because they held sway of allowing them passage through to the Persian Gulf for their oil supplies.

And the second question, of course, they didn’t particularly want to upset the Jewish community because the Jewish community here in England were supporters of the government. So in that respect, they were in a lose-lose situation. If they upset the Arabs, and there was an Arab riot in 1936 which I’m sure you know about, and there was also a Jewish uprising, attacking the British soldiers in Palestine. So it seemed to the British that the strengthening of the Zionist movement, and the support of Palestine becoming a home for the Jews, was threatening to the local Arab power base. They retaliated… As I said, the Arabs retaliated with anti-Jewish strikes and riots, and then Britain was forced to reappraise its own situation. So what was going on with the Jewish community here in Britain? First of all, there was a lack of unity. There was a lack of agreement amongst the leaders of the community and of their constituents. And I know Trudy spoke the other day about the lack of agreement between the martyrs in the Warsaw ghetto, and I won’t say it was the same here but it had the same feeling. They couldn’t agree between them of how to act. They should have been, in my view, again, united in their efforts to concentrate on rescuing the German Jews and the Jews of Central Europe. But instead, there was an disharmony amongst the charitable organisations who became responsible for the relief and support of the Jews who came to England.

And this was roughly divided between the Zionists and the non-Zionists. Before 1930, the Board of Deputies was recognised as the political and civil representative of the Jewish community here. Now, I hope anyone who’s listening from abroad isn’t too bored with this, but I’m just going to give you a flavour of what it was like in the UK and who the leaders of our community were during that time. They were drawn from the traditional core of the ruling elite, and I mean the ruling Jewish elite, obviously. I’m talking about the Rothschilds, the Montefiores, the d'Avior-Goldsmids, Waley-Cohen, Lord Samuel of Swaythling. You’ve got the picture. Many of these families had already arrived in the first half of the 19th century and were well-established. They were acculturated, they were assimilated, and they were successful citizens of Britain, and their point of identification was essentially English. They’d been to public school, they’d been to university, they were members of the House of Lords, they had fought in the British Army, and each of them, they had country houses.

And it seemed very difficult at a time when these were representative of the community here, the vast majority of whom were now Eastern European immigrants, Jews who’d arrived, up until 1914, from Russia, from Poland, from the Ukraine, from the Pale of Settlement, and I know that’s already to been discussed. The only representatives of this part of the community really were what Robert Waley-Cohen liked to call the “Marks and Spencer’s clique,” and I’m sure you don’t need me to explain what that was. The community generally felt they were betrayed by this ruling elite, and this grew more after the rise of fascism here in the 20s and 30s, with Mosley and his brown shirts… Black shirts. Particularly, that the Board of Deputies were reluctant to actually lodge a complaint on behalf of the Jewish community to the government. Well, it’s a very difficult judgement to make of them because I presume that they were more frightened of stirring antisemitism than was already happening, and felt that if they maintained a low profile, this would all go away, this would all disappear.

Jewish statehood has become a serious question at this time, and the question… It came further into the British arena. And the Zionists actually saw the Jewish community of England as being crucial to this. So they couldn’t afford to alienate them because we had… I don’t mean me because I was born after the war, but the English Zionists of the… Whoever they were, even if they were the Marks and Spencer’s elite, had voting powers here. They hopefully had some sort of influence on the government, but I don’t think that the old school time, the corridors of power actually made very much difference. So the leaders of our community, between them, decided under the auspices of, originally it was the World Jewish Relief and it became the Council of British Jewry for the Relief of German Jews, I think I’ve got the name probably wrong. Again, it’s members read like a who’s who of Anglo-Jewry. But what actually happened at that time was that they made an arrangement. They went to the home office with… Three of them went, one of whom was Otto Schiff… Can we have the photograph please, Judy?

