Adam Yamey's Blog: YAMEY, page 240

HOW THE SOUTH WEST WAS WON

Review of The Kaiser’s Holocaust, by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen (published in 2010 by Faber & Faber in London.)
One of the great stumbling blocks during the lengthy, eight year process leading up to the Union of South Africa in 1910 was whether or not to give non-Europeans the right to vote, or any political rights at all. In 1909, JBM Hertzog, whilst discussing the draft constitution of the proposed union in the Transvaal Parliament, is recorded as having said that, “the native was undeniably a human being, but he was not yet entitled to political rights because he was still a child, ‘in matters of civilisation … thousands of years behind the whites.’”.  Earlier on in that debate, Abraham Fischer had questioned, “whether the people of South Africa had done any act of injustice to the natives”, before adding that, “…the overriding law was ‘the law of self-preservation’” For, he said, “The black man’s rights were not the rights of the white man, who had no intention of acknowledging that they were such now.” (All of these quotes come from The Unification of South Africa 1902-1910, by LM Thompson, published 1960 in Oxford). At least, the most ardent opponents of giving black people the franchise in South Africa recognised that the Africans were human, and were willing to discuss whether they had any rights to self-representation.
This was definitely not the case across the border in German South West Africa (‘SWA’, now ‘Namibia’), as is eloquently described in The Kaiser’s Holocaust, a book written by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen.
JC Smuts, in his 1952 biography of his father Jan Christian Smuts (South Africa’s Prime Minister from 1939 to 1948), summarises the history of German SWA succinctly: “The German flag was hoisted on the 6th August, 1884, at Lüderitzbucht… Nine years later a ruthless series of wars began which went on till 1908. The German ideal of colonisation was the same as in the old Americas - extermination. Thereafter there was no Red Indian problem. In South-West Africa Germanydetermined there would be no Herero problem…”
T he Kaiser’s Holocaust describes how, to quote Smuts, the Germans ‘determined there would be no Herero problem’ in SWA, and shows effectively how the genocide of the Herero and many of the Nama people can be considered to have been a prototype for the Holocaust orchestrated by the Germans during the Second World War in their quest for Lebensraum and racial purity.  This alone would have made me want to read the book, but I had an additional personal interest in the subject matter.
Newspapers across South Africa noted the discovery of alluvial diamonds in SWA in 1908. In November of that year, The Cape Mercury, published in King Williams Town, carried a detailed report about the extremely rich alluvial diamond field discovered in the immediate vicinity of Lüderitzbucht. The diamonds were easily accessible, lying just beneath the surface of the dust on the floor of the desert. The writer of the article expressed surprise that this remarkable discovery had not been made earlier, as, “… it is understood that during the recent struggle between the German Troops and the Hereros, detachments of troops camped in the immediate vicinity, if not even upon the actual ground where the stones are now being picked…”. It is this ‘struggle’ against the Hereros and also against the other ‘black’ or ‘coloured’ inhabitants of SWA, which is described in detail by Olusoga and Erichsen. This ‘struggle’ that began as an attempt to suppress native attacks on the recently arrived German settlers rapidly deteriorated into blatant genocide.
On the 28th December, 1908, a writer in the Mercury wrote: “Attention is directed to the advertisement appearing in another column regarding the prospectus of the Kolmans-Kop Diamond Mines Ltd., near Lüderitzbucht, German South West Africa … One of the directors is Mr Franz Ginsberg, MLA”. Mr Ginsberg, Member of Parliament for King Williams Town, was one of my ancestors. As I read The Kaiser’s Holocaust, I wondered how much my ancestor knew about what had been going on in SWA until a few months before he trod the diamond-bearing sands near Lüderitzbucht (upon which the Imperial German Army had camped whilst executing their ‘struggle’), and what he thought about it.
The ‘struggle’ alluded to above began in earnest 1904, when the Hereros, fed up with the unfriendly activities and false promises of the recently arrived colonists from Europe, began their attacks on the Germans. At first, they were very successful, but later when Germany sent out reinforcements, their defeat became inevitable. The arrival of General Lothar Von Trotha (1848-1920) in SWA marked the beginning of the ruthless destruction of the Hereros. Von Trotha wrote of the situation in SWA in 1904, “I know enough tribes in Africa. They all have the same mentality insofar as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy by absolute terrorism and even cruelty I shall destroy the rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money.” And he did, even employing ‘Cleansing Patrols’ to kill any natives who had managed to escape his murderous forces. This was a forerunner of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, such as disfigured the Balkans not so long ago.
Many Africans, who were not killed immediately, were herded together and imprisoned in concentration camps (such as were pioneered by the Spanish in Cubain the late1890s, and used with devastating effect by the British during the 2ndBoer War of 1899-1902), with the idea of killing them off by exposure to inhospitable living conditions and forced labour. One of these camps was on Shark Island, an island next to the town of Lüderitzbucht, and only 13 kilometres from Kolmanskop, where Mr Ginsberg’s diamond ‘mine’ was to be established in 1908.
Closed in 1907, Shark Island was a forerunner of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other equally notorious places. It was undoubtedly a concentration camp.  However, as is well-described by Olusoga and Erichsen, Shark Islandwas not simply used to separate the Africans from the Europeans, but it was part of a systematic attempt to exterminate the Africans. Many unfortunates were killed by the cruelty of their captors, starvation, and exposure to the harsh elements. Others were worked to death. Working to death, which was to become a feature of the Nazi concentration camps, was pioneered in the many concentration camps of SWA including Shark Island. The only thing that distinguished these camps from those set up by the Nazis a few years later was the absence of industrialised methods of mass murder (i.e. the use of carbon monoxide and Zyklon B).
According to Martin Gilbert in his book Auschwitz and the Allies, very little was known outside the Axis territories about the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews and others before 1944. Even between 1944 and the end of the war, knowledge of the existence of what is now called ‘The Holocaust’ was limited to a very few politicians. The converse was true forty years earlier in German SWA. If my ancestor, Mr Ginsberg, had been a reader of the Cape Argus, a newspaper published in Cape Town, he would have read about the horrific suffering that was happening in camps like Shark Island. Olusoga and Erichsen quote from a series of articles published in 1905 in this paper. These contained reports on the camps supplied by a German trader who had witnessed them first-hand. The excerpts, which they reproduce in the book, are too horrific to be included in this review.
What had the Africans done to inspire such cruelty as was inflicted upon them by the Germans in their colony?
Was it their failure to trust their German invaders and their false promises of protection? Was it the heavy blows that the Africans rained on the initially ill-prepared German military forces? Or, was it the result of a belief in Social Darwinism? All three of these were important in determining the Germans’ behaviour in SWA. However, the authors of The Kaiser’s Holocaust consider that the major driving factor in the genocide in German SWA was strong belief in the concepts of racial supremacy and Social Darwinism. The evidence that they present to support their views is impressive.
They describe, for example, the writings of Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who was inspired by Social Darwinism and ‘invented’ the Lebensraum concept. He believed, according to Olusoga and Erichsen, that, “Colonial peoples disappeared because they were persecuted, enslaved and exterminated” because some “inner cultural weakness of the native races of Africa, Americaand Asia made them passive, and therefore incapable of withstanding the European assault. All this was acceptable because the people the Europeans were destroying were what he termed ‘inferior races’”.  A few years later in 1912, Paul Rohrbach (1869-1956) wrote, “No false philanthropy or race-theory can prove to reasonable people that the preservation of any tribe of nomadic South African Kaffirs… is more important for the future of mankind than the expansion of the European nations, or the white race as a whole.” Horrific as this may sound today, it was perfectly reasonable to those who ordered, and carried out the genocide in SWA.  The same kind of reasoning was applied by the Nazis a few decades later in Europe. They believed that Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs, all of whom were to be regarded as being sub-human were suitable only for use as slave labour before being exterminated.
The authors of the Kaiser’s Holocaust devote many pages to describing the genocide of the Africans in German SWA and comparing it with what was to follow later in Nazi Occupied Europe. The comparisons are frightening. They include the use of prisoners in scientifically questionable medical experiments, and their corpses for anthropological studies, whose aims were to attempt to prove scurrilous, pseudo-scientific theories of racial supremacy. However, what is more frightening is the gradual evolution from the Imperial Germans’ justification of genocide to that of the Nazis.
Whilst most of the Kaiser’s Holocaust is dedicated to the German treatment of the Africans in German SWA, a largish part of the second half of the book deals with the development of Nazi ideas, and the regime that resulted from them. Many of the Nazi’s views on race and how to deal with ‘inferior people’ (Untermenschen, the translation of a derogatory term coined by the American eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard in 1922) were, as is well demonstrated by Olusoga and Erichsen, derived from the ideas believed by those whose racial theories justified the African genocide, and also those persons who carried it out in SWA and then later lived in Germany.
Some readers may consider that too much space in the book has been devoted to development of the Nazi’s genocidal plans, everything that is contained in this book is fascinating, and contributes to a greater understanding of the basis of Hitler’s dreams and their ghastly realisation.
Anyone with even the faintest interest in twentieth century history should spend a few hours reading this fascinating, well-written book. And if you don’t have any interest in this aspect of history, this book will certainly change that!
AFTERTHOUGHT
Lest we should become complacent, we must not forget that the German elimination of the ‘natives’ in SWA was not without precedent. Olusoga and Erichsen mention that Ratzel cited the ‘displacement’ of indigenous people in North America, Brazil, Tasmania, and New Zealand, as being models for future colonialism, wars of extermination, and, dare I say it, genocide. 
Remember, “History is written by the victors”, or as George Orwell put it, “He, who controls the present, controls the past. He, who controls the past, controls the future.”

