The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 2010 352pgs.

A Hidden Inheritance:a Jewish Family and History Saga..  His uncle Iggie who was living in Tokyo with his husband had the natsuka collection. It consisted of 264 pieces with a vitrine. Ignace von Ephrussi had this collection that was bought by a cousin  of his grandfather Charles Ephrussi who gave it as a wedding gift to her great grandfather Victor von Ephrassi..  In 1857 They were a Jewish family from Odessa from where the 2 oldest sons moved to Vienna  to run a branch of the firm in the Austro Hungarian Empire. In 1871 they spread to Paris just after the Prussian siege, where the family tomb was in the Monotreme cemetery. Odessa was a city inside the Russian Pale. In 1860 the family in Odessa was the greatest grain merchant.

.1859 Commodore Perry opened up Japan for trade

1860 In Vianne  Emile and Isaac Pereire were 2 Sepharidi brothers who were magnates in Railroad Building and Property

In Paris Baron Hauseman, the  city planner spent 15 years demolishing and rebuilding the city.

The Ephrussi children had tutors to teach tem Latin, Greek, German, French and English.  Ability to speak languages gave you class allowing you to trade in Europe and to move up in social situations. They looked to invest in oil in Baku and gold in Lake Baikal.  Charles was an art collector and had a collection of 40 Impressionists paintings.. He was well received in all the solons despite the novelists' objection to them being Jews.

Phillip Sichel went to Japan and found people desperate to sell sumeria swords, heirlooms and nutsaki items for money. Before Perry there were very erotic art pieces available and erotic nutsaki. Charles wrote a biography of who he considered the greatest German artist.  Prounst wrote about the art he saw at Charles' home. Proust represented Charles in his books as Swan. 1889 Kipling was entranced by Nutsami when he visited Japan.  1882 .In response to the Tsarist pogroms against Jews  the Ephrussis threatened to flood the market with grain

1886 Drumond published an anti semitic newspaper "La France Juive".  Only after the French revolution could Jews in France own land and get full citizenship.  Maurice Ephrussi married Beartrice de Rothschild.

The Dreyfus Affair  lasted 12 years and resulted in the outbreak of antisemitism.  Supporting Dryfus meant you were "Jewish first and only French second."

Zola was accused of libel and fled to England but Dryfus was cleared in 1906.

1863 only 8000 Jews lived in Vienne but when Jews were given civil rights by the Emperor to trade and own property by 1890 118,000 were living there . They came from Bohemia , Monrovia Galicia and Hungary where living conditions were abject. By 1910 only Warsaw and Budapest had larger Jewish communities. In Vienna 71% of the financiers and 65% of the lawyers and 59% of the doctors were Jewish.  De Neue Freir Press was owned and edited and written by Jews. 

1962 when the Danube flooded Vienne the Ephrussia family loaned the government money to construct embankments and bridges. Vienna university was  a hotbed of anti semitism and some Jews became excellent fences to deal with duels. The Emperor spoke out against antisemitism.  There was a high incidence of suicide by Jews 3 of the Wittgeanstein brothers as well as Gustav Malhars brother took took their own lives.  Also Crown Prince Rudolf and his lover Marie Veteera in 1889.

Joseph Roth set novels to Vienna during the last days of the Empire. The Ephrassi registered their marriages at the Rabbinate and gave money to Jewish charities  but never went to synagogue. They did not see why others needed Zion. in 1899  Vienne had its own Jewish orphanage hospitals and 22 synagogues .  During WW1 the family had a bank in London, Paris, Vienna and Petrograd. Where did this fit into the war? 100,000 Jews fled Galicia and many came to Leopoldvillle in Vienna. 

1914 Oct PM Carl von Sturgkh assasisnated 

1916 November Franz Joseph died aged 86 he had been on the throne since 1848 and Emperor Carl replaced him. Joseph Redlich predicted defeat of Austria Germany. 

1918 Oct Chezkeslovakia  declares independence and the influenza plague. At war's end Karl fled to Switzerland. Vienna was the capital of the empire of 52 million and was now in charge of 6 million citizens. 

Rilke the  poet was an important part of Aunt Elizabeth's life and when Rilka died she sent the letters back to the family. Rilka wrote a book  paying homage to Rodin.  1924 Elizabeth received her doctorate at Vienna and a Rockafellow scholarship to go to NY, one  of  the first given to a woman.. Elizabeth married Henry de Waal in Paris in the Anglican church.  Iggie was a Jewsih banker in Germany during the depression.

Engelbert Dollfuss suspended the Austrian constitution under pressure from Hitler. This was to be a plebiscite to see if Austria wanted to join the Reich and Jews gave money to support the NO but the day before the plebesite the Nazi's marched in.  The Germans swarmed through the apartment . There were already maps available of the solid German nation stretching from Alsace Lorraine to the Baltic.  The "proper" plebiscite was held where Jews could vote. Several thousand Jews were sent to Dachau.  Jews lost their jobs in music as teachers and lawyers . The little English church was baptising Jews and 180 Jews commited suicide.. The Sturmer was sold in Vienna streets.

The contents of the Ephrusssi palace were distributed , old master paintings to the museum, some sold on auction. Some books to the Vienna library, some to Berlin and some to Hitlers private library in Linze. Judiaca to Alfred Rosenberg's Centre to prove how wild Jews were by this Nazi ideology.  Jews queued up outside embassies to get visas but they became targets here.for the SS/  Eichman set up the Central office for Jewish emigration in the Rothschild Palace.`` The land of Dichter and Denker became the land of Richter and Henker" 

In England his grandmother Elizabeth tutored the neighbours children in Latin.  Uncle Iggie arrived from the US as an Army intelligence officer as he spoke German and French.

After the war when Elizabeth went to Vienna to see what she could recover the maid Anne was still living in the house.now American headquarters.She had  hidden the nutsake and Elizabbeth brought it back.

Before the Anschluss there were 185000 Jews in Austria only 4000 remained. Dr Karl Ressner, a lawyer and post war President, claimed that Austria was the first victim of Nazism and had no responsibility for the Nazi plunder between 1938 and 1945.

Iggie was working for Bunge the agribusiness company  after the war and receiving the nutake made him decide to accept the offer of a position in Tokyo. 

In 1923 Japan had survived a bad earthquake. In 1947 Jan Morris wrote the Phoenix Cup on Japan which was under US occupation.  Here Mc Author was the Governor and decided that the work day would be 8 hours and that women would get the vote. 1951 Oct Truman sacked Mc Author and the Japanese lined the streets to watch his departure. 

90 years after the nutsake left Yokohama, people could identify who made the pieces . Now in 1970 Iggie put a number on the bottom of each piece and the list of names of the artists.

The writer visited Odessa and saw Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin 192 steps. For 50 years a Soviet statue had been in Odessa now the Catherine the Great Statue was restored.  He found the Efrussi house and the place where the bank had been in its stairwell had the symbol of wheat on the banister showing that they were grain merchants.  

When Iggie died the nutsaki was sent to him and he set it up in his London flat for his 3 children to play with them.

The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winschester 2001 301 pg.

 This is the  story  of William  Smith, the development  of geology and the first  geological  map.   26/10/2023

1815 A map delineation of the strata of England Wales and parts of Scotland by William Smith culminated in the work of Darwin who developed the theory of evolution. . This map was one of the great projects that can be compared to the creation of the Oxford Dictionary, Manhattan Project and solving the Human Genome. William Smith imagined the underside of the whole country.