That’s it, okay. This is Otto Schiff. He had already settled in England. He came to the UK in 1896, and I’m sure his name is very familiar to many of you because the care homes, I won’t say the Jewish care homes, the care homes that he… Named after him were designed for German Jews eventually. Excuse me. At the meeting that Otto Schiff went to at the home office, he met Ernest Holderness, who was the Assistant Secretary of State at the Home Office, who incidentally was our champion amateur golfer, which I don’t think says much for the attention that he paid to his position. But Otto Schiff guaranteed, on behalf of the Jewish community, that no refugee would become a burden on public funds. This is absolutely, absolutely crucial because it was an unprecedented commitment to support the Jews whose length of stay here and financial predicament could never, ever have been predicted. And what happened was, of course, this allowed the British government to effectively distance itself from any responsibility to the Jewish immigrants. And I want to make it clear, the English government did not request this undertaking. This was given freely by Otto Schiff.

They initiated, in 1933, fundraising efforts to the community. Can we have the next photograph, Judy, please? So here, you can see the fundraising efforts that were put out. The first one was May 1933. The last one was, I think, in 1936. They aimed to raise a million Pounds to support the immigrants that came, which I think is roughly equivalent… I did a rough calculation of about 78 billion… Million, billion. Not million, billion. It was an enormous amount of money. Fundraising was a continuous problem amongst the diaspora. And you can see, if you can see it clearly here, you might be able to see the names and the amounts that people were donating. They fell short, sadly. They only managed to raise just over 40% of the money that they were looking for. Unfortunately, the money that was being raised here at the same time was competing with the money that was being raised for the funding of the , the Keren Hayasod, in Palestine. Historically, the Jews of England had donated to both organisations, but they wanted that… The non-Zionist here in England wanted assurance that any money raised now would just go for the support of the German immigrants. It wouldn’t be deflected, it wouldn’t be set aside, it wouldn’t be sent to Palestine, which clearly wasn’t a very good move as far as the was concerned.

One of the most difficult members of this anti-Zionist, I don’t think they were anti-Zionist, I would say non-Zionist probably was a better expression, was a gentleman by the name of Robert Waley-Cohen, whose son, Bernard, I’m sure, British people will know actually became Lord Mayor of London for a while. He was a physically very impressive man. He was vice president of the United Synagogue. He was an ex-officer in the Royal Navy. He was a successful businessman. And he used to shout a lot apparently. Those who knew him well said he could be very gentle, he could be helpful, but actually they agreed he had a choleric temper, and could even make a blessing from his mouth sound like a threat, which I think really probably described him very nicely. So one of my very close friends says to me, “I’m going to cut a long story short. "I’m going to tell you how difficult "he was considered to be. "He was the chief protagonist "in the non-Zionist position. "He frequently came into conflict with Chaim Weizmann,” who, by that time, had settled in England, who, incidentally, as I said before, chose not to attend eventually at the Evian Conference.

But Chaim Weizmann eventually resigned from this fundraising committee because of his conflict with Waley-Cohen. And eventually, Waley-Cohen, continuing his attacks on the Zionist, claimed at one point to Lionel de Rothschild that “The Anglo-Jewry,” as I said before, “is led by the nose by the Marks and Spencer’s clique.” If you want me to say who they were, I will, and I’m sure you all know, so I probably won’t. But Simon Marks, who was one of them, received a letter from Lionel de Rothschild at the time, which clearly had some sympathy for the abuse that they were receiving from Waley-Cohen, but said they would try and calm over the situation because in reality, they relied on the Marks and Spencer’s clique, who were now very wealthy, for contributions to their organisations. Anthony de Rothschild, who was by then chairman of the CBF… I think he was president of the CBF, was the calm negotiator. And he called Robert Waley-Cohen quietly into his office, subsequently wrote a letter to Lord Bierstadt on this subject and said, “The latter, RWC, was almost in agreement, "so you see the Age of Miracles has not yet passed.” That was quite a good few years later. Some immigrants did find employment here in England and made an enormous contribution to our society.

