England

Victoria link to UK honours

More than 20 girls were rescued from Nazi persecution and brought to Tynemouth (photo from Summerfield family via BBC)

On Jan. 26, 2023, a blue plaque at a house in Tynemouth, a coastal town in northeast England near Newcastle, was unveiled. The marker recognizes the efforts of David Summerfield, the grandfather of Victoria, BC’s Henry Summerfield, to help rescue Jewish children before the Second World War.

David Summerfield’s undertaking was part of the Kindertransport, which, from late 1938, after Kristallnacht, to the declaration of war in September 1939, brought Jewish children to the United Kingdom.

“My grandfather ran a jewelry store in Newcastle. He was very well known and well thought of inside and outside of the Jewish community,” Henry Summerfield told the Independent. “He got a committee together and they raised funds and got a house in Tynemouth. In those days, they would not have boys and girls in the same house. Thus, they decided girls were more vulnerable and they would take them in.”

The house at 55 Percy Park provided lodging for 24 Jewish girls, aged 3 to 15, from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In total, nearly 10,000 children were brought into the United Kingdom during the nine months of the rescue operation.

“It was a terrible ordeal for the children because they were in a strange country and they were going to a city they had never heard of. They were not accompanied by any adults who could guide them,” said Summerfield. “A girl from Czechoslovakia was the worst off because did not speak either German or English.”

The local Jewish community in Newcastle needed people to care for the girls after they arrived, Summerfield said, and they managed to find two Jewish widows from Vienna who had fled to London: Paula Sieber, who had owned a cinema, and Alice Urbach, a well-known chef who also operated a cooking school.

Prior to the war, Urbach had written a popular cookbook, Cooking the Viennese Way, under a false name, because, as a Jew, she was not able to publish using her real name. In 2022, her granddaughter, historian Karina Urbach, published Alice’s Book: How the Nazis Stole My Grandmother’s Cookbook, which explored Alice Urbach’s story and the Nazi appropriation of her intellectual property.

“Because attempts to avert a war failed, the parents were never able to join their children,” said Summerfield. “Instead, Newcastle and the nearby area became a war zone subject to heavy bombing and out of bounds to enemy aliens, so the girls were moved across the country to a house at Windermere in England’s Lake District. There they remained under the care of the two matrons till the end of the war. They were educated in local schools.”

As reports started to come out about the death camps, the matrons tried to be strict about keeping the girls away from the cinemas, where newsreels were shown. One girl managed to sneak out, saw the news and returned to the house in hysterics. Most of the girls’ parents died during the Holocaust.

As the years passed, the girls finished their schooling and got training for various jobs. The whole enterprise was successful – the girls grew up, had careers and raised families. Some stayed in England, while others moved to Israel, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

The BBC recently learned of the endeavour and broadcast a report about a reunion of the refugees, now elderly, and their lives. The reunion was attended by David Summerfield’s granddaughter, Judith Summerfield, and great-granddaughter, Alison Moore. There were previous reunions, in 1988 and 1999.

A six-episode BBC podcast was released earlier in the year, The Girls: The Holocaust Safe House, detailing the stories of those who lived at 55 Percy Park. The current owners of the house, who purchased the property in 2017, hadn’t known the historical significance of the address as a Kindertransport hostel.

The newly unveiled plaque at 55 Percy Park reads: “In 1939, this house was home to more than 20 girls fleeing Nazi persecution. They came here via the Kindertransport rescue effort and were cared for by the Newcastle Jewish Refugee Committee, as well as the wider community of Tyneside. Most of those housed here lost their parents during the Holocaust. The committee funded their care for over seven years.”

Below that inscription is a quote from Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

A posthumous honour for David Summerfield has been proposed. His jewelry store, started in 1914, is still in operation.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Systemic change possible?

Eleanor Boyle’s Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today offers concrete ideas for how food systems can be transformed. (Julie Doro Photography)

I plan to make the Honourable Woolton Pie. Just for fun, not necessarily because I think it’ll taste wonderful, though it might. Named after Lord Woolton (Frederick Marquis), who was appointed minister of food in 1940 Britain, it represents several of the British government’s goals during the war years: it was “meatless, thrifty, filling, and made use of domestically produced in-season foods.” The recipe is in Eleanor Boyle’s latest book, Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today (FriesenPress, 2022). The book is the only reason I know who Woolton is. More importantly, the book offers many reasons to feel less naïve for mostly believing that humankind can save ourselves and the planet before we kill ourselves and the planet.

Mobilize Food! is an optimistic examination of Second World War rationing and other wartime policies in England and how the lessons from that period could help us counter the climate crisis by changing our food systems, to start. Lest one think that Boyle is a pie-eyed dreamer, she has solid credentials – a bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in food policy and a doctorate in neuroscience. The Vancouverite also has been a journalist and she taught for many years. She wrote the book High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society, 2012).

