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09/01/2020
Commemorating 75 years of liberation from Auschwitz
This year we commemorate 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. To mark this significant date, we invite you to attend our service to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day 2020. Venue: Belsize Square Synagogue, 51 Belsize Square, London, NW3 4HX Date: Thursday 23 January 2020 Time: 2 pm Programme The Service will be led by Rabbi Stuart Altshuler and will reflect the theme for HMD 2020, ‘Stand Together’ AJR member Frank Bright who is an Auschwitz survivor from Czechoslovakia, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz Hephzibah Rudofsky, daughter of Lady Zahava Kohn will share her thoughts and reflections on speaking about her mother’s experiences We will also hear from Emma Harrod, who is the granddaughter of Ziggy Shipper an Auschwitz survivor AJR members will light six memorial candles to remember the lives of the six million Jewish people murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust Service will...
09/01/2020
Celebrating members who received New Year’s Honours
We are extremely proud that a number of its members were included in the New Years’ Honours list for 2019. Members that were honoured include: Ruth Barnett, John Hajdu, Ruth Lachs, Kurt Marx, Sonja Sternberg, Ingrid Wuga, William Bergman, Mindu Hornick, Gertrude Silman, Dorit Oliver-Wolff, Peter and Marianne Summerfield, Doctor Peter Kurer, Gisela Feldman, Wlodka Robertson, Renate Collins, Lilian Levy, Rev John Henry Fieldsend, Ariel Henry Schachter, Dr Eva Willman, Bea Green JP, Eva Neumann, Manfred Goldberg, Wolfgang Marc Schatzberger, and Simon Winston. These inspirational men and women have dedicated their lives to Holocaust remembrance through education, commemoration and creating awareness. Posthumously Leslie Baruch Brent was also honoured in recognition of his services to Holocaust Education and the Field of Immunology and Organ Transplantation. Sadly he passed away shortly after he found out about his honour. Leslie arrived on the first Kindertransport, a group of children from an orphanage in...
02/01/2020
Hermann Hirschberger, former Chair of the AJR – Kindertransport special interest group and MBE recipient who came to Britain on the Kindertransport
It is with great sadness that we learnt of the passing of Hermann Hirschberger MBE, aged 93, a former Chair of the AJR - Kindertransport special interest group. Among his other achievements, in 2007 Hermann devised and oversaw the creation and publication of a unique survey entitled "Making New Lives in Britain", a database recording the Continental background, journey to Britain, reception and subsequent experiences and lives of some 1,450 Kinder, a strongly representative sample of the almost 10,000, predominantly Jewish children of the Kindertransport. This is now published in the form of a statistical database. https://ajr.positive-dedicated.net/kindertransport-survey/ Hermann also successfully campaigned to enable Kinder to benefit from a British state pension although they had missed the opportunity to pay national insurance premiums. Until poor health prevented him doing so, Hermann regularly spoke to school pupils about his experiences fleeing Karlsruhe, his town of birth in Germany, on a Kindertransport and...
24/12/2019
Leslie Baruch Brent, renowned immunologist and zoologist who came to Britain on the Kindertransport – Obituary
We were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Leslie Baruch Brent, a Kind, who has passed away aged 94. He arrived on the first Kindertransport, a group of children from an orphanage in Berlin, on 2 December 1938. Having studied Zoology at Birmingham University, he was the co-discoverer with Peter Medawar and Rupert Billingham of acquired immunological tolerance for which Medawar was awarded the Nobel Prize. Leslie became a leading immunologist and was appointed Professor Emeritus at the University of London in 1990. In recent years, among his other interests, Leslie was a stalwart member of the AJR and regularly attended commemorative AJR events. Leslie was the driving force behind the AJR plaque dedicated to Anna Essinger, the Headmistress of the Bunce Court School in Kent, to which Leslie and several other Kinder were sent. Leslie also spoke about his experiences as a Kind, including at Westminster Abbey...
18/12/2019
AJR pays tribute to Otto Schiff
On Wednesday 18 December 2019 the AJR unveiled a commemorative plaque in honour of the founder, chair and director of the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC), Otto M. Schiff C.B.E. at Woburn House, Tavistock Square in London which served as the Committee’s centre from 1933 to 1939. Many of the estimated 60,000 Jews from Germany and Austria who fled to Britain after 1933 – when Hitler acceded to power – received some form of assistance from the JRC, if only by registering with it at its seat in Woburn House. A number of dignitaries attended including: The Lord Sassoon, one of Schiff’s six great nieces and nephews, who were all present at the unveiling and The Rt Hon. the Lord Pickles, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Post- Holocaust Issues. Early life Otto Schiff was born in 1875 in Frankfurt and was the nephew of banker Jacob Schiff. In 1896, at...