Saving Jewish orphans Ochberg 1921

I was fascinated by Isaac Ochberg (1879–1938) who was born in Uman in Russia/now Ukraine. With thousands of other Russians, the Ochbergs went to South Africa in 1894 where Isaac became a successful Cape Town businessman.

Isaac Ochberg, March 1921

aish.com

After the old Czarist regime ended in 1917, rival armies were fighting for control. With law and order failing, transport for many thousands of demob'd soldiers ended. Plus vast armies of German ex-POWs tried to make their way home after the Soviets’ Peace Treaty at Brest-Litovsk.

The battles did not start out as particularly anti-Semitic. But owing to the oppression to which they had been exposed for gener­ations, the lives of the impoverished Jews worsened. With famine and typhoid epidemics, ancient horrors surfaced in the misery. Polish and other peasants joined forces with reactionary officers and troops, to kill Jews in pogroms.

Survivors begged their cousins in South Africa for help. A great surge of compassion swept the South African Jew­ish community who would try to save some of the victims, partic­ul­arly children. But would the Union Government create any difficulties in admitting them? 

Ochberg quickly met Gen Jan Smuts, prime minister between 1919–24, who gave the children entry visas. Smuts could have sunk the rescue plan in an instant, had he chosen to. His support was essential and warmly welcomed.

A South African Relief Fund for Jewish War Victims was already in place when Ochberg pro­p­osed that the Cape Jewish Orphanage take responsibility for the children. The Relief Fund had to raise £10,000, enough for 200 or­phans. [Sadly 400,000+ destitute Jewish orphans were eventually found]. By Jan 1921 the Un­ion Gov­ernment agreed to give pound for pound to the Pogrom Orphan Fund.

Someone had to go to Europe, so Ochberg made himself respon­sible in Mar 1921. He travelled to Ukraine for a few dangerous months, vis­iting lots of villages in the Polish Ukraine and Galic­ia. Och­berg proceeded from town to town, visiting Minsk, Pinsk, Lodz, Lemberg, Stanislav and Wlodowa etc. When a letter came to him from Port Elizabeth's com­munal leaders, Ochberg answered and expressed his very great thanks for their boxes of second-hand clothing. The gen­er­os­ity displayed by South African Jewry made it possible to rescue the children. Otherwise they would surely have died of st­arvation, disease or Ukrainian pogrom wounds.

At first Pinsk was isolated by the fighting and Ochberg and helpers were thrown on their own resources. The 3 Jewish orph­an­ages in Pinsk had few beds, bedding and clothes - they used flour bags to sleep on. Typhus spread in the orphanage and shells were bursting in the streets. A notorious Ukrainian fanatic descended with his gangs and the pogroms raged for a week. The Federation of Ukrainian Jews did its best to assist but with civil war raging over large areas of Poland and elsewhere, and only a minimum of transport in operation, progress was slow. As order was restored, supplies began to arrive, first from Juedischer Hilfsverein in Berlin, and then from U.S Joint Distrib­ution Committee: cocoa, condensed milk, cooking oil and clothes.

One day the orphans heard that a "man from Africa was coming". He was going to take some of them away with him and give them a new, safe home. Nearly all the orphans had lost both par­ents, many in pogroms, on the Ukrainian border, at Minsk, Pinsk and other places. 

Group passport photo

The Observation Post

Confronting Ochberg was how to make his choice from the vast number of destitute children. He chose 8 children from each orphanage, making a total of 200 for whom he had funds. Since the South African Government had specified that the children must be in good health, of reasonable intel­lig­ence and willing to leave, the cream of each orphanage was selected.

Even though they were scared of being eaten by African tigers, the children were excited. And when Mr Ochberg appeared, with his gingy hair and welcoming smile, the orphans soon called him Daddy.

The Polish authorities put many children trav­elling to Warsaw on cattle-trucks. Though their passports carried the usual Polish word Paszport with the Polish Eagle, there were no individual photos. Instead group photos app­eared, some with 30-40 small children sitting in rows.