DRAWN IN COLOUR

Drawn in colour is a book written by a ‘black’ South African in 1960. The author compares the lives of the black Africans (‘natives’) living under Apartheid in Nationalist South Africa with that of those living in the much freer conditions in The Protectorate of Uganda just two years before it became an independent member of the British Commonwealth. As it is has been out-of-print for a while, and hard to find, I have included a number of extracts in this review.
During my researches into the life of my great grandfather the late Senator Franz Ginsberg (1860, Prussia - 1936, South Africa), I scoured numerous crumbling pages of the issues of the Cape Mercury (published in King Williams Town, where Ginsberg was an important political figure), stored in the British Library’s newspaper collection, looking for references to him. I found was an editorial dated February the 6th, 1906, an extract of which reads: “Much to the Cape Mercury’s surprise the Natives are objecting to the proposed take over of the locations by the Council. The newspaper “Imvo” has voiced the opposition expressed.  Mr Ginsberg published a reply in Imvo. The editors of Imvo pointed out that the Native inhabitants of the locations, under threat of repossession, do not see things in the same light as Mr Ginsberg.” The editor of the Cape Mercury countered that the Natives did not realize the benefits that they would accrue if the Council took over their locations (i.e. native townships), and wrote that Imvo would be doing good work if it advised its readers to approach the matter from a broader standpoint, relying a little more on the Council’s honesty of purpose, in preference “to indulging in carping criticism”.
I returned home after recording this extract, and looked up Imvo amongst my collection of books about South Africa. I learned that Imvo was a shortened form of Imvo Zabantsundu, the full name of the first African language newspaper to be published in what is now South Africa. According to JD Omer in his  “History of Southern Africa” published in 1994, the newspaper was founded by John Tengo Jabavu in 1884 with the financial support of  James Rose-Innes.  Rose-Innes was a white lawyer with liberal views about the rights of ‘natives’ (i.e. native Africans) to have opportunities to determine their own political fate. John Tengo Jabavu, according to Wilson and Thomson in the second volume of their “The Oxford History of South Africa” (1971) founded the Native Electoral Association in King Williams Town in the same year. It supported Rose Innes, who was standing as a candidate for the town’s representative in the Cape House of Assembly (i.e. parliament).  It is obvious why they favoured him when one reads one of Rose-Innes statements made some years later: "we do not allow separate representatives for Jews and Gentiles, for Catholics and Protestants, for farmers and merchants. The result would be chaos. Why then should there be separate representation for the Natives? No doubt, the ethnological distinction between European and Bantu constitutes a wider separation than exists between any of the classes which have been mentioned. But that does not alter the fact that both races are interested in the welfare of the whole country; and that the economic position of the one reacts upon the other. The part of statesmanship is not to stress racial differences, but to emphasise the interests which exist in common” (quoted from an article by Jeremy Gauntlett, published in Consultus, a South African law journal, in April 1988).
Some years after learning about Imvo, I was browsing the shelves of a large second-hand bookshop in Brecon (Wales) when my eye was attracted to the orange coloured spine of a book. It was “Drawn In Colour” by Noni Jabavu. As it was only £2, having already been reduced from £4, and I was in a hurry, I snapped it up without skimming through it, but hoping that the author might be related to the Jabavu who founded Imvo.
Only recently, I decided to read it after I had just finished ploughing through Shaun Johnson’s tedious novel, “The Native Commissioner”, which is concerned with the genesis of, and the results of, Apartheid. I hoped that Noni Jabavu’s book would deal with this subject in a better way. I was not disappointed.
Jabavu’s book is a work of non-fiction. It begins with the author, who resided in London, landing in South Africa in 1960 in order to attend the funeral of her younger brother who was shot by gangsters in Johannesburg where he was studying. She makes her way to her birthplace Middledrift, a village in the Eastern Cape which is almost 90 kilometres east of King Williams Town and 19 kilometres east of Alice. The latter houses Fort Hare University, the oldest black university in Southern Africa. Its graduates included many who took part in the struggle to end Apartheid including: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo Govan Mbeki, Chris Hani, Robert Sobukwe, and Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
I did not need to read far into Noni Jabavu’s book to discover that she was indeed related to John Tengo Jabavu, who founded Fort Hare University. Noni, who died aged 88 in 2008, was one of his granddaughters. Her father, known by all as ‘the Professor’ was Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu. Educated in England, where Noni was living at the time of her brother’s murder, he became the first black professor at Fort Hare. So, Noni was a member of a highly educated and respected Xhosa family.
As soon as Noni arrives in Middledrift, the ceremonies leading up to her brother’s funeral begin. And after this has finished, the family retreat, according to Xhosa custom, ‘in the forest’. For, the elder Xhosa people believe that, “The bereaved have to be secluded because if the public are suddenly confronted with them at such times, they, too, suffer pangs of the heart since they are at a loss how to comfort them.” This seclusion of the bereaved minded me of the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva for seven days after the death of a close member of the family. This also caused me to remember another similarity between Jewish and Xhosa traditions, that of placing pebbles on gravestones. When we visited Steve Biko’s grave in the cemetery near to the township of Ginsberg (named after my great-grandfather Franz), we noted that pebbles had placed on his gravestone. Our guide told us that it was the tradition that Xhosas, who had been unable to attend a funeral, placed pebbles on the grave of the deceased. So do Jews when visiting a grave (even if they had attended the funeral of the deceased on whose grave they place a pebble). I suppose that both the Jews and the Xhosas, once having been nomadic people, had to bury their dead in the wilds where nature would have gradually obliterated traces of these graves. By placing these stones, passers-by would help to preserve the longevity of the burial place.
After the period of mourning, and before Noni left Middledrift, the family members decided that it was time for her widowed father to get remarried. However, before the wedding could proceed a pre-nuptial contract had to be drawn up.  Noni’s father entrusted this Mr EEP Burl, to an elderly white advocate in the town of Alice. While Mr Burl and the Professor were dealing with this matter, Noni noticed, “… an equally ancient telephone made by Ericcson of Stockholm, the name picked out in gold letters…” This must have been a forerunner of the better known Sony Ericcson mobile telephones that so many of us clutch today (The first Ericcson factory was Lars Magnus Ericsson in 1876).
Eventually, Noni sets set off on the first stage of her journey to East Africa where he is going to visit her sister, who was unable to attend her brother’s funeral. Her father accompanies her on the first stage, which is by train to Bloemfontein. They meet a cousin of hers, Governor Mjali. She learns that Mjali had been on the point of marrying someone, when at the last moment it was discovered that the couple were distantly related.  For amongst the Xhosa, isiko (custom or tradition) dictates that when people propose to marry, genealogies must be traced to ensure that there are no blood links between them. Marriage between cousins of any classification was forbidden amongst Noni’s people. This resembles Kayasth Gujaratis of Indian origin, who restrict their marriages to those who do not share the same gotra (people who are descendants in an unbroken male line from a common male ancestor), but contrasts with the religious diktats of the Jews and Moslems, which allow first cousin marriages.
Noni’s father is like a magnet. He attracts other passengers to join him in his compartment on the train, where the lively discussion soon reaches the subject of African languages. This focussed on the subject of the intermixing and subsequent dilution of the purity of the various African languages caused by “…Big Business and Industry’s need for workers.” The Professor sees little wrong with this, reminding his fellow passengers of his ancestors from ‘invading’ from the north, who, “… as they travelled with their cattle, their languages constantly being enriched by those spoken by the unknown populations they overran during those centuries of movement!”.  The conversation then drifts to another language spoken in Africa, Afrikaans. Some of the passengers in Noni’s compartment felt that, “Many of the younger generation have become emotionally antagonistic towards Afrikaans, reciprocating the Nationalist Boer Government’s policies of repression and the unfairnesses (sic)they cause…” Her father replied to this, “to know Afrikaans can teach you as nothing else can the background and character of the intrinsic Boer” with whom they had to deal.
Noni and her father reach Bloemfontein, where they stay with her new step-sister and her husband in their house in the Bochabela Location, a part of Bloemfonteinwhere black Africans were permitted to live. As they tour the location (township), they begin comparing the Boers with the ‘Europeans’ (which is how the Xhosas referred to the white English in South Africa). Their hosts point out that “… the Boers are not all primitive Calvinists stunted in thought as Nationalist policies and tenets of the Dutch Reform Church imply… nor are the English on the other hand all civilised  Western men as their ‘overseas’ inheritance would lead you to expect… Furthermore, the English are guilty in our eyes of a subtler, greater sin because in what we call their ‘dessicated’, intellectual’, to themselves ‘balanced’ approach to human problems. They appear heartless and unfeeling…”  And, a little later, Noni writes something that chimed with my own gut feelings about the effects of the Second Boer War (1899-1902): “What ruined the Boer was when the Englishman, having vanquished and thrashed him in war, handed the whip to the loser with that 1910 Act of the Union of South Africa.”
Noni then continues her trip northwards. She leaves Bloemfontein on an overnight train, and observes, that the bedclothes in her sleeper berth, “ … are green, with a special line to show that they are ‘Native’ and therefore even after cleaning never to be used in the European part of the train.” She arrives in Johannesburg, which, she remarks “… is an uncomfortable place for someone from a quiet country Reserve… it is bristling with energy, violence, zest for life and progress, seems to prickle with the possibilities of sudden death.” She was pleased to leave it after changing trains. Her views on this city are shared by quite a few of my cousins, who left their homes, searching for a place to live in greater safety, more than three decades after Noni wrote these words.
When Noni reaches Southern Rhodesia (now ‘Zimbabwe’), she encountered hostility towards the ‘native’. This was well exemplified by what happened when she tried to buy something in a pharmacy in Salisbury (now ‘Harare’). The sales assistant was rude, telling her to “Go’n get whatever you people use in yer own native shops, go on, get out.” She left Rhodesiaby aeroplane, flying northwards over the mighty River Zambesi, whose name, she informs the reader, is derived from the Xhosa word Uku-zambesa, which means to undress. This is what her ancestors had to do before attempting to swim across the river on their migration southwards. As she flew over the wide expanses of Africa, she was looking forward to see how other Africans lived in an Africa not burdened with the yoke of Apartheid, which her family in Middledrift imagined to be some kind of paradise.
After a long flight, Noni lands at Entebbein Uganda, and is driven to Kampala where her sister lives. On her way, she asks herself, “…what Southerner would not be impressed…at the visible signs of wealth which was on a scale I had thought Africa incapable of?” Yet, soon she realised that all is not well in the Garden of Eden.
At the edge of Kampala, she sees what was, “…clearly an horrific slum area.” She compared it with Pimville (near Johannesburg), one of the very worst slums that she had seen in Nationalist South Africa. She says to her sister and brother-in-law, “Here in the African’s own country our people are forced to live and rot in locations.”  She is surprised when they reply, “This is not a location… it’s the African’s own town, the modern town of Baganda.” Her hosts inform her that each of the plots in this slum is private property, owned by black Africans. They tell her that no one is forced to live like this and that everybody in Ugandacan live almost anywhere that they choose. They are not forced to live in slums like these by the white people. “You know, it’s time you got this South Africa idea out of your mind,” her sister says to her. Noni notices that the slum dwellers in Kampalaare quite different from those in South Africa. She wrote that in Kampala, “They did not look gay. The atmosphere was morose. I was struck by this for it was a noticeable difference from location dwellers down South. There, despite slum conditions Southern Bantu have an indestructible gaiety, bubble with vitality …” So soon after arriving in Uganda, she was already showing signs of her gradual disillusionment with what she saw in a country where the ‘native’ was unfettered by the impediments of Apartheid.
When a wealthy looking African drives past in a very fancy car, she asks her hosts, “Why haven’t such Africans developed the place? They rule themselves here, therefore why have they made no roads, no drains…” The matter-of-fact answer that she receives makes her reconsider her ideas, “ … African landlords can get enough in rents with the place as it is…why should they pay to improve… That would be spending money on other people, wouldn’t it? The object is to obtain money for yourself if you are a landlord, from the other people.”
The next part of Noni’s book, most of the second half, deals with her experiences in Uganda: the people she meets and their attitudes; a safari during which her idealistic preconceptions of Ugandaare further demolished; and finally the breakdown of her sister’s marriage. Eventually, she writes of Uganda, “Yet I kept on trying to come to terms with this exotic background which was beginning to grate… I found I was averting my eyes so as not to see ‘the Natives’ who embodied and represented it.” She found that she felt impelled to, “…try to ‘like’ and ‘be nice’ to those natives I knew…”, and was dismayed to find that she was, “… in the same boat as those whom we Southerners call slightingly ‘liberals’, meaning white people whose brain and sense, education or conviction tell them that there’s no reason not to like us blacks; but whose emotions are rooted, as evidently mine were too, in an instinctive revulsion from a way of life more primitive than their own.”  Her words have a startling honesty and ring of truth.
In the last section of her book, the author returns to South Africa to see her family. She wanted to see again how her fellow ‘Southerners’, “… sweat blood as they progress; how they gain experience in co-operation and cohesion as they pass through those steel tempering ordeals of Treason accusations, women’s anti-Pass campaigns, bus boycotts, imprisonments… All these things seemed to me to be, if one remembers that it is the long view that counts in Africa, why our lovely South Africa was a significant country.”  I hope that Noni, who lived to see the ending of Apartheid, was not disappointed by what was beginning to happen in her mother country in the last years of her life.