1769 to 1839.He was the orphaned son of the village blacksmith from Churchill Oxfordshire yet soon after the map was made he was in financial ruin. This was a consequence of his being working class.  Eventually he was acknowledged as the founding father of the new science of Geology.

 1819 in London alone there were 20 debtors' prisons and he was in Southwark.

1650 James Isshuir the Irish Prelat declared that the world had been born at 9am. Monday morning October 4004BC  This dogma was accepted  when Smith started his work. The origin of the planet and mankind was accepted as incomplete and divinely inspired.  Now Smith's discoveries triggered a collision between religious belief and scientific method and led to Charles Darwin theories. 

  Watt received the patent for his steam engine as well as Josiah Wedgewood potting and Richard Arkwright's cotton spinning frame. There was a mania for canal building brought on by the coal and iron industry.

1755 Samuel Johnson's great dictionary came out.

1787 the Enclosure Act was passed so that farming methods improved at an extreme rate but with industrialization Britain could no longer feed herself..

Oxfordshire pound stones this was a deep sea fossil that dairymaids used.  Smith saw these and it was realized that they had been living creatures.

1759 The Duke of Bridgewater built a canal of 42 miles from his mine to the Mersey, reducing the cost of his coal by 50%. . A single horse putting a barge could pull 80 times the weight of a horse pulling a cart.

1792 South Welsh coal developed and could float to Bristol . Smith worked in the geology of the coal mines and the canals and saw that the pattern of rocks  was always the same from top to bottom. Noting the fossils he found in the different strata and he could predict that there was a universal phenomenon.  He was first employed as a surveyor on the Somerset Coal Canal to get coal out of Wales. From what he saw above ground he could predict what was underground. The science of Stratigraphy was born. Fossil collecting had become a fashion and many gentlemen of leisure went into it.  As the beds go up we first see primitive creatures, higher up they are more developed.  This system worked all over the nation and so did the rest of the world. Thus one could predict what rocks were to be found, others were using these ideas and proving them correct.

1799William Smith was fired from the Somerset coal Company. This was a job that paid him 450 pounds per year. After this he would never have full time employment. He had contract jobs and looked to build canals on beds of impermeable rocks . He came into demand by farmers, who needed help to drain swamplands.  At the same time Smith travelled the whole country to map it geologically.

Thomas Coke of Holkham took over running his estate and breeding better pigs.

John Farey became Smith's first apprentice .

Benjamin Richardson warned Smith that if he did not publish his ideas others would steal them. so a book called Accurate Definition of Strata was to be published by John Debrettte whose company went broke in 1802.  So Smith's book was not published. Debretts Book of  Peerage was first published in 1769.

Jurassic Oolites are rocks ideal for sculptors  Other Jurassic sandstones are ideal for building. Stonefield slate, Here the rock is exposed by removing the pemble that covers it. The first frost of the season caused the slate to shatter apart for quarrying, otherwise it is covered till next year. Smith's map took 14 years to complete. He had the reputation of wandering the country with scholarship and brio and his nickname was Strata. The Geological Society were snobs and did not accept him or Farey, a farmer's son, as members..

1778 Sir Joseph Banks was one of his supporters. Banks was the one who encouraged the Bounty Expedition of Captain William Bligh to Tahiti and the first to bring the mango to England..

1807 Smith bought an old quarry in Combe to work oolite limestone but the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo followed with a recession and this cut demand for building and he went bankrupt. 

1815 400 copies of the map were printed today there are about 40 still in existence.. It took till 1865 till the Geological Society finally made amends and recognized that all the work and credit belonged to Smith.

The London Natural History Museum in Kensington London has more than 9 million fossils.

Debtors Prison, this was meant to be a deterrent . Men of means  signed bills .Those for whom they signed knew that they could land in prison if the bill was unpaid. These prisons were usually populated by middle classes.. Despite his reputation he was penniless , homeless and out of work.

1817 William Fitten helped Smith get his reputation back. The Scarborough philosophical Society finances the paleontology of Yorkshire and build the City Museum there which Smith designed showing the progress of fossil development.

1920  Smith finally became a member of the Geographical Society with the help of William Vernon

.1831 Smith received the Wollaston medal as the father of English Geology given at the Oxford Sheldonian theatre.  King William IV granted Smith a pension of 110 pounds a year. This pension also covered his wife when he died  in  1839 and was buried in St. Peters Church ,Northampton . All Geological maps are based on his work.

John Carey  published maps from 1783 and was commissioned by the Postmaster General to publish maps of British Roads. 1805 he produced the ordnance survey. He collaborated with Smith who drew his maps on Careys maps.

Charles Lyell a Scottish geologist published his major books called "Principles of Geology" between 1830 and 1833

Geological Time

 

65  million years ago. Death of the dinosaurs

140  Cretaceous.

201 Jurassic south coast east of Cornwall

245 Triassic 

290 Permian   lifeless rocks

360 Carboniferous coal a period of thick rainforests 

420 Devonian From Devon age of fishes.

440 Silurian

500 Ordovician part of Wales.

540 Cambrian  means Wales

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Spare by Prince Harry 2023 400pg

16/9/23

J. R. Moehringer is a journalist, memoirist, and novelist. was the ghostwriter of this book.  This book is different from the dozen's of books written about the Royals.  Also I have a relative in London who is helping Hugh Grant, Elton John and other celebrities as well as  Prince Harry to sue the tabloid press 

Even the royal family referred to the 2 princes as the heir and the spare. His name was Henry but he was always called Harry in the family. Faulkner " The past is never dead its not even past.

They were all at Balmoral Castle in Scotland when Dianne was killed and he describes that he never came out of the trauma of that . They boys knew that Dianes life was miserable in the Royal family. however both boys never objected to Charles taking on Camilla as they understood he needed a companion. He describes being at the boarding schools

His history teacher kept asking him questions that he could not answer and said he should know more about his family.

He described that Charles and William could not travel on the same plane as the were both heirs to the throne. After Diane's death he went with his father to South Africa and met Mandela. He was on the sight of the Battle of Islandwana and learned its history and they is not much to be proud of the British defeating so many natives and the largest number of Victorian crosses were handed out for this.

 The book starts at Frogmore in the gardens where his mother is buried and where he and Megan Fled in Jan 2020. He contemplates his mother Diane and that his grandfather Prince Phillip was the loudest advocate and actually brokered Charles's marriage to her. After Edward VIII abdicated he and Wallace were obsessed with being buried at Frogmore . Before he went to fight in Afghanistan he had to declare where he wanted to be buried and Harry chose Frogmore.

1984  Harry was born. Balmoral to him was always a Disneyland that he loved visiting. Balmoral has 50 bedrooms. He mentions that Queen Victoria was shot at 8 times in 8 different occasions by 7 different subjects. William was born the heir and he the Spare born 2 years after him. He was Plan B , the shadow the support, a back up distraction, a spare part, kidney, bone marrow perhaps.

1997  August Diane died almost exactly a year after the divorce was finalized. Sarah Ferguson had clipped 2 locks of the dead Diane hair and given one to each boy. At Ludgrove  in Berkshire boarding school everyone knew who was circumcised and he was part of the Roundheads versus the Cavaliers who were not.

1997 Nov. He went with his father to meet Mandela and the Spice Girls to get positive publicity, for Charles. The Spice Girls compared their campaign against sexism to Mandela's against apartheid. In Kwa Zula he heard the historian David Rattray about the story of the battle of Rorkes Drift where 11 British soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross the greatest number ever in one battle.

