Britain’s ‘lucky’ Jews
“A third of British Jews don’t see a future for them in the United Kingdom, and half of them have recently considered leaving the country, according to a poll published Monday and conducted by the NGO Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).”
This was the first line of an article in the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Ironically, this article came out just a day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
I say ironically because if you were Jewish and living in Britain in 1939, you were a lucky Jew. My grandparents were some of those lucky Jews.
My grandmother (of blessed memory) just passed away this past month at over 100 years of age. She emigrated to Canada when my dad was just 3, in 1951, but despite living in Canada for most of her life, she was a true life-long Brit.
My grandmother lived through the war years in England. And she was an enormous fan of the monarchy her entire life. She was about the same age as Queen Elizabeth and watched as this impossibly young woman took the crown and steered her nation for a staggering 70 years. Someone once asked her why she cared so much for the Royal family. She said that she preferred to be under the monarchy than under fascism or Nazi Germany. And she was a hundred percent right. The British government not only fought to protect its citizens — all citizens — from Hitler as he desperately tried to invade Britain, but they actively participated in the Kindertransport programme.
The United Kingdom took in thousands of children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. 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. Many of them stayed in Britain and built lives there. Their descendants make up part of what is British Jewry today.
The Kindertransport 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.
In stark contrast, back in the United States, the Wagner–Rogers Bill was introduced in Congress, which would have increased the quota of immigrants by bringing to the US a total of 20,000 refugee children, but it did not pass. Let that sink in.
The United States was not the only country that didn’t want to save any Jewish children or adults. Canada — where I was born — was not only uninterested, but felt the compelling need to say: “none is too many” when asked how many Jews they would take in during the war.
Unlike these two countries — which became a haven for Holocaust survivors POST war — the British government placed NO numerical limit on the programme. ZERO. By the time World War II broke out and borders were sealed, about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country. That’s 10,000 Jewish souls, and you know what they say about saving just one soul.
My grandmother’s family was one of these foster families. They hosted 2 young sisters from Austria, whose parents were still stuck in Europe. They didn’t speak a word of English and my grandmother and her sister didn’t speak any German, but these girls spent the duration of the war with her family. And my great-grandmother was directly responsible for saving their parents, who managed to escape and were able to reunite with their daughters. That, though, is an incredible story that I blogged about in a previous post.
So my grandmother was justified in her loyalty to The Crown. She lived through the Blitz, through the bombing and the shelters and the rations and the death tolls. She lived through the news that the Nazis had invaded Channel Islands on June 30, 1940 which, although geographically closer to France, was still part of the UK. The Nazis remained in control of the islands until the end of World War II. I think every Brit was very aware of just how close the Nazis were to invading the UK. But the British Army and the RAF fought valiantly to keep Britain — and all of its citizens — safe. And they lost many many young men for their bravery and sacrifice.
Indeed, if you were a British Jew, you were a lucky Jew. You were one of the only European Jews that wasn’t being hunted down like an animal.
But now hunting season is back.
And British Jews aren’t so lucky this time around.
50 percent of British Jewry is thinking about leaving. (67% of adults 18 to 24 years of age and 63% of adults 25-49 years of age agreeing with the sentiment.) These numbers are staggering. More than half of Britain’s Jews feel the target on their back and the question is WHY?
Why is the country that not just protected them but reached out to protect foreigners at the cusp of WWII abandoning them now? Why are their police turning a blind eye to the violent protests that won’t allow a Jewish man wearing a kippah to walk home from synagogue? Why are British Jews hiding their Jewish necklaces and not wearing their kippot in public? Why am I reading articles about London’s Jewish families removing their mezuzot because they fear what will happen if they don’t?
Don’t say this is about the war, about the conflict, about what Israel is doing to protect its borders and its people. (And let’s remember the hostages that are STILL in captivity, in terrible and horrible conditions.) Because that is just an excuse.
The truth of the matter is that antisemitism never went away. Like a dormant cancer that waits for the perfect moment to rear its ugly head, the trend of Jew-hatred is not just rearing its head, but it’s shouting out to the world that there’s a new “Jew problem” and it’s encouraging everyone out there to get on the bandwagon. The October 7th massacre was just the excuse they needed to get on the streets and raise their pitchforks.
The “never again” mantra that we thought (and hoped) would remind people what the Holocaust was responsible for had stopped working decades ago. How do I know this? By watching all these terrorists-in-training firebomb a synagogue, or a Jewish school, or a Jewish restaurant in countries thousands of miles away from Israel. The business owner in NYC is not anywhere closely related to what’s going on in Gaza. Neither is the synagogue in Australia. A young pre-teenage girl in France who was attacked and raped had nothing to do with Gaza. But these incidents all have ONE thing in common.
They are all Jews.
The year 2025 is masquerading as a modern-age. We are living a futuristic times. We have technologies that no one could have possibly imagined 30 years ago. Electric cars, missions to Mars, computer chips that are the size of a dot. Our medical advancements are staggering. But underneath all that, when it comes to humanity, it’s just a year that is living in the shadow of 1940.
The dirty word of the year is Zionism.
It has been stripped of its meaningful, and patriotic, and love-for-Israel status and had been turned into a dirty word, a word that incites uneducated indoctrinated jihadist wannabes into raging lunatics who are donning the Hamas headband with as much pride as Miss Universe dons her tiara.
The Jewish nation in the Diaspora lives quietly and purposefully. They are connected to their communities and they mind their own business. They are involved in charities and community initiatives. They not interested in ruffling any feathers. The fact that Britain has caused its vibrant Jewish community to contemplate leaving is shocking.
Historically, the Jews were expelled from England 1290 in the reign of King Edward 1st. Some 365 years later, in 1656, they were allowed to resettle under Cromwell. While the UK is not actively banning Jews from living there, not is it actively expelling them, they aren’t doing much to protect them or their basic human rights to live there either. As we have seen historically thoughout the ages, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump from withholding protection to outright expulsion.
Britain’s government, and The Crown — with all due respect — owe their Jews more than their turning a blind eye to the antisemitism that has been rising like a tsunami within their borders. Jihadists have been taking over the streets and like they say, the inmates are running the asylum.
Please, please, find your way back to humanity, to the time when you actively sought to protect our people. Return to those times when you bravely took in 10,000 Jewish children who were destined to die in the gas chambers, when others wouldn’t. Find that same courage and determination to fight to be on the right side of history.
You did it once before, you can do this again.