AN ACCIDENTAL BARMITZVAH

ALIWAL
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AN ACCIDENTAL BARMITZVAH


Early in 2002, our daughter, who was then almost seven years old, was highly impressed by a photograph of somewhere in Venice. Her instant reaction was to ask us to take her there. As she was taking swimming lessons at that time we said that we would take her when she had learnt how to swim (in case she fell into a canal). Within a couple of months, she had become a competent little swimmer. She learnt much faster than I did. At her age I would have been reluctant to even consider entering a swimming pool.
When I was a child, my parents took us, my sister and me, to Venice every year until I reached my late teens, which is when I began travelling without the rest of my family. Many years later, in 1982, my friend - and many years later she became my wife - and I spent a few days in Venice. It was during the Falkland’s Crisis, and I remember standing near the Accademia Bridge having an argument with my future wife about the rights and wrongs of the war being waged by the British and the Argentineans. Luckily, we eventually became reconciled to our opposing points of view, and agreed to differ.
Twenty years later, we flew into TrevisoAirport, near Venice, along with our seven year old daughter.
We had rented an apartment near to the Cannareggio sestiere (Venice like some other Italian towns is divided into six districts or boroughs known as ‘sestiere’). It was within walking distance of the railway station and also close to the Ghetto, which was once the quarter of the city in which there were iron foundries and also where Jews were permitted to live. The word ‘ghetto’ is most likely derived from a Venetian word meaning the waste slag produced by iron foundries. The Ghetto Vecchio (old ghetto) is actually newer than the Ghetto Nuovo (new ghetto), which it borders.  The Jews of Venice were required to live in these districts of Venice, and nowhere else. The modern word ‘ghetto’ is derived from the Venetian term. 
When I used to visit Venicewith my parents, we occasionally visited the Ghetto district. This was not because of any sense religious attachment. It was for art historical reasons.

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THE ACCIDENTAL BAR-MITZVAH

SEE: http://yameyamey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/...






Early in 2002, our daughter, who was then almost seven years old, was highly impressed by a photograph of somewhere in Venice. Her instant reaction was to ask us to take her there. As she was taking swimming lessons at that time we said that we would take her when she had learnt how to swim (in case she fell into a canal). Within a couple of months, she had become a competent little swimmer. She learnt much faster than I did. At her age I would have been reluctant to even consider entering a swimming pool.
When I was a child, my parents took us, my sister and me, to Venice every year until I reached my late teens, which is when I began travelling without the rest of my family. Many years later, in 1982, my friend - and many years later she became my wife - and I spent a few days in Venice. It was during the Falkland’s Crisis, and I remember standing near the Accademia Bridge having an argument with my future wife about the rights and wrongs of the war being waged by the British and the Argentineans. Luckily, we eventually became reconciled to our opposing points of view, and agreed to differ.
Twenty years later, we flew into TrevisoAirport, near Venice, along with our seven year old daughter.
We had rented an apartment near to the Cannareggio sestiere (Venice like some other Italian towns is divided into six districts or boroughs known as ‘sestiere’). It was within walking distance of the railway station and also close to the Ghetto, which was once the quarter of the city in which there were iron foundries and also where Jews were permitted to live....


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AIRLINES

I first visited Bangalore in southern Indiain January 1994. Much of the first week of my stay was taken up with preparations for the very colourful and quite complicated Hindu wedding ceremony, in which I was to play a starring role. After the three days of proceedings were over, my wife and spent a fortnight away from the city on our honeymoon, visiting Ootacamund and then Kerala. When we returned from this enjoyable trip, my first in India, we spent a few weeks in Bangalore, during which I was introduced to some of its attractions.
The Bangalore Club was one of these. In the days when the British controlled India, this was known as the ‘Bangalore United Services Club’ and its members were selected from the higher ranks of the armed forces. Today, it is still considered to be highly distinguished amongst the many social clubs of India, and its members, including myself, are very much aware of being considered by others, maybe without much justification, as being privileged people. In any case, the Club is located in its own delightful park-like grounds, an oasis in the heart of the ever increasing mayhem of everyday life in the city.
One of the Club’s two main entrances is located on Lavelle Road, which was named after Michael Lavelle who made his fortune in the 1870s by selling his mining concession in the Kolar Gold Fields. In 1994, most of the buildings along Lavelle Roadwere old bungalows, private residences set well back from the leafy street and surrounded by luxuriant gardens. Today, few of these remain, many of them having been replaced by modern blocks conceived by architects who appear to have little or no aesthetic sense. The road winds northwards from the Club until it reaches the grounds of St Mark’s Church, an elegant structure containing many memorials to Britons who fell during some of the many military campaigns, which they undertook to control their unruly subjects, such as, for example, the suppression of the Mopla Rebellion in Malabar in 1921. Before Lavelle Roadreaches this point, it meets the eastern end of Madras Bank Road. In 1994, the southern corner plot where the two roads met was occupied by the open air café of the Airlines Hotel (‘Airlines’).
I don’t know exactly when Airlines first opened, but my wife, who lived as a small child in Bangalorethe middle of the 1950s, has vague recollections of visiting it then. Other people, with whom I have spoken, feel that it first opened later, in the early 1960s. The exact date is unimportant, but it was during an era when air travel was considered new and exciting, and was definitely something that the vast majority of Indians would have never even dreamt of experiencing. The closest that even most relatively affluent Indians would ever get to flying was by driving out to an airport, and having a tea or coffee at its café. My wife remembers this is as being one of the treats she enjoyed during her schooldays in Calcutta, where her family moved to in 1958 from Bangalore. So, ‘Airlines’ - a name that suggested exoticism, modernity, and the latest mode of transport - was a clever choice for a new establishment opening in the late 1950s or the early 1960s. Furthermore, it had a drive-in, just like something that  Bangaloreans would only have seen in American films. One could, and still can, sit in the car park and have refreshments served on a stainless steel tray that clips on to the window of the car door.

Squirrels mating high above Airlines Café
My wife introduced me to Airlines for several reasons. Firstly, it is full of good memories of her childhood. It was a place that her parents visited as a treat. Secondly, it is a place that one can sit peacefully in the open-air, shaded from the sun by umbrellas of fern-like foliage growing from the branches of the huge trees that surround the open-air café. Thirdly, the coffee served there is good. Waiters dressed in stained white uniforms deliver large glasses of good quality milky south Indian filter coffee from the main building of the hotel. The coffee at Airlines may not be the best available in a city overflowing with coffee outlets, but it is way above average, and few places can compete with the café’s leafy ambience.