Charles and William could never be on the same flight in royal travel , the 2 heirs had to be on separate flights  but with him it made no difference who he accompanied. There were rumor's that  red haired Major Hewitt was his father and not Charles. William never liked that Diane dressed the 2 boys in the same outfits. like Alice in Wonderland twins. 

1999 he spent time in Okavango. 2002 the press were full of stories that were lies, his own father and Camilla had given them, they were hoping to get good publicity for  themselves, a public sacrifice of the Spare. He says he and Margaret should have been good friends as  they had much in common but he only realized that very late, both Spares. 

2002 The Queen Golden Jubilee The Queen was moving her feet in time to the music but had ear plugs in her ears not to suffer the noise.

2002 At the funeral of the Queen mother , placed on top of her coffin was the crown that had the Koh-i-Noor  the largest diamond seen by human eyes, it was cursed for men so only women wore it. She was 102 years old and survived her husband George VI  by 59 years.

Eton was founded by Henry VI. Eighteen British Prime Ministers had been there and 37 winners of the Victoria Cross.   At school he took every cigarette offered and graduated to weed. He agreed for the boys to give him a haircut but they shaved his head and the press called him Harry the skinhead. His school reports were public domain. He had to take part in a play and discovered being Royal was not that far from being on stage. He completed his Eton education in 2003 with help of special tutors his father paid for.

In a gap year he went to friend's of Diane's lived in the Australian outback at  the Tooloombila cattle station in Southern Queensland. He worked as a jackeroo, was a good rider for chasing cattle learned that a fat is a  plump cow ready for slaughter , a steer was a bull that should be castrated, a weaner was a calf newly split from his mother. Even there an intruder came looking for him and the local police nabbed him.

2004 he spent a few months in Lesotho at a time when  it was the epicenter of AIDS and was one vast orphanage pandemic. The average life expectancy there was 42.  A quarter of Lesotho adults were HIV positive. He was taken by Prince Seelso  on ponies to see schools at remote villages Samakong at an altitude of 7000 feet. Later staying in Cape Town he called a girl that he met at the Berkshire polo club who was totally immune from the common affliction called the throne syndrome. Chelsy became his girlfriend. He met her parents and they got on very well. She was his girlfriend while in the army and they were on the phone together all the time. 

In Botswana he was with Mike and Teej doing research on the fauna and flora. Teej's grandfather was Robert Ardrey (1908 to 1980 )who wrote the books African Genesis and wrote movie scripts.

2005 April  death of Pope John Paul II .Camilla and Charles had to postpone their wedding a few times as the pope died leaving a bad karma if the married just after his funeral. After Harry turned 18 he asked to see photos of Princess Diane death. He was shown shots by paparazzi as their camera's were confiscated by the Paris police.

By being in the military he avoided the prying eyes of the press. He had to write exams to get into Sandhurst.  Boot Camp is a benign name for what happens when you are pushed to the limits of your physically , mentally and spiritually. They were taken to the Brookwood Military Cemetery where the poem They shall not grow old by Laurence Binyon 1914.  Harry  was Second  lieutenant  Wales of the Blues and Royals and at the passing out ceremony in 2006, in front of the Queen she hadn't taken part in this type of ceremony for decades.

One photo of Harry fetched $30,000, for the paparazzi. Once when he left a pub from the back door he got into the car's boot to avoid the paps, something his mother used to do. The tenth anniversary of Dian's death a concert was put on in aid of AIDs sufferers at Wembley stadium. He would go to Botswana to meet up with Chelsy.

2007 Britain had 7000 troops in Afghanistan. Having a prince in the army is a big PR for the military.  He managed to get sent to the war and flew into Kandahar airport. he met up with British, Dutch, French and American troops. He felt very comfortable in the company of Gurkhas who had been recruited from Nepal and had fought in every  British war for the last 2 centuries. When they weren't escorting him fattened him up on goat curry and called him Saab. Some pilots were women. During action they wounded a boy on a motorcycle patched him up and returned his vehicle, some felt he had been a pawn in a Taliban feint. You get details on the Afghanistan war but then a small Australian magazine outed him and then it went on the media about Harry in Helmand province. He would have been a target and the army did not want other to die because of his presents.

2007 The Rugby world cup finals were in England  and South Africa won. The semi final took place in Paris and Harry asked to see the tunnel where his mother died and found it to be a short straight tunnel.

In Cape Town the press always knew where Chelsy was and Harry's security guard explained to her brother how to remove the tracking device under the car.  Harry later was trained to be a helicopter pilot and describes that landing it is not easy as you have "hover monkeys" the propeller wind that blows down, rushes up again when it hits the ground and you can loose control. He was trained to fly Apaches and qualified. He was asked and said since the age of 12 when his mother died he was not afraid of dying. 2010 The passing out ceremony he was given his wings by his father.

Harry was now 25 years old considered a watershed age and the queen had become monarch at the age. Back in Botswana he was aware of Climate Change, poaching, drought, fire and asked to be a global megaphone on this,.

2010 William and Kate married in Westminster Abbey where more than 3000 poets, scientists and saints are buried underneath including Dickens, Chaucer 13 kings and 18 queens. His girlfriend Chelsy was at this  wedding but not near him for fear of the press.

Harry went with a group of army veterans to the North Pole but returned for the wedding, he got frost nipped ears cheeks and the tip of his penis. On later trips to the South pole he put on an insulating pad there. Apparently it is nipped  worse if you are not circumcised.

 Rebecka Brooks was finally disgraced for the Hacking Scandal in News of the World yet continues to be a powerful ally of Rupert Murdock. Hacking peoples phone is blatant criminality.  This was to do with the Milly Dowler Murder and her phone being hacked. This newspaper was closed as advertises were talking of fleeing and readers of boycotting it . In ran from 1843 and was closed in 2011. After his relationship with Chelsy ended he had other girlfriend but were all exposed by the paparazzi and not prepared to put up with that.   

2013  He returned to Afghanistan as a Captain and was flying Apaches, till the Taliban heard about his presents on the base. On the Apache they would  follow a Taliban pair on motor bike and they had to kill them when they were not near civilians. Every kill was on video. Motorbikes were the chosen vehicle of the paps all over the world. harry was on 6 missions that ended in taking human life and were all deemed justifiable. He was able to show accountability and had killed 25 Taliban. 

 He toured Angola areas poisoned by land mines a thing that had been his mother passion. At this stage he seemed to be a confirmed bachelor, an outsider even a non person in the family.

He went for a march to the South Pole with wounded veterans which is an altitude of almost 10,000 feet enough to give altitude sickness. There is a tradition to drink booze from prosthetic legs when you achieve your goal. Later he went to a wedding of a friend in the States and visited Graceland's Elvis Presley's home which he had actually for  bought for Elvis's mother.  At the wedding they all wore blue sued shoes in honor of Elvis.

2014 July 1st  Dianne's birthday at the Tower of London the public were asked to come and spread  888,346 paper poppies on the grass  to commemorates that number of British and  Commonwealth soldiers that died in WW1. This was the day that the Battle of the Somme took place. On Flanders Fields where poppies blow the poem by John McCrae. Thus the poppy became the symbol of WW1 

Harry was involved in organizing Paralympics for soldiers from all over the world  at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park. This was the start of  the Invictus Games, he had met dozens of people with post traumatic stress and realized that he also had it. The press were now gunning for William as he refused to let them photograph his family and he had made a mildly anti Brexit speech.  