They travelled in overcrowded, dirty trains to Warsaw, each child having a tiny package of clothing sent from overseas. In the middle of Warsaw was a restaurant, belonging to Pan­ya Engel, a kindly Jewish woman who the children adored. For several months the Ochberg orphans stayed in local schools, and Panya Engel and friends worked hard to protect them. Just as it seemed as if most of the difficulties had been overcome, there was a serious outbreak of eye trachoma which held up their departure.

From Warsaw, they travelled by river boat down the Vistula to Dan­zig. There, on the Baltic, they boarded a steamer bound for London, and the other kind people took charge of the orphans. A few of them were again taken ill, and spent the time in London in hospital.

Warm reception awaited the orphans

who came ashore in Cape Town, late 1921.

Observation Post

There was a warm reception when they finally landed in Cape Town in Sept, with huge crowds waiting on the quay for them. So large was the group of children that Cape Jewish Orphanage could no longer house them all, and some went to Arcadia Johan­nes­burg Orphanage instead.

In South Africa, the once-pathetic, poorly dressed children clearly profited from the kindness and instruction they received. There were numerous invit­ations to Jewish homes, and some of the children were adopted. Special English language classes were organised.

Nicholas Winton saved far more children from murder before WW2 and took them to Britain. But Ochberg set the model for humanitarian heroism in taking c190 Jewish pogrom orphans from the Ukraine and Poland to South Africa after WWI. See the honours he received and the formal dedication that was made in 2011.

Read Ochberg Orphans and the horrors from whence they came, David Solly Sandler, 2014

The tragic, early death of Prince Albert

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819-61) came from a small German state whose ruling family married into many European royals; in 1840 he mar­ried Vict­or­ia, his first cousin. The Queen came to rely heavily on his advice, and their marriage seemed happy. With his wife con­stant­ly preg­nant (9 babies in 17 years), Albert performed the fun­ctions of king, driving himself on through his offic­ial dut­ies. He’d been an unof­ficial govern­ment min­ister to Victoria, and she always def­erred to his ad­vice. Especially since the couple mostly spoke German with each other.

How much real influence did Prince Albert have on British culture?
History Extra

Victorian Britain had been a land of nasty capit­al­ism, where government regulation was minimal and welfare was left to the Church. With little tax burden and low labour costs, indust­rial­­­­­­is­ation helped Britain’s middle class thrive while the working class suffered. And the state helped safe­guard trade through tough foreign pol­icies. But Albert was a royal consort with a high le­v­­el of learning in architecture & design. He ended the dissol­ute Han­overian reputation and he “gov­erned England for 21 years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings has ever shown" (Disraeli) .

The Royal Family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Wiki

When Albert died from ?typhoid in Dec 1861 at Wind­sor, London’s lord mayor was told to toll St Paul’s Cathedral bells. As any widow would und­er­stand, his death left the Queen grief-stricken and she with­drew from public life. How could a vig­orous 42 year old have died without warn­ing? How would Victoria cope with all her onerous duties alone?

Albert’s death dealt the royal fam­ily a blow from which it almost didn’t recov­er. But why was Albert's death regarded as a national cal­amity? His death had come at a time of polit­ical crisis, with the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment entangled in a tense diplom­atic standoff with the North­ern states in the American Civil War. This had prompted Albert’s final act of pub­lic busin­ess in Dec 1861. He’d amended an aggressive despatch from Lord Palmerston after the Nor­th’s seizure of two Confederate ag­ents from a British West Indies mail packet. Albert had warned that forc­ing the issue with­out finding a dip­l­omatic path would mean war, soon af­ter U.K had recov­ered from the dis­as­trous Crimean War (1853-6). His med­iation helped defuse a tense political situation, prompt­ing P.M Henry Temple to stress the Prince’s value to the government.

Britain had lost Victoria's "king". The immediate public response show­ed the national outpouring of grief. The middle classes put themselves and their children in black: shops closed, blinds dropped, flags at half mast, theatre performances and concerts cancelled. Even the poor­est rur­al workers put on black armbands. That 1861 Christmas was very sad.