And let’s see how I’m going for time? Okay. There were, of course, many of the professional organisations that actually excluded them. The BMA, the British Medical Association, only would take so many. The British Dental Association, likewise. And in fact, between 1935 and 1937, 83 doctors… Sorry, 183 doctors and 78 dentists were admitted. They used the excuse, of course, to say that because they hadn’t practised for so many years, some of them hadn’t practised for so many years, their techniques would be out of date. And they thought, primarily, of course, without saying it, that they were going to be competition to them. In fact, one of my very close friends, her father and uncle, who was Julius Handler… Her father was Julius Handler, her uncle was Aria Handler, who were quite… He was quite instrumental in bringing refugee children over here to Gwrych Castle, and Julius actually qualified, eventually, three times as a doctor. He qualified in Leipzig the first time, he then qualified in Basel when he finished up in Switzerland, and then qualified again here in England. So they did make an enormous contribution to our society. They wouldn’t allow shop workers in, they wouldn’t allow architects in.

So only the architects had to prove that they had previously practised. And I want to quote one architect, Nikolaus Pevsner, who actually came and settled in Hampstead. Those who live in London, or those even who don’t know London, it’s northwest London that finally saw an enormous number of the German Jews settling in this area. And personally, I was at school in Hendon, at Hendon County, and we had the most wonderful, wonderful chemistry teacher. Not that I was good at chemistry, but her name was Gertie Strands. She came as an immigrant. Her father was a lawyer, her grandparents were Jewish. None of us knew that… Oh, she wasn’t actually Jewish, she was a Unitarian? No, something like that. No, she was… Of the Pente… Of the Christian Church, devout. She led the churches, and she was the most wonderful, inspirational mistress at school, who spent all her school career, apart from educating the children to the highest level, and I know from good authority that most of these students who took A-level chemistry, and I’m talking about back in the 60s and 70s, all got As from her.

She was the most inspirational woman. She never married, she never talked about her Judaism. She was a wonderful singer, and also she played the violin, I think. The only time someone got a hint of her feelings was when she went to an Anne Frank exhibition that was in Watford at the time, in the late 80s or something like that. And when she came to the part about the deportation, she started to cry. And it was so out of character for her because she had been a baptised Christian, and she was a baptised Christian, and still believed herself, obviously, to have empathy with the Jews. She couldn’t leave that behind. There were parts of London, when the German Jews came, that were almost totally German. They settled at the Cafe, The Cosmo. They started the synagogue in Belsize Park that had all the services in German. Eagle Lodge, for example, in Golders Green I know had an enormous German community. And in Road, where my friend, Alan, lived, said that, “You could have heard German everywhere. "90% of the flats were occupied by Germans.” And this was interesting because this was a little bit of resentment by the Ukrainian… “The Ukrainian.” The Eastern European Jewish community who settled here in the East End, that they were impoverished. They settled in the East End and depended on charity support.

A lot of the German Jews who came to England moved into a very nice area, northwest London at that time, and still is a very nice part of the world, and there was a certain resentment against them. I wanted to read you something. They were asked to… Okay. The councils that supported the German Jews, the… What was it called? It was called the German Jewish Aid Committee, based in Bloomsbury House, actually published a booklet giving advice to new arrivals on how to behave, and it goes, “Spend your spare time immediately in learning the English language "and its correct pronunciation. "Refrain from speaking German in the streets "and in public conveyances, and…” Oops, I’ve lost myself. Hold on, what have I done? I’ve lost me. Can you still see me?

• [Judy] Yes, Sandra, don’t worry. You’re still there.

• I’ve lost… Oh, I’ve lost my picture. Okay, I’m here, sorry. Thank you. It says, “Refrain from speaking German "in the streets and in public conveyance, "and in public places "such as restaurants. "Talk halting English "rather than fluent German, "and do not talk in a loud voice. "Do not read German newspapers in public. "Do not criticise any German government regulation… "Any British government regulations, "not the way things are done over here. "Do not speak of how much better "it’s done in Germany, "even though it may be true sometimes.” So you’ve got the gist, you’ve got the gist. The ironic thing, of course, about all of this is that the booklet was written in English, so for those Germans who didn’t speak any English, they had no idea so it was really patronising. I thought it was very patronising. So many Jews, so many of the immigrants who came, made the most enormous contribution to British society, and I want to talk a little bit about those who did. We had… Primarily, I want to go on to somebody who we actually were fortunate to have known very well, Claus Moser. Can we have the photograph?

