In My Time: A Personal Journey

By Colin Lang

Bringing together a career's worth of professional expertise in law and commerce and a lifetime's worth of personal experience in traditional Judaism, Colin Lang meditates on the role this ancient ethic continues to play in our lives. While narrating everything from his family history to important changes in Britain's le

• Language: English
• Publisher: EM Publishing
• Release date: Apr 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9789657041468

Colin Lang

PPE Oxford University, Solicitor and member of the English Law Society. He retired as a Consultant with one of the largest practices in the Midlands. He has served as a part-time Chairman of the Social Security Appeal Tribunal, and for 15 years was a Deputy District Judge in the County Court. He has lectured on the Human Rights Act 1998. He represents the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation at the Board of Deputies. He is a member of the Jewish Historical Society of England and a friend of the Jewish Museum.

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In My

Time

Image No. 1

In My

Time

A Personal Journey

Colin Lang

Copyright © 2023 by Colin Lang

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book, whole or in part, may be stored, reproduced, transmitted, or translated in any form or by any means whatsoever, manually or electronically, without prior written permission from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in newspapers or magazines. The rights of the copyright holder will be strictly enforced.

ISBN:

Hardcover: 978-965-7041-44-4

Paperback: 978-965-7041-45-1

E-book: 978-965-7041-46-8

Cover photos (clockwise from top left):

Author and his wife at the Carlsberg Museum in Copenhagen, 2017; David Ben-Gurion; University College Oxford; Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks; Western Wall, Jerusalem; Sir Winston Churchill

Photo credits:

Author’s portrait: Darron Palmer Photography

Cover: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (cooperniall on Flickr), Western Wall (david55king on Flickr)

All other photos are in the public domain.

* * *

Dedicated with love

to my wife,

Elizabeth,

and to my sons,

Jeremy and Richard.

* * *

Table of Contents

Half-Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Abbreviations

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. Wandering Jews

2. 1935 and All That

3. Paradise Lost

4. Hamlyn Avenue

5. Gaudeamus Igitur

6. Fields in the Valley

7. Tzahalah

8. Woodbourne

9. The Seventies

10. Iron Ladies

11. Welfare

12. Coming of Age

13. Justice

14. Hail and Farewell

15. Millennium

16. Reunions

17. Pater Familias

18. The Board

19. Brexit

20. Peoplehood

21. Finally

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Abbreviations

Preface

Behold, it is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not count themselves among the nations.

Numbers 23:9

The period in which I have lived has seen the best and the worst of times. Although a lawyer by profession, I am a historian at heart, and what follows is not so much about me but is rather an account of stirring events and ideas, of pain and conflict, of ancient traditions that produced a distinct and separate identity not entirely consistent with the modern world. My story is ultimately one of faith and family, lost and found.

It was the great migration of the Jewish people in my grandparents’ generation that caused me to be born in England (in 1935), but that was one of many migrations. We were always a people on the move, as will be described in my opening chapter. Evacuated to a unique place of safety for the duration of the Second World War (1939–1945), I was unaware that the deadliest conflict in human history was taking place. However, I was much influenced by my maternal grandparents with whom I lived and followed without question their practice of an Orthodox but tolerant Judaism.

In the post-war world, compromises were inevitable, but eventually, there was an increased emphasis on observance of the mitzvoth, which appealed to many followers of Orthodox Judaism but alienated others who found a home in other strands of Judaism, or not at all. The gradual process of alienation originated in the debris of the global conflict (Chapter 3).

As I became aware of the history of the Jewish people, I began to see Judaism as more than a religious communion, particularly when the largest genocide in history was revealed, with some six million non-combatant and defenceless Jews having been systematically robbed, humiliated, and murdered during the Second World War, the culmination of two millennia of persecution. Sadly, that was not the end of antisemitism by any means.

Thus, I came to regard the need for Jewish self-determination as beyond question for those who needed it, and the new State of Israel, established in 1948, provided Jews everywhere with new choices, a new status, and new interest in their heritage. It created an indelible mark on my emerging teenage years and a desire to be involved with the project. My unsuccessful attempt to do so will resonate with some who have trodden the same path (Chapter 7).

The common history and language of the Jews indicate a peoplehood comprising many strands and espousing many different views that are often vigorously pursued. But whilst I certainly identify with them, they are not my only people and do not impinge on my love of Britain, the ‘sceptred isle’ and ‘blessed plot’¹ that offered sanctuary and opportunity to my grandparents and so many thousands like them.

