AJR 75th Anniversary

The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) was delighted to mark its 75^th anniversary with a reception at the Wiener Library where AJR Chairman, Andrew Kaufman, announced the installation of a plaque in honour of Hans and Eva Reichmann.

Unveiling the plaque, AJR Chairman, Andrew Kaufman, said: “It is a great personal honour as AJR Chairman to mark the 75^th anniversary of our venerable, indomitable and remarkable organisation and to formally announce the installation of a plaque on the Library’s Wall of Honour in perpetual memory of Hans and Eva Reichmann and their everlasting contributions to the flourishing of the refugees and the shaping of our understanding of the culture, heritage and history of the Jewish émigrés from Central Europe.

With Reichmann at the helm, the AJR cultivated relationships with MPs, bodies that dealt with Jewish/Christian relations and of course with many Anglo-Jewish organisations as well as with Jewish organisations in other countries. In so doing, he cemented the AJR as the representative body of the Jewish refugees from the German-speaking lands in Britain. He was prominent among those who advocated reconciliation with democratic forces in West Germany that rejected Germany’s Nazi past, and was active in influencing Jewish attitudes to Germany.”

Born in 1900, Hans Reichmann was already an important figure at the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, the representative organisation of the Jews in Germany before 1933. After the Nazis’ siezed power, he worked for the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, the representative body under the Nazis, courageously taking up an exposed position, and was detained in Sachsenhausen after Kristallnacht.

He was an exceptionally able administrator, and after the war (1949) became Joint Secretary of the United Restitution Organisation and Secretary of the Council of Jews from Germany (of which the AJR was the British affiliate, alongside its counterparts in Israel and the USA). In the same year he became Vice-Chairman of the AJR when the founding chairman of the AJR, Adolf Schoyer, returned to Germany, taking over at one of the most critical junctures in its history. During the war – the AJR was indeed founded once its principal initiators had been freed from internment – it had been pretty powerless and its scope for action restricted. But after the war major responsibilities rained in on it, and these mostly fell to Reichmann to resolve. It was at the end of the 1940s and in the 1950s that the AJR cemented its place as the representative body of the Jewish refugees from the German-speaking lands in Britain. This was the crucial time when the whole issue of restitution came to the fore and with Reichmann at the helm, the AJR cultivated relationships with MPs, bodies that dealt with Jewish/Christian relations and of course with many Anglo-Jewish organisations like World Jewish Relief as well as with Jewish organisations in other countries.

Eva Reichmann, née Jungmann, was a considerable figure in her own right. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on National Socialism at the LSE. It was published as Hostages of Civilisation: A Study in the Social Causes of Anti-Semitism in 1945, translated into German as Die Flucht in den Haß, and is regarded as one of the pioneering studies in its field when there was little else of any academic standard available. She rose to become director of the research department at the Wiener Library and was a respected scholar. She made frequent visits to Germany, speaking in support of reconciliation during ‘Brotherhood Week’ (Woche der Brüderlichkeit).

Image: German Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Dr Peter Ammon, AJR Chairman, Andrew Kaufman, and AJR CEO, Michael Newman.