... And the Policeman Smiled (38 page)

The same executive meeting discussed the problem in reverse where the RCM thought Ingeborg should be removed from her foster parents, who were failing to provide religious education, but where the local (Sheffield) committee refused to act, ‘saying that they will do no more work for refugees unless it is established that their word is law'.

Pressures to conform were rarely motivated by a desire to alienate young Jews from their faith. More often than not foster parents, who were criticised for sending refugee children to Sunday school or encouraging them to eat proscribed food, were prompted by nothing more sinister than a desire to make their young guests feel at home. For those like Elaine Blond and Lola Hahn-Warburg, who spent much of their time following up complaints of proselytisation, it was a matter of acute embarrassment to have to explain to a rural vicar that joining his church choir was not necessarily the best way for a Jewish youngster to meet people, or to point out to a farmer's wife that persuading her husband to kill the fatted pig, so that her Jewish guests could enjoy a slap-up roast, was misplaced generosity.

The most difficult cases related to foster parents who were ideal in every way except the one essential. When in early 1943 there
were reports that Jewish education was not being made available to four otherwise contented youngsters in the Devonshire village of Talaton, Dorothy Hardisty opened up a cautious enquiry. She wrote first to the Honiton billeting officer, suggesting that since the children had been born into orthodox families it was time for them to be moved to more appropriate surroundings. The billeting officer did not agree. As a stalwart of the established church, Lady Davidson possessed a clearly defined set of values which did not allow for the inclusion of other religions. She told Dorothy Hardisty that the children could not be disturbed. Six months later Dorothy Hardisty tried again, with a letter to Lady Davidson's successor, a Mr B. R. Dunning.

I want to open with you once again the cases of the four young children who are evacuated to Talaton. These children come from orthodox Jewish families. The little ones had the misfortune to be driven into no-man's-land and in 1939 were brought to this country without their parents. None of us can know what has happened to the parents but we, who are interested in all the young people and children brought to this country by the Movement, hold it as our greatest hope that reunion with relatives may one day be effected. We realise that the parents are probably suffering the utmost hardships and that their religious belief will be the strongest remaining link at the moment between them and the children from whom they are parted. If they were to realise that the children were not being brought up in the orthodox manner, it would add yet more sorrow to their grievous burden.

When the children first came to England, they attended the Jewish Free School in London, with which they were evacuated either late in 1939 or early 1940, so that for a time they remained in a Jewish environment. At a later date, the number of British children attending the School had fallen to such an extent that the Jewish teacher was withdrawn and these four children for some time have not received religious teaching, and have not been able to live an orthodox Jewish life.

The solution, Dorothy Hardisty suggested, was for the children to be moved to a ‘properly equipped and very well run' hostel during the school terms, returning to their foster parents in the holidays. Mr Dunning was sympathetic but said, reasonably enough, that he could not force a decision on the local billeting officer (a rector's wife) or on the foster parents. A meeting was
fixed for Dorothy Hardisty and E. T. Elton, a representative of orthodox Jewry, to meet the children. It began with them talking to Dorothy Hardisty alone. Immediately afterwards, she wrote up her impressions.

They are four grand youngsters. Josef is the most highly strung. He is very conscious of his Jewish birth and religion and most loyal, but he says his sister knows that their mother knows, through her, that he is living in a non-Jewish home and they do not want him moved. He wishes to have instruction and in course of time to be
Bar Mitzvah
. He corresponds with Mr Kayser of the Polish Refugee Fund, who sends him books and literature. Josef hopes to join his sister in Palestine and that his mother will go there also. He is obviously very much distressed at the thought of being moved before this can be accomplished …

The three girls cling most fondly to their homes. The sisters Frajdenreich say they have no one to look towards now but their foster home. Their family (six other children, apparently) just disappeared. They want Jewish instruction. Isa Scheider is in correspondence with her father in Spain – he knows she is not in a Jewish home but is satisfied …

They feel Jewish and are not being persuaded in any other direction. They say they know ‘something', but want to know and understand more. I must repeat my impression of the scrupulous care that is being taken not in any way to introduce any non-Jewish religious instruction.