During their 21 years of marriage Victoria and Al­bert had rescued the ailing monarchy and reinvigorated it for a democ­ratic new age. The royal family became ac­c­ess­ible to ordinary people as an ex­ample of the simple domestic virtues of monogamy, bourgeois decen­cy and family life. It was an image that Al­bert had actively pro­moted. And he actively promoted his diverse cultural legacy. 

It was only after Albert died that the nation acknowledged its debt and stopped calling him a bloody foreigner. Tragic obituaries fill­ed the Brit­ish press, many tinged with a profound sense of guilt that Al­bert had never been suffic­iently valued in his lifetime – for his notable contrib­u­tions to British culture, a patron of the arts and science.

Queen Victoria in black mourning clothes

It was clear that Victoria’s retreat from her public and her in­t­ense sorrow would not end with the normal two years of formal mourn­ing. Bertie had caused anxiety via indiscreet affairs, and in her fury, Vict­oria she blamed her son and heir for Albert’s death. And with 9 child­ren to parent alone, she retreated into paroxysms of despair, and imposed the same rigid ob­serv­ance of mourning on her family and staff!

Victoria focused exclus­ively on memorialising her husband. She turned her griev­ing into a formality, initiating a variety of artistic and cultural monuments commemorating Albert. 

But by the mid-1860s her ministers and her own family were becoming fr­antic at her ongoing retreat from public view and her refusal to part­icipate in any form of cerem­onies. Anti-monarchical feeling was growing, with regular complaints that Victoria did nothing to justify her Civil List income. By the late 1860s discontent spiralled into blatant repub­lican chall­en­ges and calls for Victoria’s abdication.

The first state ceremonial since Al­bert died was for Bertie Prince of Wales, a thanks­giving service at St Paul’s Cath­edral in 1872. A poor assass­ination att­empt against Victoria only rallied public symp­athy FOR the Queen.

Life improved for Victoria, thanks to the support of her trusted High­land servant John Brown and, in 1874, the return of her adored Disraeli as prime minister. It was by now clear that the queen would retain her black coverage for 40 years, but as she was coaxed back into public view, she did so as a respected figure of grandmotherly dignity.

Two last questions. We know the extent of Victoria’s dependency on her late husband, both emotionally and in dealing with all the official business. But had Albert insisted on their relat­ionship being this way and Vic­toria merely acceded, or had she never wanted to make all decisions? And when was Albert forgiven for being foreign?

Read: Helen Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monar­chy, Hutchinson, 2011.

Masterpieces Musée d’Orsay, Paris

In 1900 the Exposition Universelle drew thousands of art lovers to Paris, many arriving by train at the new Gare d’Orsay. Op­en­ed in 1986 and located on the Left Bank of the River Seine oppos­ite the Louvre, the building’s conversion into Musée d’Orsay was led by architects Bardon, Colboc and Phil­ippon. Now home to c100,000 works from 1848-1914, showcasing art by Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Cam­ille Pissarro, Alfred Sis­ley, Gustave Caillebotte etc.

Thank you to Sarah Belmont for her Musée d’Orsay material about my favourite works. Who were these masterpieces selected by: the curat­ors? the viewing public? the author?

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle, 1872, 

Musée d’Orsay. 

The Crad­le was an intimate depiction of Morisot’s sister Em­ma and Em­ma’s newborn baby, Blanche. At 31 Morisot (1841-95) her­self was still single, not marrying Eugène Manet until 1874 and becoming a mother herself only in 1879. The Cradle was shown at the first Impressionist Ex­hibition (1874) with little reaction, except that a few critics were sens­it­ive to its delicate palette. It did not sell until 1930, when the Louvre acquired it from the artist’s family.

Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with Bouquet of Vio­lets, 

1872 Musée d’Orsay.

 In late 1871 Manet (1832–83), who couldn’t paint while serving in the Franco-Prus­sian war and the Paris Commune, was able to resume working and reconnect with his former models. He’d met fellow artist Ber­the Morisot at the Louvre in 1868. Manet made a dozen portraits of Morisot, who married his younger brother and joined the Impressionist movement in 1874. This one shows her clad in trendy black in late C19th fash­ion, and holding a bou­quet of viol­ets. This was testimony to Man­et’s admiration for Spanish masters, especially Diego Velázquez.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers (1875), 

Musée d'Orsay. 

