Refugees In England Research Articles

Blatant Injustice: The Story of a Jewish Refugee From Nazi Germany Imprisoned in Britain and Canada During World War II (review)

Reviewed by: Blatant Injustice: The Story of a Jewish Refugee from Nazi Germany Imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II Gregory Baum (bio) Walter W. Igersheimer. Blatant Injustice: The Story of a Jewish Refugee from Nazi Germany Imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II McGill-Queen’s University Press. xxix, 232. $39.95 Walter W. Igersheimer, a German Jew born in 1917, sought refuge in England in 1933 where he studied medicine. In June 1940, after the outbreak of the war, he was interned as an enemy alien and shipped with other German refugees to internment camps in Canada, where he was released in July 1941. He then went to Cuba where he waited two years for [End Page 581] an entry permit to the United States. While in Cuba, deeply troubled by his past experiences, he decided to write the story of his internment in order to denounce both the injustice of arresting refugees as enemy aliens and the inhumane conditions of the internment camps in Canada. The manuscript, tucked away in a drawer, was published sixty years later, edited and introduced by Ian Darragh, a young friend of the author. The book's title, Blatant Injustice, reveals the author's anger. In the introduction we read that two books on these internment camps have already been published by former inmates: Eric Koch's Deemed Suspect: A Wartime Blunder and Mark Lynton's Accidental Journey: A Cambridge Internee's Memoir of World War II. The titles of these books reveal that the two authors, both former inmates of the same camp as Igersheimer, did not experience their internment as blatant injustice. The introduction quotes Koch's assertion that 'most refugees accepted their arrest and internment as a reasonable precaution.' Igersheimer did not. He suffered greatly under the fate imposed on him by the British and Canadian governments and by the military staff in charge of the internment camps. I read the book very carefully to discover why Igersheimer's experience was so different from my own. I too was a German refugee in England, interned in May 1940, shipped to the Canadian internment camps and released in Canada – later than Igersheimer, in April 1942. Igersheimer's emigration to England in 1933 had not interrupted his middle-class standing. His father, a famous doctor in Germany, had been offered a professorship in Turkey, from where he eventually moved to a university position in the United States. His son Walter became a medical student in England, had English friends, felt part of British society, and looked forward to graduating as a medical doctor. As a doctor he wanted to serve in the British army as his part in the war against German fascism. For him the internment was a cruel interruption of his life and his life's purpose, and the lack of respect and the harsh conditions experienced in the camps were an insult to a decently brought up middle-class person. My experience was quite different. I arrived in England in May 1939, a boy not yet sixteen, working for a living for a poor farmer, leaving behind education and middle-class standing. When the police came to intern me, I leaned the manure fork against the wall, stepped out of the barn, and laughed as I was driven to the local prison. In Canada I spent the greater part of my internment in Camp A at Farnham, Quebec, where most of the inmates were non-Jewish German refugees: liberals, socialists, communists, priests, and pastors. Educators among them set up a camp school, and we, boys under twenty, studied for the junior matriculation granted by McGill University. Some of us woke up intellectually in the camp; we had great German teachers, we felt rescued from Europe at a time of crisis, and we slowly got ready for the adventure of adult life. We had a photo taken of the teachers and students of the camp school, which is now in the [End Page 582] possession of a former inmate, Vernon Brooks, Professor Emeritus of the University of Western Ontario, who is tracing the careers of the participants after their release. I am sorry that Igersheimer...

Elias and the counter-ego: personal recollections

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) achieved international recognition as a major sociologist only towards the end of his long life. As a German Jewish refugee in England, he did not even gain a secure academic post (at the University of Leicester) until he was 57. Apart from his magnum opus, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation [The Civilizing Process], which was published obscurely in 1939, all his other books and most of his essays were published after his formal retirement. These personal recollections date from that last highly productive part of his life, when he gradually attracted an extensive international following. They depict his foibles, some endearing, some that seemed perversely to stand in the way of his growing reputation.

Mortality and Cancer Incidence in Vietnamese Refugees in England and Wales: A Follow-Up Study

Mortality and cancer incidence were analysed in follow-up of a cohort of 3327 Vietnamese refugees who came to Britain after the end of the Vietnam war. Overall mortality of the refugees was very low compared to expectations based on England and Wales national rates: the all-cause standardized mortality ratio for males was 64 (95% confidence interval 52-77) and for females was 56 (95% confidence interval 44-71). This resulted particularly from very low mortality from ischaemic heart disease and colorectal cancer in each sex, and breast cancer in women. Mortality in the refugees was greatly increased for tuberculosis, cancer of the stomach in both sexes, cancers of the nasopharynx and liver in males, and peptic ulcer in females. Cancer incidence data showed in addition an excess of cancer of the penis. Despite the great trauma and stress of their flight, the only indication of a possible effect of the migration on the mortality of the refugees who survived to reach Britain was the excess of peptic ulcer deaths in women.

