Manx musings

Jo Landy The Isle of Man is for me, littered with childhood memories. My maternal grandparents moved there when I was a child. They were part a ghetto of three Jewish retired seniors on Howe Road, Onchan. I recall faded elegance, sodden walks, clambering over rocks by the beach, the Venus fly traps in my grandfather’s conservatory and rockhard Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot were my grandmother’s signature dish but she was not a good cook. We always had to remember to clear the biscuit tin of her previous output when she came to the mainland to visit.

Much of the Island feels as though it is stuck in a 1950’s time warp. A sensation strengthened for summer tourists by its Victorian systems of transport: horse drawn and electric trams and a steam railway (this engine was one which inspired Rev W Awdry’s Thomas The Tank Engine stories). We went to the Isle of Man with a Jewish Renaissance group to learn about the internment of enemy aliens in two World Wars. The island has not changed much in 80 year, which makes it easier to look at long rows of hotels and boarding houses and imagine the barbed wire fences that once encircled them from other parts of Sodor lives on Ramsay, Onchan, Douglas, Port Erin and Port St Mary. Especially after reading the words to a song:

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The seagulls are in a curious mood Maybe they are getting too much food One thing they all very much deplore Is the barbed wire that grows up the shore So in the seagull parliament There was a great debate on that end And many of them then did enquire Why are humans behind the wire.

This song was part of “Central” camp’s review What a Life. The review was based upon tableau of their daily lives. It was one many public performances by internees from different camps at the Palace Theatre and other venues around the Island. What a Life was created by the inmates, from scratch, in two weeks. The tight schedule was a result of squeezing themselves in before another camp’s performing Italians. That contingent included Italian sailors who were in the UK because Mussolini had not thought to inform his Merchant Navy that he was about to declare war on the UK. German speaking 1Illustration for a programme Central Camp had a wealth of talent to draw upon. Inmates included Ferdinand Rauter whose world-renowned performances included Yiddish songs. When his group was invited to perform in Nazi Germany, but were told to

omit non-Aryan songs, their response was that they were booked out until the end of the Third Reich. The overriding impression I have of this section of Jewish history is the Kafkaesque nature of those suffering from a policy that appeared to be triggered by frenzy. A policy that almost had ramifications for Cambridge finals. An interned law professor was detained with the only key to the desk that contained final examination papers. The experience of those passing through this ordeal was often influenced by the philosophy of officers in charge. At Wrath Mills, an insanitary transit camp in Manchester, bags were not only checked, but items of value, even stethoscopes, were pocketed by soldiers carrying out initial inspections. The incident resulted in the officer in charge being court-marshalled. Ideology created problems within the Women’s camp. This, unlike the men’s camp, was under civilian administration. Dame Joanna Cruickshank was a former Matron-in-Chief of the RAF Nursing Service and British Red Cross. A formidable organiser, her attitudes towards those under her administration were probably born of her colonial experiences. Having organised the billeting and support structure (including food distribution, medical facilities, and schooling) for roughly 3,000 internees, Dame Cruickshank decided that all internees should coexist peacefully. Simon Parkin, author of The Island of Extraordinary Captives (reviewed elsewhere in this magazine), noted concern that German nationals and Jewish refugees should not be billeted together. She responded “You are all enemy aliens, and that is the end of it”. Thus, Jewish women were forced to share houses and even beds with fervent anti-Semites. In the last few years there has been work by Manx individuals to record and publicise internment history. In 2011 work began to utilise part of Patrick Old School to tell the story of families impacted by civilian internment in WW I. The building along with Patrick’s Cemetery (in which two Jewish internees are buried) is across the road from the site

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of the camp established on Knockaloe Moar Farm. The school is now a museum. At its height, this camp housed over 22,000 internees in seven compounds, in wooden barracks. As with later camps WW II camps, it was run by internees as autonomous units. Educational and cultural programmes enabled many to access educational opportunities for the first time. This created a socialist environment where all structures of society coexisted. This was not the case for all. Unlike their WW II counterparts the wealthy could pay for better accommodation within Knockaloe. Near Douglas, a disused holiday camp housed those able to afford privileges, including a dining room providing silver service. The Douglas holiday camp also had a kosher kitchen (but not silver service). The museum provided sensitive social and political context. Seven interested locals in the Island’s South have researched the history of a camp used to intern women and children and then families. Local interviews led to the discovery of documentation, including registration forms preserved by a local police officer (against directions). They have published a book, Friend or Foe?, which contains accounts of some of the tensions faced Page 22

by locals housing internees. One of the authors spoke of how one family felt intimidated when they found a swastika drawn in the condensation on their bathroom mirror. Two of the authors said that the provision of one Guinea per week internee per week saved their families from destitution. Many of our group had relatives who had been interned on the Island. One member had been there as a four-year-old. Some of the group were able to find new information about their relatives from the Manx Museum’s Archives. It was an especially resonant trip because difficult decisions made before 1939 are being echoed in Ukraine. A member of the group told me of current traumas faced by the Jewish and wider population in Zaparozhye. Apparently Rabbi Ehrentreu has been encouraging people to go to the relative safety of the Carpathian mountains. However, from the end of March, men of fighting age are being forcibly conscripted as they pass through check points as people head west. A difficult decision for any family has just been made so much more complicated. One can only hope and pray that the aggression causing such devastation, turmoil, and upset ends quickly.

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