2015 Harry heard people reading the tabloid press discussing if Harry would ever marry and whether he was gay. He finally met a therapist that confirmed that he had post traumatic stress. He was encouraged to take up his passion and went on a 4 month trip,  to educate himself on the truth of the ivory war in Botswana, Namibia and S. Africa starting at the Kruger Park. Rhino number were diminishing and Chinese and Vietnamese syndicates were incentivizing the poaching.

2016 July A mutual friend suggested Megan Markle who happened to be in London. Harry looked  her up on Google and could not stop looking at her pictures so they met in a restaurant in a quiet room of Soho House. She had had several careers Lifestyle writer ,  travel writer, corporate spokesperson, entrepreneur , activist model, had been all over the world, worked for the US embassy in Argentina besides being on the telenovela Suits, and was fierce on women issues.  Later they both arrived separately and had a week in Botswana together.  In London met her again at Soho hotel by coming in the back door through the freight lift.

He took her to Royal Lodge to meet Fergie and the Queen happened  to be there and he had to teach her to curtsey before she entered. She hadn't Googled anything and did not know who Prince Andrew was. Megan hugged most strangers. Comment-    The Royal family does not have any difficulty breeding like Pandas do, are expensive to conserve, ill adapted to any modern environment but are interesting and nice to look at.

2016 Nov. The Palace announced officially that Megan was his girlfriend as the press was printing all sorts of rumors  already and hounding them and the racist slurs began and that she was a divorcee. Private investigator were being put onto Megan but the Palace did not want Harry to sue the press for lies. One headline read Harry's girl  on Pornhub, these were images taken illegibly from Suits. The press was onto her everywhere and her family and friends and their neighbors  had no peace. The press might so poison the public that Megan could be harmed. Later the Sun ran a small hidden correction for the Porn story. Charles in the past had been ridiculed for his warning on Global Warming.

As a grown man Harry had to ask his grandmother the Queen permission to marry. The 1772 Royal Marriage Act or the Succession to Crown Act of 2013. Love took a back seat to the law. His brother Willian tried dissuading him from marrying Megan. Neither William or Charles wanted someone new grabbing the limelight of the monarchy.   The Corgi's had belonged to Queen Victoria and were their offspring. On the death of the Queen they were taken by Sara and Prince Andrew who live  together on Royal Lodge, Winsor Castle even though they divorced in 1996.

Megan left Suits after 7 seasons, shut down her website, abandoned social media at the behest of the Palace. The press spread an article that Meg had shown support for #metoo but Kate not. This comparison upset Kate. 2018 The Queen formally approved their marriage. Suits married Meg off the show. Diane's situation had gone from bad t worse when she showed she was better in connecting with people and better being royal than she had a right to.

1918 May Harry and Megan married at Winsor Castle and were given  the hidden Frogmore Cottage near Frogmore house. This had belonged to Queen Charlotte the wife of George III. 2019 Feb. The  Guardian Headline had written "Tormenting Meghan Markle has become a national sport that shames us". They later went to France and stayed at the home of Alton John and his husband David and their 2 boys. Alton had been working on his memoir for years and it was published in 2019 Oct. The Mall had paid Alton 100,000 pounds for lies they published about him.

2019 Harry ,Megan and baby Archie (born 2019 May) toured S. Africa on the Queen's behalf. In England the Daily Mail said that Megan had gone from slavery to royal in 150 years  and that she was a "gold digger" There was a document that Harry sent his father that was released to the press, it is possible that people working at the palace exposed it for payment.

2020 Jan. A Statement put out that Harry and Magen would no longer represent the Queen. He was not given a choice on this,  apparently many in the Palace saw him as an existential threat. Now in  Canada the British Government cancelled his security staff and it would cost $6 million a year to hire. Megan had a miscarriage. Later  a daughter Lilibet was born in 2021 June. Today 2023 they live in Montecito California.

Katinka by Elizabeth Graver 2023 293pg A family saga of Sephardi Jews

 This is in a novel form but documents important events of history that happened. 11/8/23

The story starts in Constantinople in 1907. They live on the top of the hill in Fener, their neighbours where Greek diplomats Armenian doctors , Jewish bankers and traders like her father. The daughter of these and a few wealthy Muslims girls like the daughters Rebecca and Corinne went to Catholic school where French was the education medium.

The nuns take special interest in the Jewish girls and the school was founded by a German Jewish convert. They  learn to embroider and dress by latest French fashions. The mother collects parcels for the Jewish orphanage.  The father is a poor businessman and is fast burning through the family fortune.

Rebecca is a close friend of Rahelika  and Djentil Nahon who is her mothers friend. Lika's father is a poorly paid teacher at the Alliance Israelite school and they don't have a holiday house.

Djentil Nahon is Rebecca's fathers first wife but could not fall pregnant.

In school the nuns take off their amulets but what of the wine as blood and the wafer as flesh. Rebecca's father is much older than her mother. Everyone knows everyone in the neighborhood. Her parents speak English over the children's head. At school they are learning about Florence Nightingale who died recently.

Her father Alberto lived in England for 5 years where he also studied Ladino, Hebrew and French. His 2nd wife Sultana had spent much of her life in Ireland where her father was a tobacco merchant.  They had a summer house on the isle of Buyukdere. The father took off from work to garden back home as that brought him closer to  God. When WW1 started the French school closed and a German school took its place Her friend Lika goes to America where she returns to school. 

The Turkish  State took over his already failing factory to make army uniforms and he lost the documents to get it back. Rebecca worked as a dress maker with no marriage prospects, Elsa and sons Josef and Marco at dead end jobs. Cats are fed in the street as they saved Mohammed but dogs left to starve. Their sons could be conscripted to the army. The Greeks Christians  had been exchanged for Greek Muslims and the Armenians had been slaughtered. The Chief Rabbi moved to France then Egypt. Jews can go into a mosque as it has no idols but a church not.

1924 Istanbul The Jewish Refugee Committee offers Alberto a position as shamus (glorified janitor) at the Barcelona's new shull. He says he will be the hazan.  Protegidos Espanoles are offered Spanish nationality by PM (dictator) Primo de Ravera. Spain was the origin of their lingua de leche.(language from the cradle) Spain had lost her Empire and regretted some past actions. The frailty of the succah indicates that life is transient.

Barcelona 1925 To go to school you need a certificate of baptism. The shull president is a German Askanazi. They must not mention that they are Jewish, but when Rebecca looks for a job as a Paris trained dress maker the name Cohen is not acceptable so she takes her mother maiden name Carmayor. The products made have a lable Fabrique de France. The Patron tries his luck on her so she sticks a strait pin into his arm, but is not fired because of her skills.

She sets up her own business as Rebecca Blanco Carmayor  Couturere de Paris Modista Haute Cauture

Meanwhile Corinne and Israel are having their first baby in Cuba Saltanas first grandchild. Then they managed to get to NY. Lika in NY has a stillborn baby.

1926 Barcelona Rebecca is almost 24 and their are no Jewish bachelors. She meets Luis who works in a car repair shop and soon Marko and Isadora have jobs there. She married Luis to discover that during WW1 he fought in the Turkish army and suffers the after effects of mustard gas.

 Rebecca gives birth to David but Luis has gone off ,he returns they have a second baby Alberto.

1929 She gets a message to come to Adrianople but is not met at the station and takes a cart there and finds it in a small village. There she meets Luis's sister Oro who has 2 sons who will later be esteemed rabbis in Israel. Luis's parents had wanted to keep her and grandsons there but she came with return passage and goes home.