A few years ago, long after my first visit to Bangalore, we arrived at Airlines and were shocked to see that it had shrunk in size. No longer did the open-air café extend as far as Lavelle Road. A high, unadorned, breezeblock wall had bisected not only the open air section of Airlines, but also the main building of the hotel. The eastern half the building still functioned, but its western half had been demolished. This section of the hotel ended abruptly at the new wall.  Beyond this wall that made me recall the Berlin Wall that fell more or less the same time as this one was erected, there was a building site. Today, this is occupied by another tasteless modern office block.
The land, on which Airlines stands, is leased from a waqf, a charitable trust maintained by Muslims. When the trust needed to realise more cash, it reclaimed some of the land and built the no doubt more profitable office block on it. The division of Airlines resulted. Today, if one sits with one’s back to the ugly wall, the café looks unchanged. In its reduced form it is now bounded at each end by huge banyan trees. 

One of these, the banyan nearest the new wall, grows next to an area where glasses and plates are rinsed before being returned to the indoor kitchen across the car park. A basin with one tap, used for handwashing, is precariously attached to the trunk of this tree. The dangling tendrils of the banyan at the other end of the café gently caress the roof of a dilapidated hut in which fresh jilebis are fried in ghee at certain times of the day. Other equally dilapidated huts, half hidden by unruly vegetation, line the the café along its edge closest to Madras Bank Road. These buildings, which look as if they are about to collapse are used to prepare treats such as delicious fruit juices freshly prepared from pineapples, apples, mosambis, and whatever else is available that day. Although these huts look as though they cannot possibly be hygienic, I have never suffered any problems after drinking juices prepared in them.
The careful observer will notice a children’s slide hidden amongst the jungle growing alongside these huts. This is all that remains of the children’s playground that was demolished when the ‘wall’ went up. Today there is a new playground located near to the main entrance of the grounds of the hotel.
A small humped footbridge leads from the car park across a dried up gully into the café, passing below a faded metal sign on which the word ‘Tivoli’ can just be discerned. Is this a reference to the well-known identically named pleasure park in Copenhagen? If so, the resemblance ends there. Until recently, when a layer of cement was laid down, the floor of the open-air café was bare earth. Uneven, it was difficult to locate the four legs of the plastic chairs and the white marble-topped tables so that they did not wobble continuously, and in the rainy season it was muddy as well. The concrete is equally uneven, but will probably be less messy during the monsoon rains.
Drinking coffee can make one need to visit the toilet. At Airlines, this is an interesting experience. The lavatories are located within the main building of the hotel, a single storied structure, now dissected by the wall erected by the waqf.  To reach them, it is necessary to walk through the indoor café.  At any time of the day, however bright the sun may be, this must be one of the gloomiest places in Bangalore. At first, you will see nothing. When your pupils dilate sufficiently, and your eyes have adapted, you will notice that the long rectangular hall is filled with tables at which people, mostly men, are sitting nursing coffees or eating idlis and dosas. Its grimy walls and ceiling look as if they have remained untouched since the day that the first customer was served in here.  The door leading to the toilets is at the end of this dingy room. Even the extremely basic men’s toilet seems more cheerful than the indoor café.
A stranger to Bangaloremight take one quick glimpse at the ancient yellow and blue sign at the entrance to the Airline’s compound, and walk on in search of somewhere that looked more salubrious to take refreshment. And, as I have already mentioned, there is no shortage of these in the city. UB City, the outrageously swanky mall, is not far away, nor is the smart Café Coffee Day opposite Cubbon Park. And, on MG Road, there are a number of coffee joints that make Airlines seem like a poor relative in comparison. Yet, Airlines is frequently overflowing with customers.
At weekends, only the courageous would consider visiting the drive-in. The car park is filled with cars packed so closely that the waiters can barely squeeze between them to deliver their offerings. You may easily hunt in vain for an empty table under the trees. From early morning to late in the evening Airlines is often seething with customers. The place is not much cheaper than other fancier, trendier places. So, it is not parsimony that attracts people there. It is not filled with people, like my wife, who remember it nostalgically. Many of the customers enjoying their beverages and eating vegetarian dishes are young. Many off them look like school kids or college students. Most of them are equipped with the latest mobile telephones and dressed in stylish casual clothes.

I am often tempted to think of Bangalore as being a yuppie city, where only the newest is acceptable, and the old is rejected as is the case with so many of the city’s older buildings.  The Airlines Hotel, decrepit as it undoubtedly is, makes me resist the temptation, and gives me some hopes for a place, which I love, and which often seems determined to self-destruct.  

LA CALCINA - memories of Venice

Almost every year until 1969 when I was seventeen, I visited Venice with my parents and younger sister. We used to travel there either by train from Florence, having first arrived in Milanby air, or directly by aeroplane from London.
As a child these air flights, which lasted no more than three hours, seemed endless. In those days, passengers were allowed to smoke once the ‘plane was airborne and there was no entertainment provided during the flight. However, I used to ask for the window seat, and my nose would be pressed constantly against the porthole, hoping, often in vain, to see a gap in the clouds beneath us through which I could see the countryside in miniature far below us.
I used to be very apprehensive about flying. It scared me to think that each time we lifted off from the runway might be the prelude to the sudden ending of my short life. I used to read the safety instruction card, and still do today. However, I had little faith that by following the safety instructions, had there have actually been a disaster, would my life have been saved. On one occasion, I became very agitated because the man in the seat beside me had not fastened his seatbelt when instructed by the voice that cracked through the loudspeakers of the ‘plane’s tannoy system. My mother mentioned my concern to him, and I felt reassured when he told us that he worked for BEA (British European Airways) and knew exactly when it was essential to fasten this safety device.
During the 1960s, there were no moving map displays in aeroplanes such as are commonplace today. However, halfway through the flight, a small piece of paper used to be passed from passenger to passenger. It contained a bulletin about the progress of the flight, and it was signed by the pilot. I used to feel privileged being allowed to handle such an important document.
The airport nearest Venicewas, and still is, Aeroporto di Marco Polo. It is situated on the shore of the lagoon, directly north of the city, and separated from it by at least two miles of water. There were several ways of reaching the city of Venice. The cheapest involved taking a coach around the lagoon to the bridge that connects Veniceto the mainland. The bus went across this bridge to the Piazzale Roma on the west side of the island. From there, we would have had to take a waterbus or a water taxi to a point near to our hotel.
My parents preferred the more costly, and, in my view, more enjoyable and exciting option. My mother hated travelling on boats as she was prone to seasickness, but for some reason she happily boarded a motorscafo, water taxi that resembled a speedboat, at the airport without resorting to seasickness tablets. After the usual haggling about the fare, we sped across the lagoon directly. This did not bother her at all. After a few minutes racing across the water, the small boat’s prow buffeting noisily against the waves, we used to arrive at our destination on the ‘Fondamenta Zattere’ the waterfront on the Dorsoduro (one of the largest of the multitude of islands on which Venice perches) facing the Giudecca Canal. We disembarked there, and our luggage was carried through the entrance of the Pensione Calcina.
The Calcina was definitely not the most comfortable place to stay in Venice, but its position was superb. Many of the rooms had views over the Giudecca, the widest of Venice’s canals, towards the Giudecca Island, one of the quieter quarters of Venice. From the front entrance of the Calcina, we could see Palladio’s façade of Il Redentore Church in one direction, and the Molino Stucky, a huge nineteenth century industrial building, in another. In between them, and separated by rows of small houses, with red tiled roofs, directly opposite our hotel was the façade of the church of Le Zitelle, also designed by Palladio. My parents always took a room overlooking the canal, but my sister and I were usually allocated a room which overlooked the neighbouring buildings. By leaning dangerously far out of our window, we too could catch a glimpse of the canal.
In addition to the views, there was a terrace that projected over the water on stilts from the front of the establishment. This was furnished with tables and chairs along with umbrellas during the heat of the day. It was reserved for the exclusive use of the Pensione’s guests. Breakfast was served here every day. This was not a meal that sustained or pleased us. Weak coffee was served along with hard hollow rolls that exploded into a cloud of sharp crumbs when any attempt was made to break them. The numerous pigeons that lurked around benefitted from these inedible items more than we did. In fact, one of the first things we used to do after finishing breakfast was to visit a nearby bar, usually the Bar Redentore, and have a decent coffee and some kind of sandwich. However, the terrace and the views easily compensated for the poor breakfasts, the uncomfortable beds, and other disadvantages of this Pensione, where John Ruskin stayed between February and May 1n 1877.
The ‘Cucciolo’ was a superb gelateria, an ice cream bar. It was located in a single-story building, which abutted the Calcina, and was run by two elder men and a younger assistant. We were frequent customers there. I remember a time during the 1960s, long before the Euro intruded into our lives, when one scoop cost 50 Lire (in those days £1 bought as many as 1760 Lire!).
One afternoon after taking our usual naps, we were all sitting on the Calcina’s exclusive terrace when we heard a commotion. A young boy, the child of a family of tourists, had just tumbled into the canal. Quick as a flash, one of the two owners of the Cucciolo came rushing out, and dived fully clothed into the canal. He rescued the child. I distinctly remember that the victim’s parents did not thank the soaking rescuer, let alone offer to compensate him for his watch, which must have been damaged by his courageous plunge into the water.
My parents used to rent rooms at the Calcina on a demi-pension basis. This means that they paid for the rooms, breakfast, and one meal. We used to have lunch at the Calcina so that my parents could take a long snooze afterwards. This meal was little better than breakfast. It was served by a friendly waiter, whom we used to call ‘Mr Greeps’ amongst ourselves because this is the way he pronounced the word ‘grapes’ whenever he served us with fruit.
The dining room at the Calcina was L-shaped. We used to be seated at a table by the window in the toe of the L. There were four other tables in this section of the room and every year they were occupied by other regular visitors. Every year, we met the same group of people.  Two extremely elderly Russian men sat at a table near us. My mother was sure that they were not only White Russians, but also homosexuals. I remember little about them apart from one occasion when one of them said to me that he thought that the paintings in the Accademia Gallery, which was a short distance away from the Calcina, had been spoilt by cleaning. He thought that they had looked better before numerous layers of yellowing varnish had been removed.
Two Polish musicians sat at tables facing each other, one with his wife, the other alone. They used to glare at one another throughout each meal. One of them was called Horowitz, and the other Tansman. Many years after I had ceased visiting Venice, I realised who that Tansman was none other than the composer Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986). Only one thing stopped them from glaring, and that was the arrival of the food. It made them raise their eyebrows in surprise and shrug their shoulders as if expressing the hopelessness of the situation in which they found themselves.
The other regular who sat and ate lunch with us was a solitary elderly American, who used to greet everyone silently, but said nothing during the meal. I was surprised that my mother, who was always happy to strike up conversations with strangers, never attempted to break the ice with him.
On the whole, little united our select group of regular lunch eaters except for displeasure with the Calcina’s culinary offerings. That was the case until the Olympic Games held in Tokyoduring the summer of 1964. There was a small television in the sitting room that adjoined the Calcina’s dining room. After lunch during the Olympics, most of the regulars from our section of the dining room congregated around its screen. Each time that the Soviet Union failed to win a gold medal, these fellow diners including the solitary American, who were all anti-Communist, cheered.