The children struck me as frank, intelligent and not just well primed. They are a credit to their foster parents – well grown, well-mannered, friendly, beautifully kept. The foster parents are quite outstanding in their care and sympathy. It was a real joy to meet such people.

The car which had brought me waited in the village. The owner driver told me a local man talked to him, telling him how all the village wanted to keep the children until they can be restored to their parents. They have been with them between four and five years and ‘we want to win the fight for them', said the man.

The follow-up session with the children had both Mr Elton and Dorothy Hardisty in attendance.

We saw first the Frajdenreichs. They both said they wanted to have Jewish teaching, but to remain in their present homes. They agreed that they would go for a short visit at
Chanukah
to the Dawlish
Hostel. (Mr Elton thought of bringing them to London, but I said we must not put ourselves in the wrong by bringing evacuees to town and he agreed.) Mr Elton will try and go to see them there.

We next saw Josef Kamiel. He also would like Jewish teaching, but is very averse to leaving his foster home, even for one night. He refused Mr Elton's suggestion of a visit to Dawlish and, when Mr Elton said he must learn a great deal and be prepared for
Bar Mitzvah
and must be made ready to take his place in Palestine, he replied that his sister had said that could all come after the war. He broke down and wept. I watched him and noticed he was trembling, fidgeting with his hands and generally upset. Presently he got calmer – showed Mr Elton the literature he had received from Mr Kayser (which Mr Elton said was not much use), and was interested in a mathematical trick shown to him. On the renewal of the suggestion of a visit he again broke down. I took him out of the room and asked him what was frightening him. Josef told me, ‘I've lost a home and want not to lose another. I am frightened. I had Nazi bayonets behind me. I can't bear it – I can't bear it.' The boy was in a very distressed state.

The upshot was an unequivocal recommendation from Mr Elton: ‘These children have got to be moved to Jewish homes.' Dorothy Hardisty was more circumspect. Noting that ‘Josef KamiePs case will require the most careful handling and that the exercise of the smallest amount of pressure would be dangerous', she urged that arrangements should be made for the children to visit Jewish hostels or homes for festivals and fasts, and that a well-qualified teacher should visit at least once a week to give instruction.

Her view was endorsed by the RCM, leaving Mr Elton to persevere with his more radical proposals. He did not stand a chance, as Paula Frajdenreich made clear when she responded on behalf of all four children to an invitation to visit London to see for themselves what it would be like living in an orthodox hostel.

I'm sorry that we won't be coming. It would be the worst time to come to London as the Second Front will be starting soon. And we are asked not to travel at Easter. We were taken away from our parents and put with strangers in London. Then, when we had begun to settle down, we were put down here. And now you want us to go with strangers when we have been settling for four years. So we should be very pleased if you would leave us alone and not give us any more invitations. I am pleased with our lessons.

We next hear of the Talaton children in May 1946, when they were the subject of an inquiry by the Board of Deputies. The reason for such high-level interest was the much publicised report that three of the children had been baptised. The RCM held back from giving evidence, but it is clear from the main findings of the inquiry that Dorothy Hardisty's recommendations had received, at best, a half-hearted follow-up. The Board of Deputies did not criticise the foster parents, who were described as ‘devoted Christians and regular church attendants', but had harsh words for the local Jewish community, small as it was, for the failure to ‘follow up the cases at the relevant time'. It is difficult not to conclude that it would have been an unequal battle.

The chances of transferring young people to Jewish hostels were greatest when foster parents set about inculcating Christian values with a sledgehammer. Thus Edgar was only too happy to depart from a Methodist family who ‘insisted on him attending church on Sundays three times, and various weekly meetings'. But Ursula had no wish to leave her Christadelphian foster mother, even though she did have to go to Sunday school. Everything else about her home she liked very much and, according to one RCM visitor, she was ‘well instructed in the Jewish religion'.