1929Barcelona The film maker, films a documentary about Jews who fled Spain and the Spanish speakers of the Balkans. like Sarajevo Istanbul, Salonica etc. Half a million Spanish Jews.  He interview the Barcelona shull and this is a document they can see later of her parents. Ashkenazim are now arriving in greater numbers. The Alhambra decree of 1472 has not been revoked. and the synagogue has no outward symbols. Rebecca father manages to arrange a small Jewish cemetery.

.  

 1934 Barcelona the have been incidents of bombing in the city. Corinne suggested that Rebecca marry Samuel Levy her best friend Lisa widower. She has to leave a good business behind.

1934 Havana. She has to meet him in Havana as she can't get into the US. Havana has good architecture as it was build by slaves.  He promises her that he is kosher at home even though he eats other thing in travel. She remember that when she visited client she ate their pork snack for business reasons. His daughter Luna is spastic but he does not tell her how badly. In Cuba there are lots of Jews and Jewish refugees in this Catholic country but they can practice openly. They have to marry in Cuba and then again in the US. Sam's father had abandoned his family and took up with a Cuban gentile. Her father had married and divorced his first wife as she was childless and her first husband had deserted her before he died. Samuel had to drop out of school and at 11 was already supporting the family because his father abandoned him.

1934 Astoria, NY Sam's mother dislikes Rebecca as Rebecca comes from a higher social class. At the local church there is a free program for learning English. America has a can-do attitude that appeals to her. Luna's doctor Dr. Carlson is in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy . When Sam's mother falls carrying Luna and breaks her hip she moves to live with her daughter. Rebecca works with Luna and forces her to be active and have speech therapy. FDR's paralysis does not stop him. Luna wants to be able to go to school but needs to be able to flee in a fire drill. It is the inside self that matters in the eyes of God.

1937 David works in the father candy store selling Snickers 1930 (laugh) David  has a small part in a school play in English. In Barcelona Italian bombers drop 44 tons of bombs in 3 days and the synagogue is ransacked. Brother Marko's brains are beaten up and he becomes an invalid. Jewish Americans are going over to help (International Brigade?) Josef her brother writes Rebecca's father was malnourished and died of sadness. Sultana moved in with Elsa.

 Rebecca has Jack, Susanne and later Frank father by Sam. Her friend Corinne and Israel move to Great Neck long island but you can't use public pools because of the polio scare. 

1939 Cambria Heights , Queens are selling houses to Jews and Sam opens up his own newspaper , stationary and candy store. Papa to Luna , Pops to David and Al, and Daddy to Jack, Susanne and later Frank who is given an American name, the other kids were named after forebears  

1942 Cambria Heights Luna does well in classes but can't make friends.  She goes now to a school for crippled children but only the clever ones. she meet Brian Ahearn who isn't Jewish and has a limp. Mother says the girls got all the brains. There is nothing that Papa admires more than education.

1944 Rebecca's  mother Sultana dies in Barcelona and Rebecca is in a state of depression. Three months later her entry her mothers to the US has been approved.

1945 USS Franklin  aircraft carrier with a crew of 3500 is hit by 2 Kamikazes as after 12 hours of battle stations are relaxed, 50 miles from Japan. David was only 17 dropped out of school and Rebecca signed for him to enter the navy.. A wounded officer tells him to get off the inferno if he can. He drags a wounded pilot in the water to a life raft and they are saved by the Destroyer USS Marshal. Those who abandoned ship might be court marshalled as deserters, as they should have been fighting the fire. Captain Gehres refused to order abandoned ship as many would die on it and it is miraculously saved.

1950 Cambria Heights, David is in collage in Chicago. Al lives in Brooklyn and is an X-ray technician. From Barcelona Josef and Isadora moved to Israel.

The book ends with Rebecca on stage singing a Ladino song about migration and loss at a Jewish concert that includes Yiddish material. Luna comes on stage to present her with a bouquet and we find out that Luna is pregnant.      - even the least amongst us deserve hope.

This is Writers 5th novel “Kantika,” unlike many novels of Jewish migration, is actually a story about a family’s economic decline, shown in the life of the writers grandmother Rebecca1902-1991 , who recorded the memoir  with Sam retired in Florida. The writer's uncles and aunts David Baruch 1926-2021 and Albert Buruch 1928 -2015 as well as Luna Leibowitz 1927-2006 (also a writer) Jack 1935-2011

The 1929 documentary film taken in Barcelona Los Judios de patria espanola. Can be seen.

1964. Maimonides statue was put up in Cordoba

 

Flirting With Danger: The Mysterious Life of Marguerite Harrison, Socialite , Spy . by Janel Wallach 2023 277pg

Marguerite and the English Gertrude Bell were 2 daughters of the Gilded Age both were highly intelligent and fluent in at least 5 languages and hid their intellect and turned on their charm. Feminists not in words but deeds.

 Born Marguerite Elton Backer daughter of a shipping magnate and of one of Baltimore richest families. She worked as a labourer in her fathers  shipyard constructing of ships to prove that if men were drafted to fight abroad women could take their place. She was the widowed  wife of a prominent stockbroker. In 1915 when her husband died. In  1917 the US joined the European War and she worked to protect Americans from German propaganda movies. She became a reporter for the Baltimore Sun but women  were officially barred from a war zone. During WW1 the world lost 20 million people and another tens of millions died from the outbreak of influenza. .

1902 Her son Tommy was born. Her husband Tom was a stockbroker and the NY stock exchange closed down when WW1 began and stayed that way for 4 months. Her husband died of a tumor of the brain leaving her their 14 year old son. 

1918 The Battle of Argonne was an allied victory but it cost 26000 American lives. The war had cost Germany over 2 million dead and twice that in wounded and they were ready for an Armistice.

1918 She applied to the navy to become a spy but was turned down. She was hired by General Marlborough Churchill as a spy for the army. She was .in Italy she met Victorio Emmanuel grandson of the king. In Rome she met Reshid Sadi bey of  the Turkish consul and became aware of Turkish politics.

She was sent to Paris to report on the Peace talks. In Germany she had to access the social and psychological conditions in Germany. The war had left Berlin unscathed. The social democrats pledged universal health care and free election with both men and women taking part. American women only got the vote in August 1920. She got a Press Card which gave her access to government buildings.

In Germany he met up at dinner at Filed marshal Karl von Bellow's home. many Europeans and Americans were convinced that Communism was a plot to invade the west. Jews were blamed for the war in those circles and she had to listen to the unfounded anti-Semitic remarks. Right wingers formed the Deuche Bund 

She was invited to the solon of countess Hetta Trauber a friend of the art dealer Paul Cassirer where she met newspaper editors and leaders of political parties and sent back information to the MI. A valued contact was Walter Rathenau, the Jewish industrialist whose father had obtained the patent rights to the Thomas Edison bulb. Rathenau supported Wilsons 14 points as without proper remedies by the Allies, Germany would collapse and be followed by anarchy. Germans looked to America for help. However Isolationism had replace Globalism and American shrunk back and Wilson 14 point plan was rejected by the Republicans.

1916 Winter in Germany had been called Turnip Winter as the failed potato harvest and the Allied  blockade. The poor struggled  with paper shirts and  shoes. Since the armistice of 1918 she wrote 20% of the population is living in luxury, 30% were spending all their income on food and 50% were close to starvation.  France had lost from the war one and a half million dead and 4 million wounded. Throughout the war the German people had been deceived into believing they were winning. The allies warned that if the terms were not accepted they would resume fighting. The war had overthrown 5 kingdoms.