Despite all of Boyle’s education and experience, she still believes that radical change is possible. This is heartening in and of itself. But it’s the 42-page bibliography that I found more assuring. The recommendations Boyle makes in Mobilize Food! are based on extensive research. And they consider what individuals, governments and businesses are already doing, as well as what they could be doing more of (which is a lot). She is not arguing for a socialist utopia, or a utopia of any sort, though she does imagine more engaged, civic-minded communities than I think currently exist anywhere in the world. That said, she gives an example of a city that apparently has ended hunger – Belo Horizonte, Brazil, “which in 1993 declared access to food as every citizen’s right. It then implemented food price subsidies, supply and market regulation, supports for urban agriculture, education on food preparation and nutrition, and job creation in the food sector.”

How does this relate to Second World War Britain? As did Britain during the 1940s, Belo Horizonte set up state-subsidized restaurants that are open to everyone (to avoid stigmatizing people on lower incomes), it feeds kids in the public education system every day, it partners with private grocery stores so that they can sell cheaper fruits and vegetables, and it supports family farms, among other actions “that help democratize food.”

Boyle provides copious data and examples of how the food industry, as it stands, is contributing to climate change “by contributing at least a quarter of human-caused GHGs [greenhouse gases].” It does this through its use of fossil fuels, the cultivation of monocultures (“vast, unnatural acreages of single-species crops”) and destroying ecosystems by removing or burning vegetation, among other activities. One of the eye-opening stats is: “Some analysts calculate the contribution of livestock to overall anthropogenic GHGs as at least 30% and as high as 51%.”

Boyle argues persuasively that how we produce and consume food can be transformed. The first half of Mobilize Food! runs through all that Britain did to make significant changes, “from national agricultural policy to the family dinner plate. They didn’t wait for dire food shortages or society-wide agreement of exactly how to proceed. Even before war was declared, government set up a high-powered food committee to craft plans for making food systems crisis-ready.” They used multiple strategies and strived for general engagement using PR campaigns and other tools. “The programs were simple but transformational,” writes Boyle, “based on shifts toward domestically produced, plant-rich and minimally processed foods. Together those programs adequately fed the population – and, in many ways, better than prewar, by providing broader and more equitable access to food and enhanced health [reducing diabetes and heart disease, for example].”

The wartime measures also show that people can change how they eat and act, she notes. But leadership is key – Lord Woolton was very charismatic, it seems, and, on the larger scale, Boyle writes, “Only governments have the mandate for the public good, the oversight for national strategy and the legislative levers. Only public officials can do the necessary system-wide planning, coordinate sectors, forge agreements across regions, and make the tough decisions.” Lastly, such massive change relies on everyone participating: “We’ll need to think systems-wide and involve every segment of society, every community, every food-related business and civic organization, and every one of us.”

Boyle admits this all “sounds like fantasy. But, as the story of World War II Britain shows, such a transformation has occurred.” Am I personally convinced we have what it takes to mobilize so drastically? The larger whole is still too much for me to contemplate, but I can eat even less meat and fewer processed foods, buy more from local growers, invest in businesses that improve the environment and/or social outcomes, support politicians who are working toward a healthier and more inclusive society. No doubt, there is much more that I could be doing, but it’s a start.

I’m glad that I read Mobilize Food! Full of images (including awesome wartime PR posters), data and stories from people who lived through the war effort, it is engaging on many levels. It reminded me that what seems impossible may not actually be so. And the importance of hope – combined with action – cannot be overstated.

For more information, visit eleanorboyle.com.

Antisemitism exposed

It recently came to light that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, was a member of at least one closed Facebook group where antisemitic rhetoric and hatred, including the most ridiculous assertions based on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other such bunkum, was liberally purveyed.

David Collier, an independent British researcher, released an in-depth analysis of the kind of content that appeared in the group to which Corbyn and other leading Labour activists belonged. Members of the group routinely threw around phrases like “Jewnazi” and “Zionazi.” Members posted articles about the “Rothschild Empire,” the “Zionist agenda and New World Order” and “Jewish organ trafficking,” the latter, as the title implies, being a modern incarnation of blood libel.

About Mein Kampf, one poster urged: “Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.” Members have claimed that Hitler “supported Zionism” and that the Holocaust is being exploited so that Jews can oppress others – all the while shielding themselves with the assertion that “criticizing Israel isn’t the same as antisemitism.”

When caught, Corbyn, who has called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends,” defended his online association with antisemitism by saying, “Had I seen [evidence of antisemitism], of course, I would have challenged it straight away, but I actually don’t spend all my time reading social media.” In fact, even the most cursory glance at the page would indicate this is a site with which no legitimate public figure should be associated.

An older incident was made public about the same time, in which Corbyn defended the artist in a case where a local government opted to paint over an overtly antisemitic mural on a public wall. Later, Corbyn would claim he hadn’t really looked at the mural, which clearly depicts stereotypically Jewish looking men divvying up money on the backs of the oppressed, while the symbol of the Illuminati, a figment of the antisemitic movement’s imagination, hovers above them.

The fact that overt antisemitism, which has existed in the Labour Party for some time, has finally had a bright light shone on it, has brought some surprising reactions. Some MPs and other Labour activists have called for MPs who attended a rally against antisemitism to be blackballed from the party. You read that right.

Those whose dogged campaigning has brought the unseemly underbelly of antisemitism on the British left to light seem to now face the daunting task of ensuring that the blame for the problem – and the task of fixing it – falls to the perpetrators, not the victims.