‘I was a stranger, and ye took me in’: Polish Religious Refugees in England and English Refugees in Poland in the Sixteenth Century

From the moment of Luther’s defiance of both Pope and Emperor at the Diet of Worms the sixteenth century became a period par excellence of cuius regio, eius religio, and of nowhere was this more true than for the very different societies of England and Poland. In England, for that time a highly centralized country, the nation’s religious fate oscillated wildly with the change of monarchs and their respective governments, mildly reformist under Henry VIII so long as Thomas Cromwell held power, indisputedly Protestant during the rule of the boy king, Edward VI, as indisputedly Roman Catholic in the equally short reign of Mary I, and then Protestant, as it turned out permanently, on the accession of Elizabeth. In Poland, where, because of its proximity to Wittenberg, Luther’s teachings began taking root at least within the German communities considerably earlier than in England, the spread first of Lutheranism and then Calvinism depended far more on the attitude of the nobility than of the monarch, though the succession of the more tolerant Sigismund Augustus in 1548 certainly accelerated the process. Apart from the five years between 1547 and 1553 in England, in neither country was life easy for converts to the Swiss version of Protestantism before 1560, and at different times both Polish and English Protestants suffered quite severe episodes of persecution: this essay traces the fortunes of the Poles who found a refuge in England and of the English who sought a temporary haven in Poland on account of their religion in the mid-sixteenth century.

German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation. Marion Berghahn

<i>German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation</i>. Marion Berghahn

Book Review: German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation

Book Review: German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation

German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation.

German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation.

Books

The transformation of Anglo‐Jewry Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England, Fairleigh Dickinson, University Press: Associate 3033–2 University Presses, 339 pp., £20.00. Elements of Jewish identity and survival Marion Berghahn, German‐Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation, Macmillan, 1984, ix and 294 pp., £20. N. Kokosalakis, Ethnic Identity and Religion: Tradition and Change in Liverpool Jewry, University Press of America, Washington, DC, 1982, xiv and 262 pp. Barry A. Kosmin and Caren Levy, Jewish Identity in an Anglo‐Jewish Community, Research Unit Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1983, 45 pp. Migrant women and work Annie Phizacklea (ed.), One Way Ticket: Migration and Female Labour, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1983, 157 pp., £4.95. Political ‘race’ and the class struggle Robert Miles and Annie Phizacklea, White Man's Country: Racism in British Politics, London and Sydney, Pluto Press, 1984, 184 pp., £4.95. Riot and responses Harris Joshua, Tina Wallace and Heather Booth, To Ride the Storm: The 1980 Bristol ‘Riot’ and the State, Heinemann, London, 1983, 221 pp., £6.95. Mary Seacole and her wonderful adventures Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee (eds.), The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Falling Wall Press, ISBN 0 905046 23 4, £3.95 p.b. Time longer than rope Roger D. Abrahams and John F. Szwed (eds.), After Africa: Extracts from British Travel Accounts and Journals of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries Concering the Slaves, their Manners, and Customs in the British West Indies, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983, 444 pp., 19 illustrations, index. ISBN 0–300–02748–6. £40 h.b., £10.95 p.b. A sourcebook for Muslim family law Keith Hodkinson, Muslim Family Law: A Sourcebook. Croom Helm (London and Canberra), 1984, £14.95. A new research resource Victor F. Gilbert and Darshan Singh Tatla (with an introductory essay by Colin Holmes), Immigrants. Minorities and Race Relations (A Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations presented at British and Irish Universities, 1900–1981), Mansell Publishing Ltd., London, 1984, 153 pp., £13.50. The education of ethnic minority children in British schools Sally Tomlinson (with the assistance of Hilary Tomes), Ethnic Minorities in British Schools, Heinemann Educational Books, London, 1984, pp. 154, £15.00 h.b., £6.50 p.b. Public policy and black people Aaron Haynes, The State of Black Britain, Roots Books, London, 1983, pp. 160, £3.75

James II in the light of his treatment of Huguenot refugees in England, 1685–1686

James II in the light of his treatment of Huguenot refugees in England, 1685–1686

Uses of Foreigners in the Church of Edward VI

to our pastor, M. de la Benseris, asking him to return with all speed to his pastoral charge. We thank you for your kindness in receiving him, helping him with money, and giving him a place among your 'theologiae professores.' We now ask you to send him back; because you have of good men, we have not. 1) This quotation from Elizabeth's reign reveals clearly a process that had its beginnings in the time of Edward VI. During the reigns of both Edward and Elizabeth those continental Protestants who were prominent enough to have any influence or position were often forced by persecution to seek refuge in the only truly Protestant country in Europe. As the quotation also shows, over the years England acquired plenty of good men. These men are mentioned from time to time in specialized studies of the Reformation, and biographical sketches for several are listed in the Dictionary of National Biography. As a group, however, working within the embryonic Church of England, they have, so far, been neglected. All the biographical information about these men cannot, of course, be included in a single article, but a report on some of the men that came over during the reign of Edward VI will indicate something of their functions in these formative years of the English Reformation. In I547, when Edward VI succeeded his father Henry VIII as king, there were few religious refugees in England. At no time during his reign had Henry departed so far from the teachings of the Roman