Carry on, Anne
Sir: When Anne Applebaum published her interesting article in your issue of 8 April ('What did you do in the Occupation, Daddy?'), memories came flooding back of my experiences pre-war. While we would never know, her article could have been very near the truth.
To my surprise, in your issue of 29 April I found a vicious letter by Mr John Mawer. His comments about William Cash are totally inappropriate and certainly your magazine could not be accused of being anti-Semitic. Mr Mawer almost spits out the fact that Anne Applebaum is Jewish, which indicates quite clearly his views.
Mr Mawer is quite wrong in saying that a large part of the Jewish community have been refugees from Nazi persecution, because so few here believed in the horrors which were perpetrated in concentration camps in the Thirties. Not even after the infamous Kristallnacht in November 1938 could we make people understand what was happening to Jews in Germany at that time.
I worked at the refugee office in Woburn House under the guidance of Captain Davidson, and we were in touch every hour of each day with people who simply did not want to believe that any man, even Hitler, could commit the atrocities which were reported and of which evidence was provid- ed in a book called The Braunbuch, of which copies are no longer available. There were people in Britain, admittedly only a few (Mosley and the Cliveden set), who admired Hitler as late as 1938.
One man, however, did believe it, and that was Winston Churchill, whom I had the honour to meet during that period. All the same, this Government, as other gov- ernments did, maintained a very strong resistance to allowing Jewish refugees to enter the country. I was one of the lucky ones and I will always be grateful for that.
Ms Applebaum has every right to put on paper her views of how the inhabitants of this island could have behaved had it been occupied. Fortunately, due to the courage of the British people, including those of the Jewish faith, these are but an intellectual appraisal of what might have been.
Peter Frankel
Elmstead', Chapel Road, Limpsfield Common, Surrey
Previous page