My people do not impinge on my lifelong affection for Yorkshire, where I grew up, or my association with the Midlands, where I settled after completing National Service. They do not impinge on the lifelong influences of school and ancient university (Chapter 5) or my longstanding enthusiasm for the game of bridge, having served as chair of my county association for several years!

The heritage of my people certainly enhanced my concern for those who continue to suffer discrimination and poverty, and I refer to the underworld of the needy and the rich who know no shame in Chapter 11. Likewise, it may well account for my devotion to the legal profession, which began almost by chance but led to some 20 years of service in a judicial capacity (Chapter 13).

With much else to occupy myself, it was many years before I felt able to return to Israel, but in 2007, I was persuaded to do so by one of my old university friends, by then an emeritus professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Chapter 16). That visit also enabled me to resume contact with my second cousin, Esther (known as Etti), whom I had not seen for many years, and I am grateful to her children and grandchildren who accepted me, a stranger, as one of them (Chapter 17).

My story also includes an account of that unique Anglo-Jewish institution, the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BOD), in which I served for some ten years as a representative of my community (Chapter 18), following in the footsteps of my distinguished uncle, the late Judge Israel Finestein QC, who was president of the organisation from 1991 to 1994.

I have quoted freely from the Bible, with which I have been acquainted from an early age. This amazing book, which introduced monotheism and the accompanying imperatives of righteousness and morality into the world, set the highest standard for the administration of justice and concern for the needy and the oppressed. Whether it is of Divine or human origin, its importance for me does not depend on its authorship, which cannot be resolved by the academic debates to which I refer in Chapter 20.

Although linked chronologically, each of my chapters is a self-standing essay with its own theme. My choice of topics is necessarily subjective, and the backcloth of local and world events that have punctuated my story will obviously receive proper historical assessment by others in due course, especially in the case of Brexit, and my reasons for voting to leave the European Union are set out in Chapter 19. The coronavirus pandemic has dominated life for almost two years at the time of writing, and extended periods of lockdown have provided much time to reflect on this work.

The world of today is surprisingly the same as that into which I was born! We seem to have learned nothing from the discredited policy of appeasement in the 1930s and have continued to appease dictators on every continent (Chapter 21). We have remained silent and ineffective in the face of human rights abuses, insane racialism, and ethnic cleansing. And reminiscent of the book burning in the Nazi era and its castigation of so-called ‘degenerate art’, we now tolerate a new generation of dictators who seek to crush any spoken or written expression of a view that purports to offend them.

Meanwhile, we have seen astonishing advances in science and technology, which have put several men on the moon, but hunger and poverty continue to exist, and the damage to our planet is becoming almost irreversible. And despite the horror of the Second World War, the threat of war is never far away, and local wars have continually erupted around the world, causing immense suffering and cruelty for those involved, as in Ukraine stoutly defending itself against invasion.

Every historical period can claim its highs and its lows, its heroes and its villains, but history offers no guarantees for the progress of mankind, except the hope of more heroes and the certainty of more villains. Yet nothing stays the same, and thus, we are entitled to hope that freedom will defeat dictatorship, that the truth will defeat lies, and that in the words of the psalmist,² those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Colin Lang

Edgbaston, Birmingham

January 2023

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to the following for their advice and support in having read or discussed all or various parts of my text: Ann Bennett, Maurice Cohen, Howard Cuckle, Todd Endelman, Gillian Hilton, Jeremy Lang, Haya and David Lewi, and Karen Skinasi. I am of course solely responsible for the final outcome.

Special thanks are due for the contribution of my friend and Oxford contemporary the late Henry Cohn, an academic historian of note who died during the course of my writing. I often regretted the absence of his insightful and helpful advice.

I have used many primary and secondary sources, which are all listed or cited where appropriate in the work itself. All were invaluable, and I apologise if any have been inadvertently omitted.

I have taken the liberty of quoting liberally from The Jewish Chronicle and The Times (and their various correspondents) for which I am most grateful. These two important institutions have held a mirror to the two distinct worlds that I have inhabited.

I am indebted to Eliyahu Miller and his team for guiding me through the publication process. It is quite possible that without their help, this work might not have seen the light of day.