Claus was what I would call the quintessential Renaissance man. He occupied, eventually, over 30 different government posts. He lived a wonderfully long life. He died in 1915. He was 93… 92 or 93. So he was born in Berlin in 1922. 1922. He came to England. His parents were very wealthy, his father was a banker. They were acculturated, they were assimilated. His mother was an amateur musician. And he led a very good life. I hope you’ll hear a little bit about it. I’m going to talk about it. He was incredibly active during his whole career, but came here as a 13 year old boy. Fortunately, they were able to come with money. They came in 1936, and he said himself that his father, as early as 1929, had already recognised there was no future for Jews in Germany. The reason they didn’t come ‘til 1936 was that his grandmother was too frail, so I can assume they must have waited until she passed away. He arrived in 1936… He arrived in 1936 here, as I said. They had money, they came with money, but, as he himself said, they were nowhere near as wealthy as they had been in Germany. The whole movement actually broke his father. His father was 51 at the time, and at the height of his career. His father never worked again. And worst of all, they were humiliated by being eventually interned in 1940 as enemy aliens.

Claus, when he arrived, they settled in Germany… “In Germany,” in Liverpool. He went to… He boarded at Frensham School, but that was very short-lived. He was eventually offered a place at LSE but before he could take it up, he was interned with his father and his mother… Not his mother. His father and his brother in Huyton in Liverpool, in the aliens camp, with 5,000 other Jews. His experience there was quite interesting because as he was considered underage, he was only there for four months. So he was released in time, actually, to take up his place in LSE. He said, and I’m not quoting but he actually said this to me, that the four months he spent in the Huyton camp was the best education that money couldn’t buy. Amongst the 5,000 internees were professors, judges, musicians, academics of every nature. They even managed to get a restaurant started with cakes, and all that sort of thing. So this was very traumatic for him but he came out, he went to LSE, he got a first class degree. And in 1943, when he finished at LSE, he actually joined the RAF. He hoped he could join as a pilot, but they put him on as a grease monkey, and I don’t even actually know what that is but I think that was just servicing the planes. When he came out in 1960… When he came out, sorry, in 1946, he went back to LSE as a lecturer. He was the assistant lecturer in statistics. And statistics was the love that he had learned in the Huyton camp.

The statisticians there gave him the love. He spent most of his time there following this path. From 1946 till 1960… From 1946… I’m sorry, yes, 'till 1964, he was a lecturer at LSE. He became, eventually, the senior lecturer there, and he became a consultant to the Robbins Committee, if you know what that was. It was on higher education. It was formed in 1967 to reappraise our education system. I think probably they could do with something like that now. He enjoyed the career. It took him through education, it took him through LSE, it took him to the civil service. It took him to the bank, which was Rothschild’s Bank. And this is where my husband actually came across him for the second time because, first of all, he was a student of his LSE, doing stats, and then he became a director of Rothschild Bank, and this is when we became friends. And he truly was a wonderful friend to have. He was so optimistic that everything had a good side to it. He didn’t ever see that there was a downside to anything. Everything could be improved. How am I doing for time? Do you think we should show the little clip of him speaking, Judy?

• [Judy] Sandra, we’ve got 10 minutes. Plenty of time.

• Oh, I’ve got 10 minutes? Good, thank you very much. Thank you very much. He recalls, in his memoirs, seeing the torchlight processions of Hitler coming through Berlin when he was 11, and remembers very clearly the humiliations he suffered in school as a young schoolboy. And he says that there were only two Jewish schoolboys in his class of about 30, and they were forbidden to stand up and say “Heil Hitler” in the morning, obviously, when class started. And he said, “Not that in our wildest dream did "we ever want to do that.” He said, “But it was humiliating "to be singled out in front of "the whole class of children as this.” And they were bullied, and it went on like that. From coming to England, he married a very lovely lady, Mary, eventually, who he met at LSE, and they celebrated every moment of his life. For his 60th birthday… Now, Claus could have been a professional musician. He played the piano from the age of five. His mother was a gifted amateur musician, and he studied for many, many years under Louis Kentner. And in 19… When he was… I’m sorry, I’ve lost my date. When he was… On his 60th birthday, in 1982, he gave a concert at the Royal Covent Garden in the Crush Bar of Covent Garden. They put two giant grand pianos together, back to back, and he played with Kentner, which was superb. And he says that the years he studied with him were probably five of the best years of his life. In 1992, for his 70th birthday, he gave a concert at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