Caillebotte (1848–94) drew from his academic training to depict an everyday scene of labourers at work. His approach to perspective may have been traditional and his subjects reminiscent of Greek st­at­ues, but the content of the painting did not please the jury of the 1875 Paris Salon, which considered it vulgar. However the 28-year-old artist presented the work at the second Impressionist Ex­hibition (1876). Critics then were less than welcoming. Emile Zola thought the painting was anti-artistic and so accurate that it made it bourgeois. It was first donated to the French State by Cail­leb­ot­te’s family in 1894, moved to the Louvre in 1929 and to Musée d’Orsay in 1986.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Moulin de la Gal­ette 1876 

 Musée d’Orsay

This is undoubtedly one of Renoir’s (1841–1919) most impor­t­ant works. The artist presented it at the 1877 Impressionist Exh­ibition. It was purchased 2 years later by Gustave Caillebotte who bequeathed it to the French State in 1894. Art critic Georges Rivière, who was seen in the painting said: “It’s a page of hist­ory, a precious monument to Parisian life painted with great ac­cur­acy.” Even if Renoir included some of his painter friends in the compos­it­ion, his goal was to capture not a scene of his private life but the atmosphere of the actual Moulin de la Galette in the Mont­martre district. Three areas are depicted: the seated char­ac­t­ers in the foreground having a conversation, the crowd behind them danc­ing, and the band performing in an enclosure at the back. The blur­ry effect created by this layering was not to every­one’s taste then but today it would be hard to deny the modernity of the piece.

Paul Cézanne, The Card Players 1890–5, 

Musée d’Orsay. 

In the 1890s, Cézanne (1839–1906) tackled the subject of card players, which he may have borrowed from Caravaggio and from the Le Nain brothers. Of the 5 versions of The Card Players Céz­anne painted, what strikes one first in this one is the symmet­rical posing of his models, pea­s­ants whom the painter would see at the Jas de Bouffan, his fath­er’s property near Aix-en-Provence. The bot­tle on the table marks the centre of the composition and accent­uates the silent face-off between the two opponents.

I have excluded the Monet, Rodin, Degas, van Gogh, Sérusier, Gauzi, Burne-Jones, Gauguin, Redon, Claudel, Derain and Rousseau. Now I would like you readers to read the original article, What to See at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and share with me views about which masterpieces you love and which you are less keen on, if any.

Read 25 Masterpieces at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris by Sarah Belmont, July 8 2024 Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Medieval travellers were quite like us

 Our perception of medieval Europe is of a confined world in which people rarely travelled beyond their own locality, and when they did it was for religious reasons. But Paul Oldfield asked us to consider Southern Italy and Sic­ily. Due to its central Mediterranean location, the region began to at­tract more European visitors for three main reasons:

Canterbury Tales

Amazon

Firstly various factors converged to boost the popularity of distant pilgrimage. After the crus­ading movement started in 1095, Europe experienced its golden era of devotional trav­el to Jerusalem. Pilgrimage offered the best med­ieval equiv­al­ent of the modern tourist trade, even though some pilgrims travelled not solely for pious motivations eg a crusade might have cloaked political and economic agendas.

Secondly South­ern Italy and Sicily were conquered by bands of Normans who unified a region which had previously been polit­ically frag­ment­ed (eg Greek Christians, Latin Christians, Jews and Mus­lims). By 1130 the Normans had created a powerful new mon­archy which had been domin­at­ed by Muslim sea-power.

Thirdly Europe underwent a cultural renaissance so learn­ed ind­ividuals travelled to seek clas­sical traditions. South­ern Italy and Sicily, with clas­sical history and with a Greek and Islamic past, attracted both an­cient & eastern learning.

The result of these three combined strands saw an influx of visit­ors who could properly be called tour­ists. High numbers of people regularly travelled both short and long distances, and some of this move­ment was driven by modern motivations: renewal, leisure and thrill-seeking.

