Jo Briggs, Editor, AJR Journal
There were some tremendous food businesses founded by Jewish refugees which made their mark in Britain. This August issue of the AJR Journal looks at two such businesses: Panzer’s in St John’s Wood, which counts Sir Paul McCartney and a Gallagher brother among its clientele, and Ackerman’s Chocolates, whose produce was so fine that it was awarded the Royal Warrant. Nicholas Rose, grandson of its founders, proudly shares how chocolate assortments would be hand-delivered to both Kensington Palace and Clarence House on regular request.
These two businesses are both great examples of the tremendous impact that Jewish refugees from central and eastern Europe have had on almost every aspect of British culture and society in the last 80+ years.
But our gain was often Europe’s loss. Take, for example, the former city of Breslau, which for centuries was a central economic and cultural hub of the German Empire. The entire population of the city – apart from its 23,000 Jewish citizens, who had already been expelled and sent to an almost certain death – was uprooted as part of the transfer of the territory from Germany to Poland at the end of WW2. The city is today known as Wrocław and almost all of its current 600,000+ inhabitants descend from Polish people who were forcibly transferred there from their homes in the former Polish city of Lvov, which Stalin insisted be transferred, along with much of eastern Poland, into the Soviet Union, and which is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Both populations – the old population of Breslau, and the new population of Wrocław – were, in four short years, uprooted wholesale from their home cities.
You can read more about the history of Breslau/Wroclaw in our August issue, in an article written by AJR member Michael Grenfell, whose mother was born and lived there until her parents sent her on a Kindertransport to London in a desperate bid to save her from the Nazis. Sadly they were unable to save their own lives and, in his article, Michael shares a moving account of his recent visit to the location of his grandparents’ former home, to install Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in their honour.
Elsewhere in the magazine, our regular Art reviewer Gloria Tessler, tells the story of how Berlin-born Bruno Bernard fled the Nazis alone and penniless, and changes his name from Bruno Sommerfeld. He is credited with being the first man to spot Marilyn Monroe in the street, transforming her through his lens from shy teenager to Hollywood beauty. He is just one of several Jewish photographers highlighted in Gloria’s review of Marilyn Montroe: A Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery.
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Happy reading!
Jo Briggs
Editor, AJR Journal