At this time, he had become Warden of Wadham, and he played with… One of the members who played the cello for him actually was Raphael Wallfisch, who is Anita’s son, who I know many of you listened to the other day. So there was a wonderful interaction between these refugees, between these cultured, assimilated, elegant Germans who brought what they thought was the best of their culture to England, and shared it with us as best they could. After his birthday at Wadham, which was quite fun, he actually gave a dinner in the long hall there, and his son entertained everybody dressed as a Hurdy Gurdy Man, which is… I don’t know if you know what Hurdy Gurdy Man was, but he dressed in bells and whistles, he had an accordion, he had tambourines between his knees, he had drums on his back. Claus had a wonderful feeling for fun but the most wonderful thing I think he ever did… In the later years of Margot Fontaine’s life, she became severely impoverished, and I know a lot of you will know about her. She spent very many years, I think about 25, nursing her husband, who had been paralysed in an assassination attempt. In 1990, just a few months before her death, Claus and the Rothschilds hosted a fundraising concert and ballet for her at Covent Garden.

Could we show the photograph please? Now, this is the photograph of Princess Diana accepting a bouquet from Margot Fontaine. Now, I can tell you, I was watching this photograph being taken, and this isn’t big headed, and I’m looking at Margot Fontaine, and I’m thinking, “My God, "that dress weighs more than she does.” It was Balenciaga, it was exquisite. The evening was so wonderfully memorable. And they raised enough money to keep her comfortably until she died, not probably five or six months later. The residue of the money was sent to a ballet school with a scholarship in the name of Margot Fontaine. So he really put his advantages to good use. He really gave everything that he saw he had gained from England back into our society. Judy, could we run a little bit of that, please? So this is an interview of Claus Moser on Desert Island Discs by Sue Lawley back in 1988, which was before he had been elevated to the peerage. I hope you enjoy it… And it gives you a feeling of how he spoke, so listen very carefully.

Audio plays,

• [Claus Moser] Down, that’s the vespers, in this, again, 1610, in which Wadham College was built. So that’s rather natural. I’m a European. Above all, I’m a Jew. I don’t regard myself now as a refugee. I don’t regard myself as without roots. I don’t regard myself as insecure. If I said any of those things, it would be false. I think the fact though is that when I became head of a major government department, the Central Statistic Office, within the Top Security Office, the Cabinet office, I was rather proud to be so appointed. And part of my pride was that this happened to somebody who hadn’t come up through the straight, not exactly Eton-Oxford, route, but you know what I mean. And I must confess that when I was knighted, again, that gave me an extra little bit of pleasure. And above all, I confess that when I was appointed first to the Board of Covent Garden, but above all, chairman, I was absolutely astonished that having come from a childhood where from very early day, when I was five, six, seven, music and opera were part of my life and happiness, it absolutely amazed me that Britain, as it were, could appoint somebody from outside to this, dare I say, top job in the arts.

• [Sue Lawley] Your last record, please.

• [Claus Moser] Well, once I had decided that not all eight records could come from Figaro, that that might be rather tedious, the last one does have to. To me, it’s the greatest, the most perfect opera ever written. And I suppose one of the most astonishing moments of happiness in my life was when on my retirement from the Royal Opera Opera House, the Opera House decided to give me, as a present, a performance… To my wife and myself, a performance of Figaro, in my honour, conducted by Haitink with a great cast. And it was a wonderful performance. I mean, a really wonderful performance. And when the cast bowed to me, led by Haitink at the end, I thought for a moment that perhaps Mozart had written it for me.

Audio ends.

