CTJC Bulletin Chanukah 2021

Frances Rotblat, role model 27 July 1946 to 22 April 2021 Jane Liddell-King As we prepared this magazine, we noticed a theme was emerging, “to love one’s neighbour”. The work of Frances Rotblat, an alumna of my school, transformed the lives, not only of her immediate neighbours but of millions of people throughout the world. Founded in the nineteenth century to enable girls to enter university and the professions, the education provided by GPDST (Girls' Public Day School Trust, now Girls' Day School Trust) schools was as close as possible to that enjoyed by boys. Nothing in the curriculum was gender specific but each school had to take account of its cultural environment. Today, 30% of the girls educated at South Hampstead High School are Jewish, and diversely so.

The question put to each of us remains: how to repay the community for the remarkable education which we enjoyed. No one achieved this more fully than Frances Rotblat.

For most of us, a cut or graze is not a problem. Our blood clots and new skin grows. But those suffering from haemophilia have a low level of protein Factor 8 and their blood flows unchecked. A small cut or a graze puts them at great risk. Frances played a key role in saving the lives of these people.

Those of us born just after the Second World War remember a London full of holes: bomb sites, hanging staircases, windows swinging high above our heads from broken latches exposing the intimate details of peoples’ lost lives, shreds of wallpaper and curtains. Rationing was our normal. It took a year to save enough coupons to buy a winter coat.

As Polish Jews, Frances’ parents, Mania and Michael, had been imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto where some 400,000 people lost their lives. With extraordinary courage, they escaped. Who can imagine Page 29