from: "The Jewish Chronicle" 20th April 2012 by Madeleine Kinsgley
An account of a transformative stay
In Ireland for 100 Jewish children
from Slovakia tells a stirring story
Rabbi’s
restoration tale
IN THE chaotic aftermath
of the Second World War, the late Rabbi
Dr Solomon Schonfeld, the marvellous
hero of Barbara Barnett’s story of post-Shoah
redemption, trawled Slovakia for young survivors: orphans, slave labourers and those hidden away by righteous gentiles. The
dynamic Schonfeld had already saved thousands of
children before and during the war, originally under the auspices of the Chief
Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council. His extraordinary post-war mission was to offer
young Slovak survivors a healing year In the Irish countryside.
Barnett’s account is scholarly yet gripping, fleshed out with archive letters, documents and photographs. Schonfeld leaps out as a maverick force whose vision of restoring heritage, health and innocence to these traumatised youngsters brooked no barriers.
No money? No matter: among his North London
congregants and further afield, Schonfeld campaigned
for £1,000 in £1 pledges and prevailed upon wedding and barmitzvah
to part with cash. A Manchester businessman and philanthropist Yankel Levy was persuaded to spend £30,000 buying Clonyn Castle, set in 1,600 acres near Dublin. Here, in
1948, 100 mistrustful and malnourished children aged between six and 17 arrived for a life-transforming
idyll before rejoining their struggling families, or starting new lives in
England, America or Israel. Jewish refugee hildren arrive in London, February 1939: Schonfeld kept the flow going for a decade.Most of these children — whose deeply affecting
memoirs Barnett gathered nearly half-a-century on — had suffered appallingly before
setting out on this (at first totally bewildering) rural adventure. “Our personalities
and demeanour reflected the vagaries of an utterly
confused past and a lost childhood. We wore our misery on our faces”, the then
teenage Alfred Leicht recalls.
Some of the group were alarmed by dormitories with
iron bedsteads requisitioned from Irish army supplies. Several screamed at the sight
of a Policeman. Many spirited food from the meal table unsure if more would follow.
And yet their story unfolds as a triumph of resilience and normality restored.
“It was like paradise”, remembers Dezider Rosenfeld,
then 10. Olga Grossman also aged 10 and an Auschwitz survivor, was
initially frightened by games of hide-and-seek. “We associated hiding with
fear.. ."
It’s heartening to read how shattered lives blossomed
into successful careers and the creation of new homes and families. Their
benefactor, Levy sadly became bankrupt through buying the castle. But he’d made his mark: Clonyn
door-frames still bear the imprint of mezuzahs, long since removed.
MADELEINE KINGSLEY is a freelance writer
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the original article
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