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Continental Britons: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Europe
An exhibition to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Association of
Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, Jewish Museum, Camden Town,
8 May–20 October 2002
This exhibition tells the story of the experiences and achievements of
the German-speaking Jewish refugees who fled from Nazi persecution
in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia and found refuge in
Britain. It takes place in the sixtieth anniversary year of the organization
that has represented the refugees since its foundation in summer
1941, the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain. The AJR is
collaborating with the Jewish Museum and the Wiener Library in creating
the exhibition.
Between 1933 and the outbreak of war in 1939, over 70,000
refugees from the Reich, the great majority of them Jewish, fled to
Britain, of whom some 50,000 settled here permanently. They were
the first of a swelling tide of immigrants to impinge on the largely
homogeneous and monocultural society of Britain before and immediately
after the Second World War, and their culture, their way of
life, and—not least—their accents made a considerable impact, especially
on the principal areas where they settled, such as north-west
London. The extraordinary contribution that they made to British
cultural, artistic, scientific, and intellectual life, as well as to the
British economy and British society in general, is already well
known: they changed the whole face of fields from psychoanalysis to
photo-journalism and from art history to publishing.
The exhibition seeks principally to record the lives and varied experiences
of ordinary Jewish refugees, starting with a brief retrospective
view of Jewish life in Germany and Austria, and going on to
their enforced emigration and their reception in Britain. The initial
phase of settlement was interrupted by the outbreak of war, which
for many sealed their separation from their homelands and, all too
often, from the family and friends they had left behind. This was followed
in summer 1940 by the mass internment of ‘enemy aliens’ by
the British government. But the exhibition then documents the
refugees’ strong record of war service, in the fighting forces, in essential
war work, and in civil defence.
The exhibition goes on to depict the ways in which the refugees
re-created their lives, both as individuals and as a group. It shows the
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