Walter Gropius introduced the Bauhous architecture school and Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil replaced romantic art with realistic portrayals of the mayhem. Elections culminated in the birth of the German Republic and the conference was set in Weimar for the new provisional government, because that was the home of Frederich Schiller. Marguerite Harrison was the only female foreign correspondent with permission to attend the National assembly meetings, in the Goethe Memorial Theater. This included 40 newly elected women. Ben Hecht from Chicago Daily News  and Sidney Greenwald of the London Express were present. They talked of the German Reich (Empire) not Republic and  Frederich Ebert was chosen as first leader.  They cheered for a union with Austria.

1919 March  the Arbeider Rath (union) voted for a general strike and Berlin became a combat zone. Germany was in debt of $35 million for war loans. With the Freikorps ordered to guard Berlin by the end of the revolt 1200 people were dead. 

Poland led by Paderewski declared Polish  independence with Warsaw the capital but Prussia stretched from Danzig to the Saar valley. Poland needed the coal mines of Upper Silesia with the Vistula going to the sea as the only sea outlet. The German Poland question was the biggest problem of the Versailles Conference.  in neighbouring Latvia  and Lithuania 2 German Generals maintained their forces of  half a million men  "Self preservation was creating a new nationalism"  At the Berlin University were placards "Germany for the Germans"  With gradual disillusionment to neurotic excitable creatures the seed of Nazism had been sown. Danzig was recognized as an International City. 

In America at this time you had a war against alcohol tobacco gambling prizefighting and desecration of the sabbath and WEB DuBois spoke against the vile treatment of 2 million Black soldiers, most of whom still could not vote.  Robert Minor was one of the most famous American political cartoonists and was encouraging US anti war activities. He was on Lenin's editorial staff circulating an English language newspaper  to American troops based in the Russian seaport of Archangel. She now went with the American  Red Cross to Lithuania. Kovno was its capitol.

She wanted to visit Russia but the Soviet were suspicious of western reporter and would not give a visa. America knew very little of the size of the Russian army who was running the country, and that the Bolshis were exporting revolution. She became Agent B as well as a reporter for the Boston Sun. In Switzerland she met Mr Julius Hacker and showed support for the Red cause and that the US would soon have a revolution.. He told her that the US consul in Stockholm was one of us, thus a mole in the State Dept. Going through Austria she saw that people in the cities were starving as very little food was getting through from the rural areas and no coal was available.

In Warsaw she interviewed General Pilsudski as Eastern Poland was still at war with Russia, she got information on  Soviet military troops and supplies and reported it to the American attaché in Warsaw. In Warsaw the Jewish population was 40% of the total population and they were doing well but not in other cities like Bialystok and Vilna. In Poland she took lessons in Russian.

She walked across the border to Russia. where she was told that with prohibition in the USA  and no bars open people will flock to political meetings to cause a revolution. She found out that farming communes were being  set up  with out farm machinery or even seeds and that from brith children should be regarded as property of state. The Bolshevists were turning a blind eye to open air markets in Moscow. 

1892 Sasha Berman tried to assassinate Henry Frick the  US industrialist who survived . Berkman after 22 years in jail was deported to Russia in 1919 Petrograd's population had dropped from 3 million to Half a million , those left faced famine.

1920 The first meeting of the Moscow Soviet took place at Moscow opera house where Lenin spoke. The Russian railways were a shambles as the boycott stopped US and British parts entering. She got into the Kremlin and saw Trotsky and got an interview with him. He  favored a small Soviet government and peace with Poland . She wondered into a room where she saw a map Communist propaganda centers around he world and sent back a message that the Bolsheviks were firmly in the saddle.

She was arrested as an American spy and Mogillevsky the Chief Commissar  of  the Cheka would let her out to spy on British and American's in Moscow for a salary of 42500 rubles. The British offered aid to the Russians in return fo the release of their citizens. Emma Goldman and John Reed both communist supporter were opposed to the dictatorship they saw and lack of free speech. John Reed wrote Ten days that shook the world. He died in hospital at the age of 30 of fever. Fridjof Nansen came to Moscow for the Red Cross to free thousands of POWs held in Russia and she helped him and noted the names and locations of Americans in captivity. No monarchy was more autocratic than Soviet Russia.

The British Labour delegation visited to confirm the wonders of the Revolution and she had to report back on their opinions. The visitors recognized the charade of what the Soviets were about. She used them to relay messages through their British counterparts. She had sent out more military information than any other agent. Bertrand Russell came to write a newspaper series and was shocked at the cruelty , poverty and suspicion. Because she was not giving the Cheka information she was put in jail and later diagnosed with tuberculosis. The Baltimore Sun had been pushing for her release.

Moscow and Washington had reached  agreement and the US Relief Administration lead by Herbert Hoover would send food aid to Russia. 16 month after Mogillevsky had got control of her she was released and taken to Vindavsky Station and deported to Riga. She was able to recall lots of information. The Soviets had no raw materials or manufactured good and no means of production. Isolating Russia could bring the thing the wanted  to prevent a prolongation of the Commonest dictatorship. Back in the US she was invited to meet Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

1919 she arrived in Germany 2 months after Kaiser Wilhelm had been forced to abdicate on November 1918. On November 11th the Germans had asked for an armistice and the provisional government was let by the Social Democrats. On the left of them were the Spartacust and on the right were the Monarchists.  Karl Liebknecht and partner Rosa Luxemberg were the founders of the German Communist Party in 1919. They were both assassinated. Karl had been the only Reichstag member to vote against entering the war.

1921At the Washington Memorial hall and President Warren Harding in office , Author Balfor for Britain Aristide for France and Baron Kato for Japan met to stop the growing Arms Race , because Japan was building a big navy. HG Wells was a NY Times reporter. They tried limiting the number and size of each countries warships and end Japans occupation of China. Japans militarists were firmly set on conquest. The NY Times said thought that Walter  Rathenau would be American savior but he was assassinated in 1922

In 1922 her book Marooned in Moscow came out. 1925  she was writing articles for magazines and give lectures for the Pond Lecture Agency. The men she had led became important members of the Explorers Club but it never accepted women members. On her travels she had met female activists in Russia Japan and Turkey who worked for women's rights. She helped set up an organization of women who had done unusual things the society of Women Geographers SWG with Harriet Adams and other like Eleonor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall ,Amelia Earhart joined and it had 500 members.

She now went off  on a tour of the Far East starting with Japan. She reported back on Vickers providing armaments to Japan. She understood that Japanese are giving and acting collectively.  In 1918 the Bolsheviks asked the Japanese to occupy Northern Sakhalin and the Siberian coast against the Whites. The Isle of Sakhalin had major coal and oil deposits a great windfall for Japan. The capital here Aleksandrovsk had been a penal colony of the tsar. She was the only woman ever invited to dine by the Japanese general staff. Russia had a buffer zone between her an the Japanese and this was named the Eastern Republic.  Here she spoke to Russians who said that under Japan things are bad but under Russia it will be worse.

Vladivostok had been part of China and was claimed by Russia in 1860. There she was aware that anti-Semitism was rampant amongst the Monarchists. In 1922 the American's withdrew and within 3 weeks the area went Red but Sakhalin remained under Japan.  In Korea she concluded that the country had advanced more under the Japanese in 20 years than centuries on its own. Japan stayed in Korea till  the end of WW2.