• I hope this has given you a little feel of what he sounded like, because that’s what he really did sound like. He had the most beautiful, mellifluous, seductive voice. And I don’t think anyone, in their wildest imagination, would ever have dreamt that he had come from Germany. I want to read you at the end… You may not agree with this, but this is what Walter Mondale wrote at the end of the Evian Conference. “At stake at Evian were both human lives "and the decency and self-respect "of the civilised world. "If each nation at Evian had agreed "on that day to take 17,000 Jews at once, "every Jew in the Reich could have been saved. "As one American observer wrote, ”“It is heartbreaking to think ”“of the desperate human beings, ”“waiting in suspense for what happens at Evian.” “But the question they underline is not simply humanitarian, "it’s a test of civilization.” If anybody would like to read anymore about this, I’m quite happy to give Judy the list of books that I’ve quoted. If anyone has any questions, if we have time for questions, I’m quite happy to take them. I could also read, if you would like, Edith Stein’s plea to Pope Pius XI. Judy, what do you want me to do?

• [Judy] There are some questions, if you can see them, on the Q&A on the screen, Sandra.

• Shall I them up?

• [Judy] Yeah. And if you could read… If there are questions, if you could read them out before you answer them, please.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Yeah. Someone who… Howard has asked here that there was anyone who had one Jewish grandparent. “Trudy had previously said "you needed three Jewish grandparents "under the Nuremberg Laws.”

A: Well, that’s a very interesting question because I thought originally that it was three Jewish parents, but it seems to have been that they had widened the category very slightly, but I will check on it.

Q: “How did Jews who only had Jewish parents react to… "How did Jews who only had Jewish grandparents react "to Nazi ascending in the first year?”

A: I think that the… Oh, shall I answer live? I think that the… They didn’t think anything of it, to be honest with you, because they were baptised Christians. They were, first and foremost, German citizens, and they believed that that would protect them. That they were Germans more than anything else.

“My grandfather died in the First World War.”

"The South African ambassador to Washington "during the Mandela era was awarded "the Iron Cross after World War I. "Do we know what happened to him though? "Harry came to South Africa "at the age of three. "They only went to countries "that sent them visas. "They only had a choice of where to go "if they had… "Family had sent visas.” Yes, they did. Many of them, unfortunately, had the visas but eventually didn’t have the money for the fares to get out. In the early days, they didn’t need a visa to come to England. And the home office is actually quite anxious because in the first few days of Hitler coming to power, they registered 150 refugees coming from Germany, landing at the ports. And also, quite interestingly, about five or 600 actually went back to Germany by 1935, 1936, because they couldn’t live here. They just didn’t like it.

Yes, “None Is Too Many,” that was an amazing, amazing quote and an amazing book.

“Camps like Dachau, Sachsenhausen, "and Ravensbruck were established "to deal with .

"The Allies should’ve…” The Allies knew about the camps, yes, they did. You’re quite right, it was published in the newspapers. There was no secret about any of this.

Janet Powell, “Just to comment, "my father was one of those "who came to the UK later in 1933 "as a young architect "after being dismissed from the civil service. "He worked as an assistant "to Walter Gropius in the UK, "who had also been forced to leave "before he left for the USA.” Well, that’s terrific because Nikolaus Pevsner, of course, wrote the definitive guide to English heritage. He wrote county by county. He travelled all around England and he was a German Jew.

“My father…” Dr. Hazel , “My father, Kirk Kaufman "of left Germany at the end of 1936. "He was studying medicine in Bonn "when his friend was badly beaten "by the Hitler Youth, . "He returned home to inform his mother, "who replied that they were Germans "and the family had lived "in the town for 300 years.” Absolutely! Absolutely, that says it all. Absolutely, absolutely.

“Is it reasonable to say,” Romaine, “the Holocaust identified the essential need "for the home now for Jews?” Romaine, Anita spoke about this, that the formation of Israel was formed from the world’s conscience. And yes, it did identify it, but I think I go with Anita on that, that it was the world’s conscience that gave us the state of Israel.

“With respect, people like the Rothschilds had "their economic interest…” Yes, absolutely, Marilyn. You’re right, they had their economic interest to protect. But by the same token, they recognised there was a serious problem for the Jews and they did support them, and they had very many charitable organisations that they supported. They didn’t stand in the way of any of them coming.

“A million Pounds is equal to 70 million today.” Thank you very much, yes.