The Pensione Il Seguso was next door to the Calcina, but set back far from the waterfront. Although none of its rooms could rival the Calcina’s for their views, it was said to be more comfortable. One summer evening, when I was already a teenager, my father was greeted familiarly by an elderly couple. Kit Russell, one of my father’s colleagues from the LSE (London School of Economics), was walking alongside her husband Sheridan. Unknown to my parents, they, like us, had been visiting Veniceannually, but stayed in the Seguso. After this first meeting, we bumped into them regularly in Veniceeach year.
When the Russells learnt that I enjoyed listening to classical music, they began inviting me to their musical evenings, which they held in their ground floor flat in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, close to the bank of the River Thames. Their large seventeenth century living room was ideally suited for the performance of chamber music. It looked right and had perfect acoustics. Sheridan was a very competent amateur cellist and knew many of London’s leading professional chamber music players. On each musical evening several musicians would be invited along with an audience chosen from the Russells’ vast collection of friends. The musicians would arrive not knowing either what they would be playing or with whom they would be playing. After everyone had assembled and been given sugar coated almonds decorated to look like little pebbles, which Kit used to call ‘stones from Venice’, the curtains were drawn, and the musicians began playing the first piece that Sheridan had chosen for that evening. Needless to say, the performances were beautiful. Only one thing marred these wonderful evenings slightly. I used to be given a special job. I was asked to sit close to a telephone, and if it were to have rung during a piece, I was supposed to lift up the receiver and say the following words: “We are having a party. Please ring again tomorrow.” It never rang, but I was always nervous that it might have done.
The Russells explained to me that they kept careful records of each of their musical soirées. They made sure that the composition of the audience was always different, and that none of their guests ever heard the same pieces played together (there used to be two pieces played on each occasion). Also, they ensured that no two musicians ever played the same piece together. However, they always served the same snack during the intervals between the two pieces: glasses of red wine and savoury biscuits, always the same kind, with a particular yellow coloured hard cheese that contained caraway seeds.
Kit and Sheridan married when they were both over seventy years old. Kit had been married before, but for Sheridanit was his first time. As soon as married, he trained to become a marriage guidance councillor, a profession, which in those days, was not open to those who had not been married. He had always wanted to do this kind of work, but had to wait for more than seven decades to elapse before fulfilling this ambition. The two of them were hopelessly in love with each other. I still remember them walking away from the Seguso hand in hand after passing the time of day with us.
The Calcina’s neighbour, the Pensione Il Seguso, was located on a corner where a narrow side canal met the wide Giudecca Canal. One morning, we were waiting outside the Calcina, trying to decide what to do. It was a bit later than usual, which is possibly the reason that we spotted something we had never seen before. A gondola with green upholstery and other identically coloured cloth drapes appeared from along the side canal and drew to a standstill at the corner near where we were standing. The gondolier was dressed in a livery the same colour as the upholstery and the drapes. After a short delay, the American, who used to sit silently with us at lunch, left the main entrance of the Calcina and boarded the gondola. The gondolier set his vessel in motion. His American passenger sat reading his newspaper whilst he was rowed across the Giudecca Canal. We watched them disappearing along a canal that passed through the Giudecca Islandtowards the wide open lagoon beyond the island. Naturally, our curiosity was aroused.

That lunch time, the American sat down in his usual place. My mother could no longer contain herself. She asked the American about what we had witnessed that morning. He explained that the gondolier was the grandson of his late mother’s personal gondolier. Whenever he visited Venice, he would hire this same grandson for the duration of his visit. Every morning, he was picked up just as we had observed, and was rowed out into the midst of the lagoon. When they arrived there, he and his gondolier exchanged roles. The American had mastered the art of rowing a gondola, and took his daily exercise by ‘gondoling’ around the lagoon for an hour or so.
The American introduced himself. My father, a keen amateur historian of art, was most excited to discover that our American lunch time companion was William Milliken, a former Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, and a famous historian of mediaeval art.
Later Miss Steiner, a humourless late middle-aged Austrian who managed the Pensione Calcina, told us that Mr Milliken stayed at the Calcina every year during the month in which his mother had died. He stayed in the room that she used to occupy during her visits to the Calcina. Whilst he stayed there, Miss Steiner informed us, the room was always filled with his mother’s favourite flowers, and furnished with the very same furniture that she used to use whilst she was a guest at the pensione.
Mr Milliken died in 1978, at least ten years after I last met him. About twenty years later, I bought a second-hand copy of his book, “Unfamiliar Venice”. This wonderfully illustrated and almost poetically written book, which was published in 1967, describes the magic of Venice beautifully, but makes no mention at all of any of the things we learnt about our solitary American neighbour in the dining room of the Pensione Calcina.

MOVE ALONG THE BEACH

 A little exercise in 'thinking aloud'



My late mother was born in South Africa. Her father was German and her mother was born in the ‘Cape Colony’ (now part of South Africa) of German parents. Mom understood German, but could not speak it. This was the language her parents used when she or her siblings were not supposed to know what was being said.
Mom studied commercial art in Cape Town before the Second World War (‘WW2’) broke out. During that war, she did something 'hush-hush' for a government department that was tracking shipping movements around the Cape of Good Hope. As the war progressed, she also worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross. It was while she was working for this international organisation that she was able to read reports of what had been going on in the concentration camps in Europe. What she learnt was the basis for her being prejudiced against the Germans: maybe not individuals, but definitely the nation.

It was not surprising that when my parents moved to Europe in the late 1940s, they tended to avoid visiting Germany whenever they took holidays in Europe (remember that until the UK joined the EEC, we 'Brits' regarded Europe as beginning somewhere across the English Channel!).

I remember one holiday in the late 1950s. We went to Noordwijk, a seaside resort on the Dutch coast. Everyday, we used to lay a blanket out on the sands in the morning. And everyday, we had to move it at least once. Noordwijk was popular with German visitors. If my mother heard German being spoken, we had to move out of earshot. She was so aware of, and upset by, recent history that the sound of German, the language of her parents, upset her enough to want to avoid hearing it. 

This avoidance of the Germans had an effect on me. The more that they were avoided, the more intrigued I became. So, when I was old enough to travel alone, I made a trip to Vienna by train, stopping at a number of places in Germany on my way. Almost without exception, I was charmed by everyone that I met. 

On one trip, I stopped for a drink in Regensburg and an elderly man sitting nearby asked me where I was going. When I told him that I was driving to Hungary and made some comment about the good quality of the autobahns, he smiled and told me that this was one of the good things that Hitler gave Germany. My German was not good enough to reply suitably to this man, who had spent ten miserable years as a Soviet prisoner of war. This was one of the only instances of positive nostalgia for the Nazi’s awful regime that I have encountered during my numerous trips to Germany. In general, most Germans, whom I have met, not only recognise readily the hideousness of the misdemeanours of their ancestors but also try to make amends for them. This cannot be said for other Europeans.

The Italians, for example, are ambivalent about their far from perfect past. This is neatly summarised in the refrain of a song: “Oggi siamo tutti partigiani…” (‘today we’re all partisans’). The implication being that yesterday, this was not the case: some of us were fascists then.

In France, a murky aspect of recent history is conveniently kept in the shadows. Between 1940 and 1944, the sleepy spa town of Vichy was the seat of a fascist regime led by the elderly Marshal Pétain, the hero of the Battle of Verdun. We visited the town and were curious to see the Hotel Parc where the quisling government had had its headquarters. We found the building, now an office block, named Le Parc. There was no plaque or anything else attached to it to commemorate its former function. We asked an office worker, who emerged from it, whether we had indeed found the right building. He confirmed that we were not mistaken. When we asked him why there was nothing to indicate the historic significance of the Parc, he shrugged his shoulders and said something like: “On n’est pas fier de ca” (‘It’s nothing to be proud of’), and then continued off to buy his lunch.

Further, when Max Ophul's produced his four hour documentary film about the collaborationist (and anti-Semitic) nature of the Vichy Regime "Le Chagrin et La Pitié (in 1969), it was banned in France until 1981. 

I am sad to relate that here in Britain, we also have selective memories. Ask most people on the street about the Partition of India and its calamitous consequences, and your response will usually be a blank face. As for British concentration camps, which antedated the Nazi German ones by at least three decades, you will probably be greeted with incredulity. Never once did any of my South African family, who condemned both the Nazis and later the Apartheid regime, ever tell me about the British concentration camps in which at least 26,000 innocent Boer women and children perished during the 2nd Boer War (1899-1902). I only became aware of this in recent years when I began to start reading about southern African history.

