Agenda item

The report relating to this item is included in the agenda pack.

The Council is requested to make the following resolution:

That the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism be adopted.

The Chairman invited Mrs Lintill to introduce the item and drew attention to the report which could be found on pages 25-26 of the agenda pack. She confirmed that there was one recommendation to Council detailed on the agenda front sheet.

Mrs Lintill confirmed that all council’s had been asked to adopt the working definition of anti-semitism and referred members to section 3.2 of the report.

Mrs Apel was invited to speak. Members commended Mrs Apel for her moving speech and it was requested that it be recorded in full in the minutes.

Mrs Apel’s speech was as follows:

This has come up the day after the 75^th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In 1938 on the 12 March the Nazi’s marched into Austria and Vienna. My father was a Jew who edited two papers (one of which was anti-Nazi so he was wanted by Hitler). My mother was English but she had two half Jewish children; my brother Anthony aged 10 months and my brother Peter aged three. They got out of their flat with what they stood up in. My mother took my two brothers on the train from Vienna (and it’s a long journey from Vienna to the Swiss border). She had forged documents which had been given to her by the British consort. She realised she would have to destroy her genuine papers so she threw them out of the window of the train. Two hours later the Nazis got on the train and took her and the two boys out and took them to a place where they were stripped naked and searched completely. After several hours they were put back on the train. My mother had no food. There was a man on the carriage who was watching them. She got to the Swiss border and when they got over the border the man got up and gave her some money to feed the children and just got out; what an angel. They managed to get back to the UK and my father went via Czechoslovakia as it was free. In 1939 when war was declared he was rounded up as an enemy and put on the Isle of Man for 18 months which was the best university in the world. You had the Amadeus quartet, the German and Austrian Nuclear Physicists who happened to be Jewish and all the big publishers; it was an extraordinary place. When he came back I came on the scene a few months later. In 1945 when the camps were all liberated he discovered that everybody apart from two cousins had been gassed; Auschwitz and Treblinka. My father in law discovered in 1945 that 200 of his family had been gassed which included his first wife, their two small children, his grandfather and endless aunts and cousins.

It’s been tough being a child of a survivor of the Holocaust so I know exactly what antisemitism is. Antisemitism if you support or don’t support Israel that is very different to antisemitism, can I please just make that point. One other point I would like to make is thankfully my two brothers didn’t end up in the gas chamber. One became one of the pioneers of kidney transplantation and retired a few years ago having built up a massive unit in St Georges Hospital and Carshalton. My other brother went to the states and was a pioneer of orthopaedic surgery. He was killed in a car crash tragically. My father had already died when he was killed. He did enormous things in knee transplantation and elbows.

As a result of this in 2015 my colleague councillor Martyn Bell realised what my background was and my husbands and we set up Chichester marks Holocaust Memorial Day. In 2015 we had a unified service in the chapel in the cemetery and in the evening we had an evening of music and various things in the university. In 2016 Sir Nicky Winton had just died aged 106. He had rescued 669 Czech Jewish children one of whom was my cousin aged five. She was put on a train in Prague station eating an apple. She said goodbye to her Mum, Dad, Granny, Aunts and new saw them again, they were all gassed.

Carl Davis, the composer had written an amazing work called ‘The Last Train to Tomorrow’ which is the story of the journey of the children coming from Prague to Liverpool Street Station. I have one of the brochures and there is a picture of the children walking along Liverpool Street Station and in the bottom left hand corner is Helenka my cousin, a beautiful little girl aged five. It was an amazing piece. We used children from Central School and it was (I think Diane Shepherd came) a very moving piece and the Cathedral was packed.

In 2017 we put on two films at New Park. One called ‘Conspiracy’ when the top echelons of the Nazi party decided on the best way to annihilate the complete European Jewish population; they annihilated six million of us.

In 2018 we were asked to put on an opera called ‘Push’ which is the story of an 11 year old boy. He and his mother were put on an Auschwitz train number 20 from Brussels and 10 miles out of Brussels the very small resistance group stopped the train. They manged to break the doors open and 217 got out. Half were shot but his mother pushed him out of the train. He was 11. He ran and ran and through a miracle he survived. He grew up to become a human rights lawyer and a famous composer Howard Moody said the next opera I write will be your story and I will call it ‘Push’. So we put that on in the Cathedral in 2018. Gillian Keegan came and I said antisemitism is going on in Parliament, this should be shown in Parliament. So we put it on in Speakers House in 2019. Yesterday we put on two performances in the Minerva Theatre. The afternoon one was for 310 school children and I said to them you are the people who have got to stop this ever happening again and what’s happening subsequently. In the evening the theatre was packed.

On Sunday we also showed an extraordinary film called ‘Enemies of the People’ where this young Cambodian journalist went out and interviewed all the people who had done the killing for the killing fields. It was a very tough film but extraordinary to see how the structure of the killing was decided upon.

I would like to say thank you to the District Council, City Council and my colleague Councillor Bell and I think and I hope you can understand why antisemitism to me is just an absolutely appalling thing. My father never recovered when he discovered in 1945 what had happened to his family and he eventually died in a mental hospital but I will support this (report) 100% and I hope you all will. Thank you.

Mrs Lintill proposed the recommendation which was seconded by Mrs Apel.

In a show of hands the Council voted in favour.

RESOLVED

That the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definitionof Antisemitism be adopted.