While the pilgrims were travelling across foreign lands, they were encouraged to imitate Christ, to feel hardship and to focus on salvation. At many shrines en route, pil­g­rims could stay near a holy tomb, to receive cures or divine rev­el­ations. Even pilgrims were exper­ient­ial travellers.

South Italy possessed one of medieval Europe’s more sophist­ic­ated travel infrastruc­tures. Being so close to the heart of the former Roman empire, it still boasted functioning Roman roads which linked into the main route - it brought travel­l­ers from western Europe across the Alps to Rome. Via Appia helped travellers to move across the south Italian Ap­en­nines to the coastal ports of Apulia, while another road went via Calabria towards the bustling Messina port.

South Italian ports hosted fleets of local ships as well as those of the emerging commercial powers of Genoa, Pisa and Venice. So the pilgrim had secure, effic­ient and direct connections. At the same time, new hospitals, inns, bridges and monasteries emerged along It­aly’s main pilgrim routes, or near shrines for foreign vis­it­ors. The major Apulian and Sicilian ports often hosted pilgrim hospit­als belonging to Holy Land military monastic orders, Templars and Hospitallers. Mes­s­ina was a particularly hectic port.

 

Pilgrim badge bought at

shrine at Saint-Josse-sur-Mer, France

Pinterest

Most of the surviving evidence focuses on elite travellers – nobles and bishops. But travel, and pilgrimage in particular, was also undertaken by the very poorest. Monastic rules out­lined their monks’ duty to offer free hospitality to all trav­ellers. It was also good advertising for shrine centres to be seen to cater for all backgrounds. After all, foreign visit­ors spent money on local serv­ices and on profitable tolls. The guardians of southern Italy’s shrine centres actively competed for travellers.

Many pilgrims suffered from debilitating conditions, and struggled to cope with travelling demands. Many died. One chronicler of the First Crusade saw the drowning of 400 pilgrims in Brindisi harbour but, he said, dying as a pilgrim brought the hope of salvation. Of course threats of robbery, shipwreck and dis­ease remained - no wonder pilgrims travelled in groups. It makes sense that the word travel comes from ancient word travail, meaning hardship.

Southern Italy’s landscape drew wonder and fear. Its seas in the busy Straits of Mess­ina were full of tidal rips. Muslim travellers suffered a near-fatal shipwreck in the Straits in the 1180s. The famous 1280 map, Hereford Mappa Mundi, por­t­rayed two sea monsters lurking in Sicilian waters.

Erupt­ions at Vesuvius and Etna were a regul­ar feature: one struck at Catania Sicily in 1169 killing 15,000 people. The region’s volcanoes had even greater potency, connecting them to Hell’s Entrance and showing God’s disapproval.

In c1170 a Spanish Jewish traveller and author, Benjamin of Tudela, pas­s­ed near Naples and marvelled at the sight of an ancient city submerged just off the coast. Like many travellers, he came there to access cutting-edge medical knowl­ed­ge, a fusion of Arabic and ancient Greek learning that had been a specialty in Salerno.

To prove that travellers had been to the distant city they had aimed for, each would buy a badge to show off back at home. Typically made of lead alloy, the badges were sold as souven­irs at Christian pilgrimage sites and related to the part­ic­ular saint ven­er­ated there. The shrine at Saint-Josse-sur-Mer in France was named after a hermit, St Jos, in a monastery. His hermitage became a popular site for late C14th English pilgrims on the way to more distant shrines.

In the most appealing and popular sites across Europe (Jerusalem in Is­rael, Compost­ela in Spain, Canterbury in Eng­land, Cologne in Germany etc) the badges tended to be standardised eg St Thomas Becket was the most popular sub­ject in Canberbury and a shell was sold most frequently in Compostela.

Hereford Mappa Mundi

map created in 1280.

Media Storehouse

Conclusion 
Medieval travellers displayed traits that reflected aspects of our modern understanding of tourism. Southern Italy was an alluring travel hotspot - it had devel­oped travel and serv­ice structures, it catered for those seek­ing spiritual salvat­ion, it provided learning and tested those who sought chall­enges. Those challenges were often sought as ends in them­selves.