I would like to emphasise that whenever the word ‘Jew’ appears, it includes ‘Jewess’ without any negative imputation of any kind. Likewise, the use of the masculine includes the feminine.

Last but not least, my book could not have been written without the understanding and advice of my wife Elizabeth throughout the process of agonising over the past, which for some reason, I felt compelled to set down. Given my advancing years, I also give thanks for the opportunity to complete the task.

– 1 –

Wandering Jews

Get thee from thy land, from thy birthplace, and from thy father’s house unto a land which I will show you.

Genesis 12:1

I would not be here at all but for Sasha, the first wife of my maternal grandfather, Jeremiah. She was already pregnant with their son Simon when, in October 1899, Jeremiah was conscripted into a local infantry unit of the Russian army. The following year, a daughter (Esther Leah) was born.

However, Jeremiah’s future (and mine) took a dramatic turn in 1903, when Sasha died, and he was transferred to the reserves, no doubt on compassionate grounds. He was subsequently given permission to travel and arrived in England in 1905 – almost too late, given that the Aliens Act of that year was intended to restrict immigration. Two sisters of Jeremiah also came over, as well as Rosa Bernstein, whom Jeremiah married in Hull on 28 January 1906.

Jeremiah had no reason to look beyond Hull, where his older brother Solomon¹ and his cousin Nahum were already established, and he was able to find work quickly as a tailor. It is estimated that the largest proportion of arrivals from Eastern Europe by far (almost one third) were in some branch of tailoring,² and many were drawn into the trade given the great expansion of the market in cheap ready-made clothing at the time.

However, Jeremiah was a bespoke tailor and eventually opened his own ‘made-to-measure’ tailoring business in a busy shopping parade along one of the main roads leading to the west of the city. It was located not far from the Hull fish docks, vast at that time but much depleted by the trawler wars of the 1960s. Many of the customers in my grandfather’s day would have been seamen – if their catch had been successful.

Solomon was among the early departures from the family home in a small township then known as Igumen (renamed Cherven in 1923) and located about forty miles or so south-east of Minsk, capital of Belarus. I remember him, in his old age, leaning heavily on an elaborate walking stick. It was said that when he was young, he always carried a cane and was known as ‘The Prince’ on account of his tall and dignified bearing.

It is not known why Solomon and his cousin Nahum chose to settle in Hull, when so many others, including Solomon’s brother Asher, pressed on to New York. Pronounced Osher in those days, and subsequently known as Oscar, he passed through the Ellis Island immigration centre in 1899. Of Oscar’s daughter Adele and her family, nothing was known until recent times, when contact was made with her son, Donald. He revealed that he had received a book from Hull in 1937 as a bar mitzvah gift, and the inscription (of which he sent a copy) was clearly in my mother’s handwriting.

Oscar died on 18 November 1932, aged only 61 years old, and the news was received in Hull with great sadness. He and his wife were buried at the Beth David Cemetery in New York, one of four cemeteries where the Igumener Burial Society had its own section. There were many such societies, indicative of the huge numbers who came over from the same township, and they remained together, in death as in life. Very little is known of Oscar except that on his gravestone, he is referred to as a ‘beloved husband and father’.

For centuries, the Jews of Eastern Europe had lived along a wide corridor stretching north to south, from Riga on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black Sea, and the Jewish population in that area increased from one million to over five million by the end of the 19th century. The economic structure of Jewish life was totally unable to respond to the needs thus imposed by such an increase.³ Furthermore, the advent of industrialisation and the transition to mechanised mass production ‘adversely affected Jewish artisans who worked in their own workshops, forcing them to abandon traditional means of production’.⁴

The concentration of economic activity in the cities added to the problem, as the major Russian cities were closed to the Jews, and Moscow expelled them. However, they were able to move to Odessa, founded in 1794 following the Russo-Turkish War, and within 100 years, almost 40% of its population was Jewish. Likewise, there was an internal migration of Jews from all over Poland heading for Warsaw, the capital, and Lodz, where opportunities existed in the newly established textile industry.

As Professor Israel Bartal points out, ‘The Jews of Eastern Europe were a mobile population, constantly on the move, and in the modern era, they maintained patterns of internal immigration that had existed from the early days of the formation of Jewish society in the area’.⁵ The motivation for such migration was mainly economic, to which one should add the prevalence of antisemitism, and, in due course, the influence of Zionism.