1921 the Japanese army attempted to seize power in Peking but were repulsed by Sun Yak-sen. Chines city of  Harbin was the center of the Chinese Eastern Railways. The Japanese refused to  withdraw  from Sakhalin till the Russians paid compensation for the massacres' at Nikoleevesh.. The modern Chinese communist part including the young Mao started at this time. She went by car to drive through Mongolia which had recently declared itself as an independant nation  now freed from China.. includes  the Gobi which is the largest dessert in Asia.  When she entered Russia she was arrested and taken to Moscow on the Trans Siberian Railway. In Moscow and the Cheka wanted her to spy on Russians as a foreigner but she refused and was put into Labyanka prison but was released after after a few weeks and deported again.

1922The USSR was formed by Ukraine, Byelorussia ,Georgia ,Armenia and Azerbaijan.

1923 The Lausanne Treaty between Turkey and Greece created great upheaval and thousands of Greeks Refugees had to be helped by the American government and the League of Nations. Little was provided for the Turk and Armenian Refugees till the Near East Relief Society was set up.

1926 She did marry  to Arthur Blake who was born in England spoke many.

 languages  had fought in the Spanish -American War and acted on the NY stage.

1927 They went on a honey moon to Morocco and she published a scholarly book Asia Reborn while in Rabat.

.1935 She wrote her autobiography There's always tomorrow  She had published 5 well received books. She was doing all these things long before women in the US had the right to vote or  married women could open their own bank account. She had been the first women spy for American and first American women to enter Germany after WW1.

1947 After her second husband died she returned to Baltimore.

1967 She died.

Hiding in a Cave of Trunks: in Shanghai ,By Ester Benjamin Shifren, 2012 276pg

    A Prominent Jewish Family's Century in Shanghai and Internment in a WWII,  24/8/23

1800s her family Nuriel and Miriam Isaacs travelled from Calcutta , India to the Yangtze River on a ship captained by Nuriel. The youngest child Matama was born in 1871 in Chinkiang and they later moved to Shanghai    “The Paris of the East,” is 40 miles up the Yangze River. David Moses David met up with the Sassoon's and Kadoorie's families that had come earlier and they encouraged family members from Bagdad and India to join in the business adventure.

The word coolie means "bitter strength " referring to the unskilled laborer's. The binding of women's feet was the ultimate manifestation of female subordination in China since the 10C it often lead to the death of many women. It was banned in the new Chinese republic in 1911 but carried on till as late as 1949. 

Her maternal grandfather Rabbi Yeheskei Jacob arrived in Shanghai from Persia in 1918 he had studied at the Rabbinical collage in Bagdad. With his wife Haviva who conversed in Judio-Arabic  had 6 children including her mother Liza. The children spoke English.

Flagships from all the treaty powers could be seen with flags from Britain , US, Italy, France and Japan. The city has a skyline of building that represent the different architecture of the different cultures.

At the English school they suffered anti-Semitism , no one escaped the levels of snobbishness of the caste system which included Eurasian children. Her mothers brother Jack took violin lessons and later became a member of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Her Grandmother Matana went to a school run by French nuns and became fluent in French. She married at 19 to Mantook Nissim from Allahabad British India (today Pakistan) The chewed betel leaf a carcinogen that causes oral cancer as happened to this grandmother who died in 1947 before the family scattered to the 4 corners of the earth.

The grandfather David Benjamin had shares in 2 rubber plantation in Chemor, British Malaya, with warehouses on the Whampu River(today Singapore). The grandfather had 6 racehorses and often won big at the races where a lot of business deals were made. They regularly travelled to Burma , Manilla , Japan.

1920 Sir Jacob Elias Sasoon endowed the synagogue in Shanghai.

The Astor House Hotel was the first place in China to be electrified. It had been visited by Ulysses Grant , Albert Einstein Scott Joplin, Charlie Chaplin and Bertrand Russel.

1937 Her father worked for a big radio shop that had just opened and also did real estate dealing as he could speak Chinese well.

1937 The author was born the year the Sino -Japan war began. Japan thought they could defeat China easily and take possession of Shanghai in 2 weeks but for Chinese resistance and the population started streaming into the foreign settlements. Bundles of abandoned baby girls were picked up by the Chinese Benevolent Society. Desperate starving parents often sold their daughters or even murdered them.

The British gave evacuation orders and shipped out their national  about 1300 to 1500 mostly women and children  to Hong Kong  as well as her mother but her father remained in Shanghai. Thousands of  Canadians and Americans also left. Then Shanghai returned to normal and her mother returned.

Ester was born in the Matilda hospital Hong Kong and 1955 the movie Love Is a Many Splendid Thing was filmed there so she was able to see the movie of the place.

1937 Nanking  because of Chiang Kai Shek resistance in the battle of Shanghai there were 50,000 Japanese soldiers bent on taking revenge and the Chinese forces were disorganized and 90,000 Chinese troops surrendered and were killed  and half the population of Nanking's 600,000 were massacred. The slaughter lasted about 6 weeks and 20,000+ women were gang raped. Then the Japanese pacified the population with opium turning thousands into addicts. 300,000 fled to the safety zone.

There were always stray dogs or cats and each time she was scratched or bitten had to get anti-rabies injections. They only drank boiled water and put potassium permanganate in water to wash  on fresh lettuce or fruit. Every year they were inoculated against cholera , typhoid. Jaundice , ringworms and also perils, and you always slept under mosquito net tent.

1938 Nov. Many Jews arrived before Kristallnacht, in  Germany anyone who heard that Shanghai could be entered without a visa scrambled for a ticket. Those who fled 

 after Kristallnacht found themselves in a extreme sad plight and the Sephardi and Russian Jews  helped them there.  In June was the typhoon season and the International settlement was usually flooded, so rickshaws worked hard to make as many fares as possible. Umbrellas were probably invented in China and used against the sun the royal family used only red and yellow ones and the public could only used blue ones.

Most of these new refugees had no English language but to practice doctors or professionals needed no license.

1939 William Joyce or Lord Haw -Haw left England and went to Germany and broadcast Nazi propaganda could be heard in Shanghai on the radio .He later died on the gallows in 1946

1939 August, the Japanese succumbed to pressure and closed the gates. The Nazi's sent Colonel Meissinger to Shanghai with special orders but the Japanese refused to take part in the "final solution" In 1904 when everyone refused aid to Japan , the Jewish banker Jacob Schiff offered aid in the war against Russia. Other wealthy Sephardim also offered Japan aid and they believed all Jews wielded a lot of power. The Japanese issued a proclamation concerning restriction of residences of stateless refugees forcing them into certain poor neighborhoods. Note they never used the word Jews.. Here Jewish refugee children and Chinese children played together and learned Chinese.

1941 Dec 7th Pearl Harbour and the Allies were at war with Japan. The Japanese took over key British and American  companies but left the people in charge until they learnd to run them

1942 Dec. From then Japanese started interning foreigners, however they had a Russian aunt who was not interned. They had to hand in their car. All steel fences and radiators were ripped out for the Japanese war effort. They were eventually interned in early 1943.

1986 When the author was living in South Africa she visited her parents in Israel and started questioning her father on what happened till he died in 2002. They were lucky to have been interned late maybe because they had young children. The camp was run internally by the ex  Shanghai commissioner of police. Her mother took on kitchen duties and father the duty of making coal bricks and keeping the kitchen fire burning and keeping the camp hygienic. There were only 3 Jewish families in the camp and so she suffered the usual doses of anti-Semitism. Everyone was skinny and hungry but morale was kept high with her mother organizing plays and stage dancing. Once the children outgrew their shoes the went barefoot. Every morning the children had classes on the material that was available. The best meat available was given to the children. Women got together and made clothes and they gave ballet lessons. There were nuns and priests interned with them and they had many dedicated teachers, they were kept very busy and had no boredom.