I do not blame my mother at all for wanting to move away from Germans on the beach at Noordwijk in the late 1950s because she knew in vivid detail what some of them might have done, or have been aware of. 


However, I do feel that it is important when criticising others to “cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye” (Luke Ch. 6, Verse 42.)

My late mother was born in South Africa. Her father was G...

My late mother was born in South Africa. Her father was German, born on the Rhine just opposite Switzerland. Her mother was born in South Africa, in the part known as the ‘Cape Colony’, born of German parents. Mom understood German, but could not speak it. This was the language her parents used when she or her siblings were not supposed to know what was being said.

Mom studied commercial art in Cape Town before the Second World War (‘WW2’) broke out. During that war, she did something hush-hush for a government department that was tracking shipping movements around the Cape of Good Hope. As the war progressed, she also did work for the Red Cross. It was while she was working for this international organisation that she was able to read reports of what had been going on in the concentration camps in Europe. What she learnt was the basis for her being prejudiced against the Germans: maybe not individuals, but definitely the nation.

It was not surprising that when my parents moved to Europe in the late 1940s, they tended to avoid visiting Germany when they took holidays in Europe (remember that until the UK joined the EEC, we regarded Europe as beginning somewhere across the English Channel!).

I remember one holiday in the late 1950s that took us to Noordwijk, a seaside resort on the Dutch coast. Everyday, we used to lay a blanket out on the sands in the morning. And everyday, we had to move it at least once. Noordwijk was popular with German visitors. If my mother heard German being spoken, we had to move out of earshot. She was so aware of recent history that the sound of German, the language of her parents, upset her enough to want to avoid hearing it. 

This avoidance of the Germans had an effect on me. The more that they were avoided, the more intrigued I became. So, when I was old enough to travel alone, I made a trip to Vienna by train, stopping at a number of places in Germany on my way. Almost without exception, I was charmed by everyone that I met. 

On one trip, I stopped for a drink in Regensburg and an elderly man sitting nearby asked me where I was going. When I told him that I was driving to Hungary and made some comment about the good quality of the autobahns, he smiled and told me that this was one of the good things that Hitler gave Germany. My German was not good enough to reply suitably to this man, who had spent ten miserable years as a Soviet prisoner of war. This was one of the only instances of positive nostalgia for the Nazi’s awful regime that I have encountered during my numerous trips to Germany. In general, most Germans, whom I have met, not only recognise readily the hideousness of the misdemeanours of their ancestors but also try to make amends for them. This cannot be said for other Europeans.

The Italians, for example, are ambivalent about their far from perfect past. This is neatly summarised in the refrain of a song: “Oggi siamo tutti partigiani…” (‘today we’re all partisans’). The implication being that yesterday, this was not the case: some of us were fascists then.

In France, a murky aspect of recent history is conveniently kept in the shadows. Between 1940 and 1944, the sleepy spa town of Vichy was the seat of a fascist regime led by the elderly Marshal Pétain, the hero of the Battle of Verdun. We were curious to see the Hotel Parc where the quisling government had had its headquarters. We found the building, now an office block, named Le Parc. There was no plaque or anything else attached to it to commemorate its former function. We asked an office worker, who emerged from it, whether we had indeed found the right building. He confirmed that we were not mistaken. When we asked him why there was nothing to indicate the historic significance of the Parc, he shrugged his shoulders and said something like: “On n’est pas fier de ca” (‘It’s nothing to be proud of’), and then continued off to buy his lunch.

Further, when Max Ophul's produced his four hour documentary film about the collaborationist (and anti-Semitic) nature of the Vichy Regime "Le Chagrin et La Pitié (in 1969), it was banned in France until 1981. 

I am sad to relate that here in Britain, we also have selective memories. Ask most people on the street about the Partition of India and its calamitous consequences, and your response will be a blank face. As for British concentration camps, which antedated the Nazi German ones by at least three decades, you will probably be greeted with incredulity. Never once did any of my South African family, who condemned both the Nazis and later the Apartheid regime, ever tell me about the British concentration camps in which at least 26,000 innocent Boer women and children perished during the 2nd Boer War (1899-1902).

I do not blame my mother for moving away from Germans on the beach at Noordwijk in the late 1950s because she knew in vivid detail what some of them might have done. However, I do feel that it is important to “cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye” (Luke Ch. 6, Verse 42.)

A SHORT TRIP TO WALES in APRIL 2012

                                           A Welsh Odyssey
 Clouds over the Brecon Beacons
NB: This narrative will eventually be illustrated , using photographs that I took whilst on the journey described in it.