Orthodox critics were liable to generalise. All Jewish children who shared a home with a Christian family were at risk, they argued; but they were frequently proved wrong, as in the case of Paul Kohn who was taken in by a Strict Baptist minister.

The Rev Morton and his wife had no children of their own. They lived at ‘The Manse', a few doors away from the Zion Chapel. Our new home was a modest house with narrow, rickety stairs to our bedroom, a small kitchen and scullery, a breakfast room, and the study where Mr Morton, as we were told to call him, would read, write and edit
Cheering Words
, a publication posted to all Strict Baptist congregations in the country, smoke his pipe and occasional cigar and play chess with me …

On the very first day, we explained that we would not eat meat and that all cooking for us had to be done in separate dishes. From then on, Mr Morton went out of his way to learn the intricacies of Orthodox Jewish observance from the Jewish teachers who were now in the town. Jews had never lived in the small Fenland town of Chatteris before. Eugen and I were never asked to go to chapel, but we were expected to attend all the Jewish services that took
place in the separate chapel hall which Mr Morton willingly made available.

One day, some ultra-Orthodox Jews arrived at the Morton's front door. They had come to return me to the fold. They were very insistent that I go with them and I was extremely apprehensive. Mr Morton informed them that only my parents could decide about my future, and until then I would stay put. He wrote to them about the visit, and the answer from Haifa was clear: ‘If you will have him, then our son shall stay in your care until the war is over.'

Equally contented with his Christian foster family was Ya'acov Friedler who, with two friends, faced the same agonised conflict of loyalties as Paul Kohn but chose the other way of resolving it.

One afternoon, as we were doing our homework in the parlour and Mrs Crook was darning socks, we were surprised by an unexpected visitor. A rabbi, dressed in the East European style, with a long dark coat, a large black hat, and a long grey beard. The three of us had never seen a rabbi like that before.

He turned out to be a very gentle man and in his quiet way explained that he had come from London on a mission to return us to the fold of the Jewish people. He had heard about the two Jewish refugee boys living in the country among the gentiles, cut off from all contacts with Judaism. He had a long talk with Mrs Crook and before he left promised to return, which he did several times during the next few weeks. He managed not only to arouse feelings of guilt in Solly and myself but to convince Mrs Crook and Vic that it was their duty to help us return to Judaism, heartbroken though they were at the thought of parting with us.

We had in fact been quite cut off from all things Jewish in Frome, where there was no Jewish community and, of course, no synagogue. At school there had been an instructor in Jewish religion, but he had left shortly before my own arrival. He had left a lasting impression but unfortunately not a very inspiring one, both on the very few Jewish boys in school and our gentile classmates. They still vividly remembered and frequently repeated for their own amusement how, on meting out punishment to an unruly boy, he had qualified it with ‘God knows, I don't want to do this to you, but you drive me beyond the limits of human endurance.' Of all the lofty precepts of Judaic thought he was to have instilled in us, this is the phrase everybody remembered and I remember it still, though it was handed down to me at second hand.

After much persuasion we agreed that the rabbi from London
see our headmaster about us, and, in a long talk, the latter agreed that it would be the right thing for us to return to a Jewish environment, provided we were convinced we should. The two of us could hardly decide anything else.

The religious dispute was roughest when the missionary factor came into play. That deliberate alienation was attempted is undeniable, though whether conversion from orthodox to liberal Judaism and from Judaism to Christianity was as widespread as the Chief Rabbi's Religious Emergency Council claimed is open to serious question.

Nobody was ever under any misapprehension of the true purpose of organisations like the Christian Jewish Alliance and the Barbican Mission. As early as April 1939, the Chief Rabbi was sounding off against their activities, in particular those of the Barbican Mission who ‘have brought to this country over a hundred Jewish children from Czechoslovakia'. He continued, ‘It is their intention to baptise them. There is just a possibility of rescuing these unfortunate children if alternative homes or hostels can be found for them without delay.'