The assassination of the enlightened Czar Alexander II in 1881 marked the catastrophic end of an era and heralded a long period of anarchy, intermittent persecution, but above all, poverty. In the period before the First World War, 3 million Jews uprooted themselves, and the vast majority headed for economic opportunities in the West. Only a few dedicated members of Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) or Po’alei Zion (Workers of Zion) headed for Palestine, where they faced immense hardship in what was then a backward corner of the despotic Ottoman Empire. The museum at Zichron Ya’acov, one of the earliest settlements in Israel, pays moving tribute.

The English and German shipping lines catered for and in fact facilitated the vast movement of people to England and both North and South America, and the newly expanding railway network assisted travel to the Baltic ports. The scale of the migration into and across England may be seen from a plaque at Paragon Station, the main city rail terminal in Hull, the second largest United Kingdom immigrant port, and a relatively short journey across the North Sea. The plaque was unveiled by the President of the Borough of Brooklyn, New York in 1999 and records that 2.2 million mainly Jewish migrants arrived in Hull in the period prior to 1914, as many as one thousand a day (at times) passing through its immigration platform.

Most of these migrants were, of course, expecting to get to America and made their way across England to the port of Liverpool, where for two guineas (£2.10, which was a lot of money in those days), passage could be found in ships some converted from holding cargo to accommodating people. Many migrants did not have the necessary funds or had personal reasons for stopping on the way West, adding to the new and, in due course, large and influential Jewish communities of Leeds and Manchester.

Until 1925, there was almost unlimited entry into the United States, subject to a quota system introduced in 1921, and the ‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ responded to the call of ‘liberty’, whose statue at the entrance to New York’s harbour was inscribed with the immortal words of Emma Lazarus (1849–1887). Her poem written in 1883 began with the above reference to the ‘huddled masses’ and ended with the words: ‘Send these the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door’.

Long before the mass emigration from Eastern Europe, however, the fascination of the American colonies drew Jewish traders from England in the 18th century, and ‘a remarkably large number of English-born Jews, some recent immigrants, worked and fought for the Revolution’.⁶ On a goodwill tour of the former colonies, General George Washington, the first president of the new United States, visited Newport, Rhode Island on 17 August 1790, where the Jewish community numbered close to 500. His letter responding to their enthusiastic welcome famously proclaimed that ‘all possess a like liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship’. And referring specifically to the ‘children of the stock of Abraham’, he ensured that religious freedom would be an essential part of the American ideal from the outset.⁷

Further immigration from Great Britain followed, and by the end of the American Civil War in 1865, it is estimated that over 60,000 immigrants per year emigrated to America from Britain or via Britain prior to the 1880s, when the figure substantially increased. Apart from the United States, there were sufficient Jewish migrants to establish synagogues in Canada, Australia, and South Africa long before the great migration from Eastern Europe. And it is significant that Jews were already sitting in the Australian legislatures before corresponding emancipation had been granted in Britain in 1858. The first Jewish prime minister (of New Zealand in 1873) was Sir Julius Vogel (1835–1899), who left London in 1852.⁸

Among the early arrivals in South Africa was Samuel ‘Sammy’ Marks (1843–1920). Having been born in Lithuania, he spent five years in Sheffield and later married his landlord’s daughter, who paid for his passage south in 1869! He and his cousin Isaac Lewis (1849–1927) made vast fortunes out of the Kimberley diamond trade and the exploitation of the huge coal reserves and other commercial developments. In 1921, Isaac Lewis set up the substantial Roy Lewis Family Trust (RLT), of which, by a series of unforeseeable circumstances,⁹ I was eventually appointed a trustee.

The number of Jewish (and non-Jewish) immigrants to South Africa inevitably increased when gold was discovered in the Transvaal, and the Jewish population increased to 10,000 by 1880. Some 40,000 Jews arrived in South Africa between 1881 and 1914, and the future Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, who was then serving as rabbi at Witwatersrand, estimated a Jewish population of South Africa at 24,000 in 1899.¹⁰ In Canada, dozens of congregations were established in Toronto¹¹ during the great migration, and by 1921, the Canadian-Jewish population had risen to 126,000. It was to rise considerably with further immigration before and after the Second World War.¹²

The welcome extended to Jewish immigrants to America contrasted with their reception in England, where ‘The communal scene was dominated by poverty, and new Jewish charities sprang up to help meet the needs of the destitute’.¹³ One quarter of London Jewry was in receipt of charity, and the London Board of Guardians pursued a policy of encouraging onward migration. In 1882, for example, they despatched some 6,000 adults and children to Canada and the United States.¹⁴ They also pursued a policy of repatriation, with largely disastrous consequences for those concerned, estimated at some 50,000,¹⁵ including those who hoped for a better life after the fall of the Czars.