A few people got out and joined Chiang Kai-shek army  in Chungking. If someone escaped the Japanese stopped giving out the Red Cross parcels. After the war warehouses were found full of these. There were about 1000 interned in this camp. Used tea leaves were used as tobacco by desperate smokers.

Before the war her mother had taught Japanese soldiers English so it seems they already knew the agenda to come.

A few moths before the end of the war they were hastily moved to Yangtzepoo which was an undercover arms and ammunition depot which was targeted for bombing by the allies. On the roof they painted POW with a code which luckily averted the bombing. The Japanese commander at this stage knew Japan was losing the war and treated the interns better. 

1945July a number of US air raids attempting to get the Japanese transmitter in Hongkew and the airfield in Chiagwan , some bombs fell wounding the refugees.

1945 Aug 10 they heard that the war is over, soon Japan had agreed to the Potsdam Terms, which was issued on July 26th by Truman , Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek The Japanese here still knew that there were over a million soldiers in China and they might go on fighting. A copy of Readers digest circulated with the "Nightmare of Nanking" Allied planes began appearing dropping pamphlets over Shanghai . They must remain in camp for their own protection signed by A.C Wedemeyer of the Lt Gen US Commanding.

The Japanese simply disappeared and they put up national flags of Britain the USA, China , Russia, Holland Belgium and Australia.

Colorful parachutes, fell containing food, underwear, cigarettes and even American comics. Friendly GIs came and brought the latest music and dances. Droves of American and British military were to be seen.

20,000 Jews were still living in Shanghai and they started emigrating. More that 30 million Chinese were killed or wounded by the Japanese. About 1500 refugees died during the war from various reasons.

They had relatives who survived the war in Tientsin where there was a big British colony. They were interned at Welhsien

Shanghai British school reopened and they returned to their apartment to find everything gone, the business was still there as it had carried on under the Japanese control. Goods began to arrive and trade returned. Her father found his car at the station and took it back this was unusual as few recovered confiscated cars.. In 1946 all appeared to be going well and her father travelled to do trade but then the situation began deteriorating.

While the war was on Moa Tse Tung and Chiang Kai-shek joined to fight the Japanese now it was Communist against Nationalists. Foreigners were leaving in droves and England began to repatriate but we were denied passage as we were not originally from England. Australia's quota was full and Canada wanted a bond of $10,000. So they relocated to Hong Kong, where they spoke Cantonese a different dialect from Shanghai.

1949 May 27 the Communists took control of Shanghai.

In Hong Kong she went to the CBS or Central British School, later it became the George V School It had been used as a hospital under the Japanese. Sir Alexander Grantham was governor of Honk Kong in 1948.

1941 Dec Stonecutters Island was a British Naval base taken over by Japan who set up a radio transmitter there and had a snake farm to milk the venom as antidotes for their troops. In Hong Kong opium was finally outlawed in 1940.

After WW2 thousands left mainland China as refugees and there were 300,000 Chinese squatter living there, this strained Hong Kong's already struggling resources

Her grandmother uncle and all her fathers sisters went to Australia where they spent the rest of their lives.

1950 June  North Korea invaded South Korea and General Mc Author led the war The Allies started placing embargoes on Hong Kong as the cargoes went through the back door to the Communists. In 1950 Dec they moved to the newly declared State of Israel. They flew out of the Kai Tak Airport which the Japanese army had expanded in 1942 by destroying the Kowloon Walled City wall to do that. 

In the Bamboo Wireless bulleting in October 1945 are pictures of Ester with children on the HMS Belfast enjoying a party. They had never enjoyed so much food and over indulged. There was a great demand for jelly by the kids. In 2005 on the ,TV program Well meet again this was 60th anniversary of the end of the war on VE day. She was with 10 other children and they saw the film footage  from that party with her mother, brother and sister in it nearby.

In 1951 the family moved to Israel where she served 2 yeas in the Israeli army, married a South African and then spent 36 years in South Africa then moved to Canada, and 5 years later to Los Angeles in 1997

1994 a plaque in Chinese , English and Hebrew was dedicated by the Hongkew district government - Area of the Stateless Refugees, who fled from the Nazis.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------__Jews of Hong Kong by Benjaman Schwarts

Hong Kong the Fragrant Harbor by the mid 1850s Bagdadi Jews migrated under the wings of the British Imperial expansion in the Middle East through India into the China coast and then even to Japan. The had international family networks with intermarriage almost as important as capital for generating business. By 1858 got land for the community and 1901 the Ohel Leha Synagogue (After Leah Sasoon) had a trust to maintain the property. In 1925 a cantor was brought from Bagdad and majority of Jews spoke Judio Arabic. Sasoon, Kadorie, Somech Sopher Gabbai families. The Kadories set up the HK Power and Light Co. as well as the HK Tram Co. The pluralistic society was made up of various clubs and the Jewish recreation club built in 1905 was very much in tune with the British Colonial style. Among the Prominent Jews were Sir Elly, Sir Ellis, Sir Horace and Lord Lawrence Kadoorie. Sir Ellis Kadoorie was a philanthropist that set up school to teach the Chinese English in HK Ganzon and Shanghai. He helped Chinese obtain work in foreign firms that he set up all over the world. Sir Mathew Nathan was the Governor 1904 to 1907 saw to urban planning and roads and railways Sir Piers Jacobs was the finance secretary 1980 to 1990s From the 1960 with increase in trade with China Jews came from the UK and especially the US Since the 1960s, Israel also began to appoint Honorary Consuls to Hong Kong. Today there are as many as 6000 Jews there with 4 synagogues. By the 1989 census Jews in Hong Kong 39% were American, 27%British ,17% Israeli. 71% were Askenazi. Jews came to China Kaifeng along the silk road. The community seems to have lost contact with the Jewish world but it was so small that it did not present a threat . Tulmud found there was the same as in Europe so missionaries could not longer claim it was a forgery. With WW2 Orthodox Yeshiva Jews arriving as well as German Jews. In 1937 there was an influx of Jews into China but most of them moved onto America, Australia and Israel which became independent 6 months before the Communists moved into Shanghai.  

שנגהי נגהש____________________________________________________________________________

New beginnings : From Japanese prison camps to Aliyah by Shoshanna Lehrer.205pg 2013 25/8/18 This is a grandmothers autobiography written for her grandchildren. The family originated from Bukovina and fled Vienna Austria in 1938 and got to the Dutch East India Batavia (Jakarta) where the father worked as a doctor. The book starts with information of Jews who lived in the Dutch East Indies mostly Dutch but also from Bagdad but their is no evidence of an organized Jewish community and their are many cases of Europeans taking on native wives including one of the author's uncles. The story on living through the Japanese occupation after 1942 and starving in internment camps. They were lucky to survive and when Japan capitulated. Japanese soldiers had to protect them against Indonesian independence fighters till British Gurkha troops and later Dutch arrived. She went with her mother to the Netherlands while her father stayed with his girl friend and her daughter. She studied in the Netherland later in England. They returned to visit Austria to claim their property and she saw post war bombed out Europe. They also received a one time payment from the Japanese as compensation. The book takes us to Paraguay under Stroesner where her husband Wim and 2 children ran the Phillip electrical distribution. They are aware that many Nazi's took refuge here. Later they live in Ecuador and when they visit Mexico city find people her family knew in Vienna. They return to the Netherland where she has 2 more daughters, divorces Wim and in 1982 decides to move to Israel where she finally feels she belongs. She now discusses her grandchildren and the fact the she finally has arrived in the country she feels she belongs.