After the Second World War ended, like most English children of the time, I was spared of any knowledge of the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. When a German woman, with two young children, came to be matron at my boarding school, I am ashamed to record that we all assumed that they were ‘the enemy.’ It was many years before I understood that they must have been a Jewish family, refugees from one of the greatest crimes against humanity in all history. Today, more than 60 years since the war ended, it is more important than ever that young people should learn the history of the attempted extermination of an entire generation of ordinary human beings.
I have now made two visits to the redesigned and extended Jewish Museum in Camden Town, London, and there is still much to discover.
Visitors may be surprised to learn that Jewish people are recorded as having lived in England at the time of the Norman Conquest. Apparently the king encouraged merchants and bankers to come here in order to ‘stimulate the economy.’ The earliest exhibit one encounters at the museum is a ‘Mikveh’, a medieval ritual bath recently uncovered during excavations in the City of London, and one can imagine an earlier version of our city businessmen enjoying the spa.
One gallery is devoted to the exploration of a range of traditional festivals, weddings, funerals, Hanukah (the festival of lights), Passover and Bar Mitzvahs.
Here one gains a sense of the closeness of family ties, and of the respect accorded to the adults by the younger members of the community. As the excellent catalogue notes, ‘Objects play an important role in the performance of rituals’ that, ‘together with special costumes, foods, customs and recitation make the ritual memorable and promote a sense of shared experience and of belonging.’ Among the collections of artefacts and artworks on display are many beautifully illustrated Hebrew manuscripts and prayer books, and also prints and paintings by Gillray and by Rowlandson whose disturbing cartoons often go far beyond humour in the portrayal of the Jewish people.
A recent and particularly interesting acquisition is an enormous, seventeenth-century Italian carved synagogue ark, built from walnut and generously gilded with carved panels depicting Jewish emblems. It was found in a servant’s bedroom in Chillingham Castle, in the wilds of Northumberland, where for many years it had served as his wardrobe. This capacious closet is in sharp contrast to the leather travelling trunk belonging to the refugee Kohnstamm family, in which, during the 1930s, they packed the few belongings they were able to take with them to England.
My father-in-law, whom I never knew, arrived in England around the turn of the last century, at the time of the Great Migration, when many people escaping persecution arrived in Britain from eastern Europe. For me, one of the most moving images is the photograph of newly arrived immigrant boys, who face the camera with solemn, bewildered faces, a picture which nevertheless seems to convey their courage and the hope for a better future that they must have felt. The East End of London, and in particular the Spitalfields area, known as ‘Little Jerusalem,’ became, for many years, the heart of the Jewish community in Britain.
Charity work has always played an important part in Jewish life and by the time the ‘Aliens Act’ was passed in 1905, restricting further immigration, there were innumerable charities operating in London and over forty philanthropic institutions were set up to raise funds for charity. That tradition continues today. My partner, a clarinettist of some distinction, plays for the London International Orchestra, which works to raise funds for good causes, generously supported by a philanthropist who prefers to remain anonymous.
It is impossible to do justice to all aspects of the collections in this superb museum, and I have hardly touched on many of the areas to be explored there.
The central section of the museum, and the one that should be seen by everyone, especially by all young people, is the Holocaust Gallery. Here one learns the life story of one man, Leon Greenman , who was born in Whitechapel in 1910, and who by the start of the second world war, was living in Holland with his wife and baby son Barney. On display are a lock of baby’s hair, a home-made toy truck, and a tiny pair of leather shoes, which had been repaired by Leon using ‘layers of rubber from a tyre.’ The shoes survived. Barney and his mother, transported to Auschwitz, did not.
Cicely Herbert visits the Jewish Museum in London.