It is not surprising that communal leaders, including the Chief Rabbi Herman Adler, were opposed to further immigration of the ‘foreign poor’ and frowned upon the quarrelsome and embarrassingly un-English communities they had set up in the East End of London. However, the prospect of poverty, unemployment, and overworking in degrading conditions did not deter over 100,000 Jews from settling in England before the First World War.

The Jewish community of Hull was itself the product of migration as itinerant merchants discovered its potential in the 18th century. In 1852, the existing synagogue at Robinson Row in the Old Town had been extended and re-consecrated with a seating capacity of 280, but such was the overcrowding that the chief rabbi visiting in 1875 urged, in firm language, the need for larger premises. However, the established families were substantially outnumbered by the new immigrants after 1881.

An impenetrable wall descended behind those who escaped the Russian Empire or who fled Europe in the 1930s. Neither Jeremiah nor Rose ever spoke of their past lives; the parents and family they had left behind; or the circumstances of their previous lives, as if too awful to mention. No questions were invited; therefore, they were never asked, especially by children who were expected to know their place in those days. Rose was more forthcoming when pressed and was certain that she was related to Abraham Moshe Bernstein (1866–1932),¹⁶ the celebrated composer and chazan of Vilna. He was born in the same township as Rose, but enquiries of his descendants in Israel have so far yielded no clear confirmation of the link.

My paternal grandfather was born in Ozorkov, Poland in 1876, located about 40 miles north of Lodz. Ozorkov was established in 1816 as part of the new area of textile manufacturing in Poland, centred on the much larger town of Lodz, which soon overtook Ozorkov in size and prosperity. It is not surprising that so many Jewish immigrants gravitated to the making or selling of clothes. He married Rose Zurkowski, who came from the same area in Poland as him. I have been told¹⁷ that her unusual surname was in fact fairly common, with many persons of the same surname listed in the records of the Lodz ghetto.

My grandfather’s given name was Yehuda Leib, which was probably too much of a mouthful for the immigration officials who greeted him on his arrival, with little or no English. This was translated as Louis, by which he was then known. They also took the opportunity to limit his Polish surname to the first three consonants, for which I have always been grateful because in my early days, England was not the modern multicultural, multi-ethnic society it has become. Foreign-sounding surnames from many parts of the world are largely taken for granted today, but in the past (and possibly still in some quarters), they drew attention to something that was largely irrelevant, invited potential discrimination, and likely to influence one’s life, both socially and professionally, for no reason.

Louis was the eldest of four siblings and would have been the first of his siblings to have left Poland. His sister, Miriam, arrived in Hull after him and married there in 1905, which might have induced him to settle there. The next eldest brother, Mendel (Max), arrived in America in 1910, and his grandson Bernard retired as a doctor in Las Vegas.

The youngest brother, Isaac, never left Poland and moved to Alexandrov, a small town close to Lodz. Sadly, he was a victim of the Holocaust. After a period in the Lodz ghetto, he and two of his three daughters were taken to the notorious Treblinka concentration camp and were murdered there with so many others. His third daughter (Bluma) and her husband (Shimon) fled their home as the Germans advanced into Poland and made it to the area controlled by Russia, which had split the country with Germany by agreement in 1939. Some 200,000 Polish Jews made the difficult choice of living under the Russians rather than the Germans, which despite the many privations involved, enabled them to avoid extermination, the fate of most who stayed.

Some were transported many miles to Siberia or to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, where my second cousin, Esther, was born in July 1941. This migration was fraught with danger, and ‘Whilst most eventually settled in one location, others were continually on the move, chasing rumours of better conditions, family or friends’.¹⁸ However, it was the ‘Final Solution’ that represented perhaps the largest and certainly the most sinister migration of the Jewish people. The forcible transportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews by rail in appalling conditions was organised on a continental scale and was prioritised by the Nazi regime in its war against the Jewish people.