TUES 10 April 2012
We left our daughter at Gatwick Airport’s North Terminal early in the morning. She was joining a group of her classmates, who were setting off on a school trip to Florence, and we were embarking on a tour of Wales. We were carrying a number of books that we hoped to read as we relaxed in the various hotels which we had booked in advance. As it happened, neither my wife nor I finished more than one book. This was a reflection of how much we saw and did on this six day trip.
We sped along several motorways, and crossed the River Severn into Wales by means of the older (and shorter) of the two motorway bridges. It was long before we spotted the Sugar Loaf Mountain that towers above Abergavenny. Bypassing that town, we drove along the Heads of the Valleys Road until we reached the small road, which winds across the southern part of the Brecon Beacons. This narrow road crosses a bleak but beautiful treeless plateau inhabited by sheep, and then winds down a series of hairpin bends to reach Llangynidr, a village lying in the green valley of the River Usk. We stopped in the upper part of the village that trails up the valley of one of the Usk’s tributaries.
The Red Lion, where we had lunch, is located in the upper section just off the main road that separates the two parts of the village. It is a smallish establishment serving a variety of well-prepared tasty dishes. Its clientele and staff are friendly as well as welcoming. It was the second time we had eaten there this year. The first time was in early January just after we had returned from India. This was a sad occasion as we had come to the funeral of our good friend Gwyneth, who had retired to the village more than fifteen years earlier. Her late husband, Kurt, had been one of my father’s colleagues at the London School of Economics (‘LSE’).
Kurt, who died in 2000, was about fifteen in 1942 when he saw the Germans murdering his parents in Poland, and was then incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp. Miraculously, he survived the three years he spent there, and was recued by the Americans. My late mother told me that when he was rescued, he was interviewed by a committee looking to help young survivors continue their education. After all the horrors that he had been through, Kurt was still able to remember and recite chunks of the classics in their original Latin and Greek. He joined the LSE, where he studied before becoming a member of its academic staff, and met Gwyneth.  His family and ours were very close.
Gwyneth encouraged me in my interest in history, and introduced me to the wonderful books about episodes in French history by Alastair Horne. We used to visit her at her cottage in Llangynidr at least once a year, and we felt sad visiting the village knowing that we could no longer sit with her discussing books, old times, common friends, and films.
After lunch at the Red Lion, we drove down to the lower part of the village to spend an hour or two with Gwyneth’s younger son, whom I have known since he was born. He lives near to an ancient multi-arched stone bridge that crosses the river.  As we sat around his dining table drinking tea and reminiscing, we were greeted by his friendly children whose ages range from twenty to about five.
We crossed the Beacons back to the Head of The Valleys Road, and drove towards the roundabout north of Merthyr Tydfil. This is the location of an Asda superstore, which we visit like pilgrims on every visit we make to South Wales. We stocked up on various items, assisted by its friendly and extremely helpful staff. Having almost filled the boot of our hired Peugeot with goods, we continued on our way towards Cardiff Bay, where we booked into the Travelodge. Our room there was comfortable but dull, almost bleak.
After eating well-spiced Steak Tartare at the local branch of the competently run Cote chain of French bistrots, we settled sown to watch an Indian film in one of the cinemas in the Red Dragon entertainment complex, an architectural mediocrity located close to the magnificently designed Millennium Centre with its highly original beautiful facade. The film, which we watched for three hours, “Housefull 2”, is one of this year’s less successful Bollywood productions. I rarely sleep in the cinema, but I slept through much of the second half, which shows how little I was enjoying it. It was not difficult before I fell asleep again, but this time in our cell-like hotel.
WED 11 April 2012
            The buffet breakfast at the Travelodge was generous. The range of food on offer was wide, but the hot food items on offer (bacon, sausages, etc.) at a self-service counter were lukewarm. I don’t know whether this was unintended, or if it was kept deliberately cool as a health and safety measure to avoid risking the guests scalding themselves.
            We took a bus from the Millennium Centre to the centre of Cardiff, and disembarked close to the National Museum, having just been driven along the oddly named ‘Stuttgarter Strasse’. I last visited this establishment in the mid-1980s with my friend Michael Jacobs, who was then doing research for a guidebook to the art treasures of the British Isles. This museum was, and still is, one of those treasures. My wife and I marvelled at the richness of its art collections. Although they are not nearly as fine as those in London’s National Gallery, they are amazing nevertheless. My favourite exhibit was a small exhibition of paintings by French artists, painted during the revolutions of 1848 and the debacle that followed in the years 1870 and 1871. These paintings that convey eloquently the hope and despair of that era were well displayed with informative explanatory notes.
            There were several galleries devoted to Welsh artists and art in Wales. Apart from the better known artists such as August John, his sister Gwen, Kyffin Williams (who taught me briefly at Highgate School), and John Brett, there was a multitude of excellent paintings by other painters. We enjoyed the splendid special exhibition of paintings by John Piper, who was sent to Wales during the Second World War to document the storage of valuable paintings from national collections in the caves at Manod Mawr. Although the caves were too dark for Piper to paint, he fell in love with Wales, and thus began the series of visits he made to the country. His dramatic portrayals of the Welsh landscape rival those of Turner, some of whose paintings may be seen in the gallery in Cardiff. In complete contrast to Piper’s exhibition, there was another one showing portrayals of Queen Elizabeth the Second. This included Annigoni’s well-known painting of the Queen as well as that by Andy Warhol. I particularly liked a work by a Korean artist who used hundreds of tiny portraits of Princess Diana to create a huge picture of her mother-in-law.
            After two hours of intense but enjoyable viewing of the artworks in the museum, we walked through the sunlight across a green space, passing beautifully planted flower beds on the way. We walked around two sides of the walls of Cardiff Castle, and poked our heads through the main gates in order to catch a glimpse of its ancient keep. Opposite the castle across Duke Street, I noticed two old looking shopping arcades. We walked along one of them, Castle Arcade. It has been tastefully restored, and its cafés have chairs and tables lining the footway. We took a look inside a second-hand bookshop, which was well-stocked and reasonably priced, and bought a few books.
            The Duke Street Arcade, which leads to, and is perpendicular to, the High Street Arcade is less well-maintained that the Castle Arcade, but is the home of Garlands Café, where we ate lunch. Lopa ate a Welsh Cawl, a soup of vegetables and bits of lamb, which was watery and almost tasteless. I had something from one of the large selection of Welsh rarebits on offer. Thick chunks of brown toast were submerged under a gloopy tasty mixture of molten cheese, mustard and beer. Hidden within this unhealthy concoction were slices of black pudding and bacon. This wholesome dish was rich in fats in contrast to Lopa’s healthy soup, which was almost fat-free. We were served by a friendly man, who shared with us the secrets of preparing rarebits before we set off to return to our hotel by bus.
            We collected our car and drove to the small Pembrokeshire town of Pembroke Dock where we booked into another Travelodge hotel. The sun was setting over the River Cleddau estuary when we entered the Shipwrights Arms, a pub at the end of Front Street opposite the so-called Martello Tower, otherwise known as the Front Street Gun Tower. It was built in 1849, and stands away from the shore.  The pub, which we have visited once before, is popular with local couples of all ages. Last year, we had a good meal there, and we looked forward to repeating the experience, but this was not to be the case. The fish, which Lopa was served, looked as if it had been collected from a pathological laboratory, and was fairly tasteless. My dish, sweet and sour pork, was more attractive but might well have been bought pre-prepared at a local, downmarket supermarket. Despite the disappointing food, we enjoyed the company of our fellow guests. However, we won’t be visiting that pub again to eat!
THURS 12 April 2012
After a good night’s sleep, we drove across the toll-bridge, which spans the Cleddau, towards Solva, a charming village with houses painted in a variety of colours at the head of a fjord-like, cliff-lined inlet of St Bride’s Bay.  We ate a well-prepared breakfast at Café Thirty Five. Good coffee, superb fried meats, and delicious mushrooms sautéed in butter made a good start to the morning, and even encouraged us to start walking up an incredibly steep path that led to a vantage point high above the inlet. We abandoned the attempt as the incline became exponentially steeper, and the drop below the narrow footway became more and more sheer. We were not the only walkers to give up. We met a number of groups of people, much younger than us, who turned around before reaching the path’s destination. I felt a little sorry for their dogs, who had no say in whether or not they wished to exert themselves on steep mountain paths.
            Back at the start of the path, we spoke to two elderly gentlemen each with their own dog. They were resting before continuing their arduous walk along the 187 mile Pembrokeshire Coastal Footpath. We tried lifting one of their rucksacks, but were barely able to raise it an inch off the ground. Each of the bags, they told us, was filled with tins of dog food for their quadruped companions. The two men were also carrying for themselves the kind of rations that astronauts and Everest climbers survive on. One of them had a fresh scar on his forehead, the result of one of the many falls he had experienced whilst descending treacherous cliff edge paths with the weight of his rucksack, equivalent to that of a well-built child, bearing down on his back. We left these two hardy adventurers digesting the breakfast that they had just enjoyed, and strolled along a gentle path that led to a point from which we had a good view of the mouth of the inlet. Below us, visitors were preparing their boats, both sail and motor powered, for a pleasant day on the water.
            We left Solva, and followed the coast southwards until we reached Littlehaven, a small town at the head of another inlet of St Brides Bay. This place, which is bigger and busier than Solva, had plenty of visitors. We had coffee in a small tea room, which seemed to be over staffed. The young lady who served us was unable to understand the price list, and when we pointed out that she had made an error, she became flustered, and started pushing buttons almost at random on her cash register. I imagine that when the owners cashed up at the end of the day, they would have been faced with an accountant’s nightmare.
            Martins Haven, a tiny settlement at the end of a thin peninsular, was our next stopping place. This is the embarkation point for those wishing to visit the uninhabited islands of Skomer and Skokholm. We had just missed the departure of last boat trip of the day to Skomer by a few minutes, but were not particularly disappointed as we thought that it was overpriced. We walked up a hill that led to cliffs that overlooked nearby Skomer and the more distant Skokholm.  Far below us the waves of St Brides Bay crashed against the rocks at the foot of the cliffs.
            We left this magical spot and stopped at the nearby village of Marloes, parking outside the Clockhouse Café. This well-maintained, clean establishment offers a wide range of well-prepared dishes. I opted for a prawn cocktail sandwich. The prawns were fresh and the Marie Rose sauce, made with mayonnaise, was delicious, a contrast to that which I ate the night before at the Shipwrights Arms. I am sure that the latter had contained salad cream rather than mayonnaise. Lopa ate some crabmeat, which she said was delicious. The people who worked there were friendly and efficient, but I found the décor to be a little too twee for my taste.  We drove on from Marloes through the little port of Dale to the complex of buildings around the lighthouse St Anne’s Head, which looked bleak even in the bright sunlight.
            We re-crossed the Cleddau toll-bridge, skirted past the edge of Pembroke Dock, arriving at Carew Castle just in time to find it was being locked up for the day. The workers there told us where we would get good views of this ruined castle, which has been painted by Turner, and these compensated our effort to reach the place. There is a tall (more than 16 foot high) eleventh century Celtic cross in the grounds of the castle, and we were able to examine the carved patterns on this, but could not detect the inscription which is supposed to be carved amongst them.
            Some winding rural roads led us from Carew to Lamphey, where once again our efforts to visit a ruin were foiled by our arriving a few minutes too late. The lady, who was locking up the ruins to Lamphey’s ruined bishop’s palace (destroyed by Henry VIII), told us that it had been the favoured residence of the bishops of St David’s when they visited their diocese from London, where they spent much of their time. Apparently Lamphey is much more sheltered from bad weather than St David’s, and the wine that used to be served there was superior to that in the palace at St David’s.
            We drove from Lamphey to a town whose name, Manorbier, sounds like it ought to be the name of a French cheese. A well-preserved castle overlooks the wide bay at Manorbier. We were too late to visit the castle, but in time to enjoy a walk on the beach. The tide was out and the setting sun caused even the smallest pebble to throw a long shadow. People were out and about exercising their dogs, and a woman on a horse rode to the water’s edge, and then galloped through the foam created by the waves breaking against it.
            We crossed the Cleddau Bridge for the third time that day, and, intrigued by a sign that boasted that Neyland was Brunel’s town, drove to the water’s edge to view the heritage centre created by the town there. A curious looking railing running along the edge turned out to be made from remnants of the rails that Brunel designed specially to carry the heavily laden trains to the dockside at Neyland in order to load freight and passengers on ships bound for Ireland. Today, ships for Ireland no longer depart from Neyland, but from Pembroke Dock instead. In addition to a series of interesting plaques describing Brunel’s contributions to Neyland’s nineteenth century history, we had good views of the chimney stacks of the oil refinery at Milford Haven silhouetted against the setting sun in one direction, and of the Cleddau Bridge, lit up by the last rays of the day’s sun, in the other.
Milford Haven is a few minute’s drive from Neyland.  It has a modern yacht marina, surrounded by recently built buildings that lacked any architectural merit. The town was been founded by Quaker whalers from Nantucket more than two hundred years ago. This is probably why the restaurant where we ate dinner was named Martha’s Vineyard, an island that in the same archipelago as Nantucket. It had a pretentiously decorated dining room, but the food did not live up to its pretentions. The steak that I ordered could not be faulted, but the rest of the meal was unexceptional. The pate I ate as an hors d’oeuvre tasted liverish as it should have been, but lacked any flavour of the brandy that the menu promised that it would contain. The batter coating the prawns that Lopa ordered, expecting the lightness typical of tempura, which the menu hinted at, was ordinary and not particularly light. The chilli dip that was served with the prawns was indistinguishable from plain mayonnaise.  Though the food was better than what we had eaten the night before, and it was obvious that the chef was trying hard to please, I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone. We returned to Pembroke Dock, once again paying the 75 pence toll to cross the Cleddau Bridge.

