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| Founded | July 1941 |
|---|---|
| Type | Social welfare agency |
| Location |
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Area served | United Kingdom |
Members | ca. 2000 |
Key people | Chairman: Andrew Kaufman; Chief Executive: Michael Newman |
Employees | ca. 40 |
Volunteers | ca. 120 |
| Website | www |
TheAssociation of Jewish Refugees (AJR) is the specialist nationwide social and welfare services charity representing and supporting Jewish victims of Nazi oppression, and their dependants and descendants, living in Great Britain.
The AJR was established on 20 July 1941 [1] [2] to support and represent the interests of the estimated 70,000 Jewish Refugees from German-speaking countries [3] who fled to Britain to escape Nazi oppression before the Second World War. This number includes approximately 10,000 children who fled Nazi-controlled Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Britain on the Kindertransport between December 1938 and August 1939. [4]
As well as the refugees who arrived prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, AJR membership today includes several groups of post-war Jewish refugees from Europe including survivors from concentration camps and ghettos, child survivors as well as those who survived in hiding.
The children and grandchildren of refugees and survivors, the Second and Third Generations, are also entitled to be AJR members.
The AJR has specialist social and care workers dedicated to the daily needs of AJR members who require support and guidance on a wide range of social, welfare and care requirements.
As part of their nationwide programme of home visits, social care workers assess members' needs and, where appropriate, eligibility for a number of financial support schemes, designed to enable members to continue to live with dignity, comfort and security in their own homes for as long as possible. Meals-on-wheels deliveries are made once a week for members living in certain areas in London.
On behalf of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany the AJR administers emergency social, welfare and care funds, which can be used to pay for a number of services and essential items including dental treatment and specialist clothing as well as urgent house repairs, recuperative convalescence and respite breaks. The largest proportion of these funds are used to support the Homecare programme.
The AJR operates a nationwide network of 44 regional groups that offer members a unique opportunity to socialize with friends of similar backgrounds. Through this outreach programme the AJR has reunited former friends and acquaintances from more than 60 years ago.
In addition to organising local meetings, outings, coffee mornings, garden and tea parties, AJR outreach co-ordinators also arrange national and regional get-togethers.
The AJR offers advice and assistance with claims for Holocaust-era compensation and the restitution of appropriated assets. As well as information about pensions, property and insurance policies, help is available for enquiries related to dormant bank accounts and lump sum reparations paid by individual governments or commissions. Although the deadlines for many reparation schemes have expired it is still possible to apply to certain programmes.
In addition to this guidance, the AJR lobbied the British Government to ensure that certain compensation awards are exempt from income, capital gains and inheritance taxes and that lump sum reparations are disregarded when calculating entitlement to social security benefits.
Through the Claims Conference, AJR assisted former forced and slave labourers with their claims to receive compensation from the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future".
The Kindertransport (KT) is a special interest group of AJR. It represents those victims who arrived in Britain as children by Kindertransports fleeing from Nazi-occupied Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia prior to the start of the Second World War. The group arranges monthly meetings including guest speakers and regular activities. Sir Erich Reich (d. 2022) was chairman of the Kindertransport planning committee.
The Child Survivors Association (CSA) is also a special interest group of the AJR. The CSA committee arranges for guest speakers and the group offers mutual support in a relaxed social atmosphere where members can come together to discuss their experiences. The CSA is an affiliated member of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust.
The AJR is committed to the education of future generations about the Holocaust. As well as supporting educational, research and commemorative projects, the AJR has produced several resources that will help create the legacy of the Jewish refugees and survivors shedding light on how they rebuilt their lives and their remarkable contribution to Britain.
The AJR Charitable Trust has given grants to institutions to develop programmes for the formal teaching of the Holocaust in schools, colleges and universities. It has also made grants to organisations that arrange and organise commemorative events, programmes and exhibitions.
The AJR has produced a series of Holocaust Memorial Books that honour the families of individual AJR members living in different areas of the country.
The UK Holocaust Maplaunched in December 2021 [6] . As of April 2024 it contains 682 records, 22 collections, and 3 walking trails [7] . The map also contains co-curated collections from the Scottish Jewish Archive Centre, the Frank Falla Archive, the Wiener Holocaust Library, and the Anne Frank Trust UK.
The map was developed to highlight Britain’s relationship with the Holocaust at a national and local scale, as recommended for Holocaust education by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2019 [8] .
Alex Maws, Head of Educational Grants and Projects at the AJR, commented: “…In Britain, this guidance is often overlooked, in large part because teachers themselves are not aware of the many local aspects they could be including in their lessons. The UK Holocaust Map helps to rectify that.” [9]
All members of AJR receive the monthly AJR Journal which combines topical news analysis with feature articles as well as book, theatre and film reviews along with the ever-popular letters page. It also contains profiles of personalities with a connection to the refugee community and promotes forthcoming AJR events and activities.
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The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust that was to come. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.
Holocaust Memorial Day is a national commemoration day in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of the Jews and others who suffered in the Holocaust, under Nazi persecution. It was first held in January 2001 and has been on the same date every year since. The chosen date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union in 1945, the date also chosen for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and some other national Holocaust Memorial Days.
Gedenkdienst is the concept of facing and taking responsibility for the darkest chapters of one's own country's history while ideally being financially supported by one's own country's government to do so.