An alternative migration on an equally vast scale was envisaged by the leader of the right-wing Zionist movement, Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880–1940). In 1936, he proposed the mass evacuation of the entire East-European Jewish population and continually pleaded with the Jews to depart. He clearly feared the extermination that was to follow, and in 1938 at a Revisionist Congress in Warsaw, he described the Jews of Poland as ‘living on the edge of a volcano’. His plan to resettle them in Palestine over a period of years was vetoed by the British and dismissed by Chaim Weizmann, chairman of the World Zionist Organization. Jabotinsky did not live to see how accurate his assessment of the danger was and how urgent the need of rescue was before it was too late.

In the great migration to the West, not everyone headed north for the Baltic. Many headed south-west to Vienna, where by 1900, one tenth of its population was already Jewish. Among that group were Tanya Belinski followed later by her sister Esther Plotkine, both nieces of Nahum referred to above. What prompted them to continue their journey as far as Paris (much further still) is not known, but at the beginning of the 20th century, it was undoubtedly a magnet, especially for the great artists of the time.

Tanya arrived there in 1909, about the same time as the young Jacques (born Chaim Jacob) Lifchitz (1891–1973) who had travelled there from a small town in Lithuania, just across the border with Belarus. He became a renowned sculptor, and his colossal and complex ‘Tree of Life’ (1973) has pride of place on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, opposite the entrance to Hadassah Hospital. Lifchitz was the original surname of my mother’s family, and much as we would like to claim the great sculptor as our own, we have no evidence of the connection!

In 1940, when the German army overran France, Tanya fled Paris with her daughter, Annette, son-in-law (Paul), and grandson (Robert). They took refuge in a secluded cottage (which they owned) at Neauphle-le-Chateau, then a small village about 30 miles west of Paris. They lived there throughout the Second World War and avoided the notorious round-up of Parisian Jews in 1942, which included Tanya’s sister, her husband, and their two youngest daughters, aged only eight and fifteen. They were held in the Velodrome d’Hiver until they were deported with some 76,000 other French men, women, and children who were never heard of again. However, their eldest daughter (Minna) escaped because, thanks to her marriage, she was away from Paris at the time of the round-up.

The attraction of the New World was not lost on the younger generation, and Jeremiah’s eldest son Simon travelled there in 1921. He stayed in New York for a time with his uncle, Oscar, and eventually settled in Washington, DC. He was not seen again for many years, but there was always pleasure when the occasional letter was received. We knew him as Uncle Sim, and it was as if he lived among us. Of particular pleasure to my parents was a dollar bill that he sent them as a belated wedding present, just in time to help with the cost of my arrival.

For Uncle Sim and millions like him, America was the ‘Promised Land’. But the land promised by God to the ancient Hebrews and in 1917 by Lord Balfour (thought by some to be no less of an authority, with so much of the globe in British hands), was barren and neglected. The restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land had been the subject of much discussion in the 19th century, and there were certain religious non-Jews who saw it as an essential pre-requisite of the ‘second coming’ as they believed to have been predicted in the Bible.¹⁹

However, the Anglo-Jewish leadership was largely opposed to restoration. They feared that a return of the Jews to Palestine would weaken their status as honourable and longstanding British citizens, cast doubt on their loyalty, and perhaps even lead to their deportation. Nevertheless, some distinguished individuals from Britain²⁰ went to Palestine during the interwar years together with some 350,000 immigrants, representing a major core of the future state. This figure includes some 60,000 German Jews who arrived in Palestine mainly after 1933, joining a further 60,000 who had already been there since 1920, part of the massive emigration of some 245,000 German Jews after the Nazi regime came to power.²¹ Apart from Palestine, favoured destinations were Britain, the United States, and Latin America in roughly equal proportions.²²

The German-Jewish community was unique in many ways, as they had been emancipated and were educated. All were proud of their country and its cultural heritage, and many had served with distinction in the First World War, only to be blamed for Germany’s defeat by the Nazi regime. An additional factor concerning the Jews was the influential role taken by German Zionist leaders in creating a bridge for immigration and in shaping the pattern of German-Jewish integration into Palestine. Apart from agricultural training, the future State of Israel would benefit substantially from the modern commercial expertise of the new immigrants and from those who would contribute at a high level in academia and the professions.²³

The end of hostilities in Europe initiated a new period of migration throughout the continent as many Jews and others who had fled the Nazi advance returned to their homes only to discover the awful truth. Most had no choice but to join the camps for displaced persons, and many became part of Aliyah Bet, the name given to the illegal immigration of Jews into Palestine. The British post-war government clearly felt that further appeasement of the Arab nations was necessary and chose to enforce the restrictions on immigration envisaged in the British Government’s White Paper of 1939.