“I remem…” Amanda Dweck, “I remember Gertrude Strand. "She was my chemistry teacher too.” Yeah, there you are.

Okay, we’ve got the figures here. Thank you, everybody. Melvin, thank you. I’ve mentioned this about Nikolaus Pevsner, thank you.

Our rabbi from Toronto, “Rabbi Erwin Schild, who just turned 101, "was interned in a camp in England "after he left Germany, "and then was deported to Quebec, Canada, "where he was again interned "in a camp as an alien.” Yeah, that was the life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, “I would like to know where "the German Jews got their wealth from. "My ancestors were poor Ukraine…” So were mine. “When I grew up in the East End, "I remember my parents and grandpa talking "about the wealthy lot in North London.” They were well established. The early German Jews, as I mentioned, that came out, were allowed to bring money with them. They couldn’t bring… They couldn’t bring goods. But for example, Gertie Strands, her father was a lawyer. Although, they didn’t come out until 1938, he had no money. And what little money he did have, he actually spent on the most expensive passage to England that he could find. He booked a three day cruise, believe it or not, to get here. And he arrived with the equivalent of 50p in his pocket. So yeah, I agree with you.

“Found a wonderful movie by chance, ”'A Very Good Man’ about a German reno…“ You know, there were so many wonderful scientists, musicians, academics that made the most amazing contribution to British society, just society all over the world. Someone like Paul Hamlyn, I’m sure many of you will know who he was, founded The Publishing House and various charitable organisations that he left legacies to in his memory.

Thank you, Gail.

Compliment, "How much British charged for a visa?” I don’t know that, I will look it up. I’m sorry, I don’t know.

Layla said, “My father was at Cable Street "and bore a scar on his head "from a blow dolled up "by a mounted policeman.” Yeah, yeah. You know what they did at Cable Street to the mounted police? They threw marbles so the horses slipped. That’s what they did.

Yeah, I haven’t commented on Frank Foley. Oh, Ruth, thank you. That’s another story. That’s a whole other story about Frank Foley. And don’t forget, I don’t know about him, but he came a little bit later in the story. He was the British attache in Berlin who issued many, many visas to Jews to escape. Yes, I do know. And the fact was that even with the visas to escape, every day, there were more and more queues outside all of the embassies. And I know parents of very good friends of mine who actually came to England in 1936. Her grandmother and her sister were trapped in Vienna subsequently. They couldn’t get out. They had a visa to get to Shanghai at the time. And they actually wrote to Anthony de Rothchild in January 1940, so it’s quite a while after the war started, asking for help, asking for funds to be sent. And unfortunately the response went that “We are not allowed or able "to send money into alien territory.” And actually I did ask him, eventually… He knew nothing about this letter incidentally. I asked him eventually if his grandmother and his aunt managed to escape, and he said they did. They got to Shanghai, however they got there, and finished up in the United States.

There are so many amazing stories. And, I mean, so many of them actually… There’s so many of them to be told. And I’d like to add, if I ever had the opportunity, to tell the stories of the people who led the Jewish community here and what they believed in and how they came to it, as well as so many of them that made wonderful contributions to our society. You have to draw your own conclusions.

“Did Britain do enough? "Did the world do enough? "Could they have done enough? "Did they know what was going to happen?” I don’t know. I don’t know. How are we going?

• [Judy] Sandra, do you want to take a two more questions?

• There’s a whole load of questions here that–

• [Judy] I don’t think we’ll have time to get through all of them, so just take two or three more questions and then we can finish off.

• I can’t see anymore. I’ve got up to 39. I’ve answered–

• [Judy] Well, that’s what they… We have 39 questions, Sandra, so you must have got through all of the questions ‘cause there are only 39.

• Okay, okay, that’s fine. Thank you.

• [Judy] So thank you very much, Sandra, and thank you to everybody who joined us this evening. And we will see–

• If anybody wants any of the book titles, Judy, if they write to you and if you let me know, I’ll give you the book list.

• [Judy] Thank you so much. Thank you, Sandra, and thank you to everybody who joined us. Bye bye.

• Bye.