The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization funded by the Austrian government which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in form of the Gedenkdienst, supporting vulnerable social groups and sustainability initiatives in form of the Austrian Social Service and realizing projects of peace within the framework of the Austrian Peace Service. The Austrian Service Abroad is the issuer of the annually conferred Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award.
Sir Nicholas George Winton was a British stockbroker and humanitarian who helped to rescue Jewish children who were at risk of being murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Born to German-Jewish parents who had immigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Winton assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. On a brief visit to Czechoslovakia, he helped compile a list of children needing rescue and, returning to Britain, he worked to fulfill the legal requirements of bringing the children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport.
The March of the Living is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day observed in the Jewish calendar, thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
Sh'erit ha-Pletah is a Hebrew term for Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are considered Holocaust survivors as well. The definition has evolved over time.
The One Thousand Children (OTC) is a designation, created in 2000, which is used to refer to the approximately 1,400 Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied or threatened European countries, and who were taken directly to the United States during the period 1934–1945. The phrase "One Thousand Children" only refers to those children who came unaccompanied and left their parents behind back in Europe. In nearly all cases, their parents were not able to escape with their children, because they could not get the necessary visas among other reasons. Later, nearly all these parents were murdered by the Nazis.
The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief formerly Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF) which currently operates under the name World Jewish Relief (WJR), is a British charitable organisation and the main Jewish overseas aid organisation in the United Kingdom.
After Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933 and enacted policies that would culminate in the Holocaust, Jews began to escape German-occupied Europe and the United Kingdom was one of the destinations. Some came on transit visas, which meant that they stayed in Britain temporarily, while waiting to be accepted by another country. Others entered the country by having obtained employment or a guarantor, or via Kindertransport. There were about 70,000 Jewish refugees who were accepted into Britain by the start of World War II on 1 September 1939, and an additional 10,000 people who made it to Britain during the war.
United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on Holocaust remembrance called for the establishment of a programme of outreach on the subject of the "Holocaust and the United Nations" and measures to mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide. Since its establishment by the Department of Public Information in January 2006, the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme has developed an international network of civil society groups and a multi-faceted programme that includes: innovative online educational products, youth outreach, DVDs, seminars and training programmes, a film series, book signings, a permanent exhibit at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, and the annual worldwide observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
Anna Essinger was a German Jewish educator. At the age of 20, she went to finish her education in the United States, where she encountered Quakers and was greatly influenced by their attitudes, adopting them for her own. In 1919, she returned to Germany on a Quaker war relief mission and was asked by her sister, who had founded a children's home, to help establish a school with it. She and her family founded a boarding school, the Landschulheim Herrlingen in 1926, with Anna Essinger as headmistress. In 1933, with the Nazi threat looming and the permission of all the parents, she moved the school and its 66 children, mostly Jewish, to safety in England, re-establishing it as the Bunce Court School. During the war, Essinger established a reception camp for 10,000 German children sent to England on the Kindertransports, taking some of them into the school. After the war, her school took many child survivors of Nazi concentration camps. By the time Essinger closed Bunce Court in 1948, she had taught and cared for over 900 children, most of whom called her Tante ("Aunt") Anna, or TA, for short. She remained in close contact with her former pupils for the rest of her life.
Fridolin Moritz Max Friedmann was a progressive German-Jewish educator. He taught at the Odenwald School and was later headmaster at the Landschulheim Caputh, both in Germany. He accompanied several Kindertransports to England, remaining there himself in 1939. He began teaching at Bunce Court School in 1946, hired by Anna Essinger to replace her, but she decided to close the school in 1948. He then taught at several other places before retiring. In retirement, he gave lectures about Jewish history.
Kindertransport – The Arrival is an outdoor bronze memorial sculpture by Frank Meisler, located in the forecourt of Liverpool Street station in London, United Kingdom. It commemorates the 10,000 Jewish children who escaped Nazi persecution and arrived at the station during 1938–1939, whose parents were forced to take the decision to send them to safety in the UK. Most of the children never saw their parents again, as their parents were subsequently killed in concentration camps, although some were reunited. The memorial was installed in September 2006, replacing Flor Kent's bronze Für Das Kind, which was installed in 2003. It was commissioned by World Jewish Relief and the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR).
Children were hidden in various different ways during the Holocaust in order to save them from the Nazis. Most were hidden in Poland, though some were hidden in Western Europe. Not all attempts to save them were successful; for instance, German Jewish refugee Anne Frank was eventually captured in Amsterdam.
Bertha Lilian Bracey (1893–1989) was an English Quaker teacher and aid worker who organised relief and sanctuary for Europeans affected by the turmoil before, during and after the Second World War. These included many Jewish children threatened by the Holocaust and rescued in the operation known as the Kindertransport. In 2010, she was recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust.
Trevor Chadwick was a British humanitarian who was involved in the Kindertransport to rescue Jews and other refugee children in Czechoslovakia in 1938–1939 before World War II. After the Munich Agreement Nazi Germany annexed Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938 and occupied the whole Czech part of Czechoslovakia in 1939. The children were mostly resettled with families in the United Kingdom.
Ruth Emma Clara Louise Barnett, is a Holocaust survivor and educator.