Over 70,000 Jews, including many Holocaust survivors, were transported across Europe to Mediterranean ports in Italy and France between 1945 and 1948 and were crammed into outdated vessels. The small port of La Spezia in northern Italy played an important part in Aliyah Bet, with the successful evacuation from there of some 23,000 Jewish refugees. A plaque attached to the local town hall demonstrates its pride in having assisted survivors of the Nazi regime, and its involvement is recognised on Israeli maps by the Hebrew name given to the town: Sha’ar Zion (Gateway to Zion).

The most famous of the outdated vessels was the SS Exodus, which set sail on 11 July 1947 from Sète on the south coast of France (west of Marseilles), overloaded with some 4,500 passengers. It was the largest by far of the vessels that took part in Aliyah Bet, attempting to break the British blockade, and it was intercepted about 20 miles from the coast. It was taken to Haifa, but its passengers were not allowed to disembark. They were not incarcerated in Cyprus as were other ‘illegal’ immigrants, and in an attempt to dissuade others, they were sent back to France, which would only take those passengers who consented to disembark. Very few did, and the remainder were then transported to Hamburg in the British sector of Germany. The infamous treatment of the passengers of the SS Exodus created adverse publicity for Britain and did much to unify Jews around the world in support of the fledgling State of Israel.

The Israel War of Independence attracted a special migration of its own as Jews from 37 countries volunteered for military service there. They were known collectively as the Machal, an acronym for the Hebrew words meaning ‘Volunteers from Abroad’, and provided much-needed military experience and expertise. Of particular importance were those involved with the undercover purchase and delivery of weapons and aircraft. Precise figures are not known, but it is estimated that there were between 3,000 and 4,000 volunteers, with as many as 600 coming from Britain,²⁴ a surprisingly large contingent. The total included a number of non-Jews, often Second-World-War veterans who had served in the Middle East and felt sympathetic towards the Jewish people.

Following the declaration of the new State of Israel on 14 May 1948, the way was open for large-scale Jewish immigration. For myself and others of my generation, just entering our teens, there was an overwhelming desire to participate in the ancient Zionist dream and escape what many thought to be the rigid structure of Anglo-Jewish communal life. The numbers from Britain were initially small but more than doubled after the Six-Day War (1967), when new opportunities became available, attracting many, some with little or no Zionist background.

Despite the combined effect of the great migration and the Holocaust, many Jews survived in Russia itself, some having managed to avoid the advancing Germans and their Nazi execution gangs. Among them was Jeremiah’s nephew, Ilya Samilovich Starobinets (born in 1922), whose mother had remained in Belarus. I learned later that he served with distinction in the Russian army and became a noted geologist and an honoured member of the Russian Scientific Research Institute.

However, the substantial Jewish community in Soviet Russia found itself, after the war (as it had been before), at the mercy of another paranoid dictator, Joseph Stalin. Synagogues were closed, antisemitic literature was encouraged, and well over 100 Jews were executed on trumped-up charges. A protest movement on behalf of Soviet Jewry began in the 1960s in the United States and Britain, and after 1967, Soviet Jews themselves began to demand the right to move to Israel.

Many applications were refused, including those of such distinguished dissidents as Natan Sharansky, who served nine years in Soviet prisons, often in solitary confinement, before being freed in 1986. He has served as a minister in several Israel Government departments since 1996. Yuli Edelstein was hounded by the Soviet authorities for ten years before he was allowed to leave in 1987. He has served as a member of the Israel Parliament and was appointed its Speaker in 2013.

The position of the ‘refuseniks’ or indeed anyone who applied for an exit visa was precarious. However, on 6 December 1987, at a summit meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan (backed by 250,000 American protestors), it was made clear that the forced assimilation of Jews must cease, and emigration must be allowed. During the preceding 20 years, about 290,000 Jews had been granted exit visas, with