FRI 13 April 2012
            After checking out of our hotel early, we crossed the Claddau Bridgefor the last time on our trip. We were heading away from Pembrokeshire towards north Wales. The village of St Dogmaelslies just outside the town of Cardigan. We made a short detour to visit the ruins of an abbey sited there before driving into the centre of Cardigan, where we had coffee in a café named ‘Food for Thought’. However, all that I could think about whilst we sat there was how any more minutes we could sit there without risking infringement of the town’s strict parking rules.    
            It was a long, but beautiful drive along the coast bypassing Aberystwyth, and driving through the coastal resort of Aberdovey to reach the town of Tywin, where we stopped at its railway station. This is the coastal terminus for the narrow gauge Talyllin Railway. Formerly used to transport slate and passengers, this railway climbs up the valley of the Dysynni River to its terminal near the slate quarries at Nant Gwernol. Hauled by a small steam engine, we wound our way upwards alongside fields filled with sheep and their playful lambs, and then through a forest, passing occasional steep waterfalls. Every few minutes, the train stopped at small stations to allow walkers to embark or disembark. When it reached the upper terminal at Nant Gwernol, the engine was shunted from one end of the train to the other in preparation for our descent towards Tywin. On our way down, we stopped for twenty minutes at the Abergynolwyn station to allow passengers to make use of the refreshment room and other facilities. The round trip took just over two hours. It was pleasant to get the chance to experience a form of travel that has all but faded into history.
            We continued following the coast northwards to Penmaenpool where we crossed the River Mawddach by means of a narrow wooden toll bridge, having paid a fee of 60 pence. From the northern (right) bank of the Mawddach estuary we could see in one direction the snow-capped peak of Arenig Fawrr, whose height is between that of Snowdon and Cadair Idris; and in another direction, we saw the long low railway bridge that crosses the mouth of the estuary.
After driving through Barmouth, a seaside resort located at the mouth of the Mawddach, we drove on to Harlech. We visited its famous castle, which did not impress me as much as others I have visited, before taking tea at the Cemyn Tea Shop. This elegant café, whose rear terrace commands a good view of the castle, is owned by a friendly, knowledgeable tea merchant. It offers over thirty blends of tea to drink or buy as leaf.
From Harlech we drove to Penrhyndeudraeth after crossing the estuary of the River Dwyryd by a toll bridge that carries both the roadway and the railway. We slowed down at the toll-booth, only to be waved on without needing to pay. The collector of tolls was closing the toll-booth for the night, and seemed uninterested in our money. By following a series of roads and crossing a mountain pass, we arrived in the village of Bedgelert. This picturesque place, where the Colwyn and Glaslyn rivers converge, is located in a bowl almost surrounded by mountains. Soon, we arrived at the Bryn Eglwys Hotel, where we had booked two night’s accommodation.
The hotel surpassed our expectations. We were shown to the room by Jana, a woman from Bratislava in Slovakia, who, along with her fellow countryman Mihail and the owners of the place, Kevin and Lyn Lambert, helps keep the establishment in tip-top condition. The window in our room had a wonderful view up the Glaswyn valley. Our bed was comfortable and the bathroom was faultless. The three course dinner cooked by Mrs Lambert was one of the best that we have ever eaten outside London. Lopa’s duck was cooked to perfection and my chicken breast in a stilton sauce was tasty as well as succulent without having even a hint of the dryness often associated with this part of the fowl. The selection of Welsh cheeses was a delight to cheese lovers like us. Each of the three cheeses on the plate had its own distinctive and unusually unique flavour. One was cheddar, another blue cheese, and the third a soft cheese with a pungent flavour reminiscent of the strongest of French cheeses. After dinner, we sat in the hotel’s comfortable lounge where we were served coffee. We retired to bed well fed, and extremely tired.
SAT 14 April 2012
After a satisfying cooked breakfast at the hotel, we drove to Blaenau Ffestiniog, a small town nestling in a bowl formed by greyish black slate covered hills. When we had last visited this place in August 1994 in order to travel on the narrow gauge railway that runs from there to Port Madoc on the coast, we were impressed by the bleakness of its setting. In those days, houses were selling in the town for £10,000 or the nearest offer, but now the town is showing signs of becoming a desirable place to live. The former police station has been converted into a trendy looking wine bar and eatery, and there is a brand new supermarket in the town centre. We visited one of the town’s two second-hand bookshops. It is housed in a former post-office. The owner, whose mother tongue is Welsh, assured us that she had run the shop for more than twenty years ago, but we had not noticed it when we were there last. That was a pity because it is one of the best second-hand bookshops we have visited for a long time. The stock was large and extremely varied, and the prices were low. For those who can read Welsh, there are a vast number of books in that language available to purchase, both new and used. We left the shop laden with purchases, all written in English.
Our next destination was the ruins of Cymer Abbey, which we were looking forward to exploring. However, as we neared the site of the ruins, I saw the name ‘Vannier’ on a sign board, and I experienced a feeling of déjà-vu. It was the name of the caravan site which is adjacent to the ruins. As soon as I saw this dign, I realised that we had visited the abbey recently. We had completely forgotten that we had done so. As it was not a particularly interesting looking monument, we drove away disappointed.  So, we continued on towards Dolgellau, a small town with many dark stone buildings, where we stopped to refill the car with fuel.
After crossing a mountain pass, we descended into the valley containing Llyn Mwyngil, otherwise known as Tal-y-llyn Lake. We stopped at the Tyn y Cornel Hotel at the south-western end of the lake, and had coffee there in its lounge, sitting next to windows that afforded a good view of the lake and some of the peaks of Cadair Idris, one of the highest mountains in Snowdonia. Whilst we were settling our bill, a fellow guest informed us that the lake provided for good fishing, and we did notice a couple of men in boats out on its wind ruffled waters. 
Suitably rested and refreshed, we headed for Bala Lake. On the way we stopped twice in order to see from different vantage points the snow covered slopes of Arenig Fawrr. At one of these places the ground and edges of the road were covered with snow. Sheep standing on the snowy slopes stared at us as we stared back at them and the mountain. We reached the long BalaLake at its southern end and drove north eastwards along its eastern shore, arriving eventually at the gloomy town of Bala, where we did not stop.
A short drive into the mountains brought us to Llyn Celyn. This lake is really a reservoir that collects water to supply to the city of Liverpool. We walked along the dam at its eastern end, admiring the lake in one direction and the grassy slopes of the dam in the other. A narrow channel containing water curved in a sinuous path down the grassy slope of the dam facing away from the lake. Sheep and lambs were grazing on this. Occasional planks of wood had been placed across the channel to allow the sheep to cross it. Some of the animals used it, but a small gang of four or five lambs seemed to take pleasure from repeatedly leaping over it from one side to the other. Whilst watching these animals in the bitingly cold air, which was blowing across the lake, we noticed that when lambs began sucking their mothers’ milk, their tiny tails began waving frantically, suggesting to us that they were experiencing something that caused them to be delighted.  This might sound as if we were anthropomorphising. Maybe nature has some particular reason for them doing this. Whatever the reason might be, we were pleased to return to the warmth of our car.
The sky became grey as we drove around the lake, and then up into the mountains towards a road, the B 4407, which leads to Ffestiniog (rather than Blaenau Ffestiniog, which we had visited earlier).  A few miles along the B 4407, we took a right turn and drove along a narrow unclassified road, which climbed up to a desolate treeless plateau, and then descended through a forest, finally reaching the hamlet of Penmachno.  We did not meet anyone or any other vehicle on this lonely stretch of road, and there were few sheep or any other creatures to be seen alongside it. From there, we drove along a less spectacular road that took us to the A5, the trunk road, designed by Thomas Telford in the early 19th century. It connects London’s Marble Arch with the Admiralty Arch in Holyhead on the island of Anglesey.
After by-passing Betws-y-Coed, we reached Llanwrst, a village on the right bank of the River Conwy. We crossed this waterway over the narrow three-arched stone bridge, and made our way to the chapel of Gwdir Chapel, which we wished to enter. It was locked. A notice on its door informed us of the number that had to be rung in order to obtain keys to it. We rang the number, and arranged to collect the key the next day. As we returned to the car, we saw three peacocks strutting about and investigating the rubbish bins near the chapel.
We returned to the bridge at Llanwrst, and had tea and cakes in an olde worlde teashop housed in a 16th century building at the end of the bridge away from the village. Although we were served about half an hour before it closed, its disproportionally large staff bustled about clearing the tables around us, clearly giving us and the other guests the feeling that we were not so welcome.
After tea, the sun reappeared. We re-crossed the Conwy over the old bridge, and drove through Betws-y-Coed to the Swallow Falls, which are just outside the town. Although they are not as spectacular as the waterfalls at Niagara, Schaffhausen, or Sivasamudrum (in southern India), the Swallow falls are most attractive. Staircases guide the visitor to a series of viewing platforms from which the multiple fast flowing streams can be seen coursing through the boulders that separate them.
The sky became cloudy as we drove via Capel Curig to Llanberis, the village at which the railway, which climbs Mount Snowdon, has its lower terminus. After passing a lake with the same name as the village, we drove around the base of Wales’s highest peak through Warnfawr and Rhyd Ddu, and arrived in the centre of Bedgelert, now bathing in the rays of the late afternoon sun.
We parked the car, and walked along the river to an isolated tree that marks the supposed site of Gelert’s grave. A stone at the base of the tree records the tragic story of Gelert’s demise: “In the 13th century Llewelyn, prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert, "The Faithful Hound", who was unaccountably absent. On Llewelyn's return the truant, stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince alarmed hastened to find his son, and saw the infant's cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged his sword into the hound's side, thinking it had killed his heir. The dog's dying yell was answered by a child's cry. Llewelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed, but near by lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain. The prince filled with remorse is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here.”That evening, we ate well again. Lyn Lambert’s leek and potato soup and her simply grilled prawns made tasty starters. My pork in a cream and mustard sauce was faultless, as was Lopa’s generously large rack of Welsh lamb. The latter tasted excellent despite having watched the sweet little creatures frolicking innocently earlier in the day on the slopes of the dam. The filling meal was rounded off with another portion of excellent cheeses and a plate of Spotted Dick bathed in smooth custard. After dinner, whilst we drank coffee, our host, Kevin, told us about his exploits as a naval helicopter pilot just after the Falklands War, when he visited the islands.
SUN 15 April 2012
After breakfast, we left Bedgelert. A few miles out of the town we stopped beside Llyn Dinas. This lake, whose water surface was almost smooth, reflected the hills and mountains behind it like a mirror. Some distance further on, we passed Llyn Gwynant, but did not stop until we were high above its north eastern end. We pulled into a car park that afforded us with views all around. Far below us was the lake, which we had just driven past. In another direction, we could see the sharp, snow covered peakof Mount Snowdon. It was white against the grey sky. We admired it, and then drove onwards towards Betws-y-Coed. Just before we reached the town, we turned left onto a small road, which led through some woods to Gwydir Castle, where we collected the key to the nearby chapel.
From the outside, Gwydir Chapel looks like any small gothic church. However, its interior is a surprise. Its barrel vaulted wooden ceiling is covered with seventeenth century paintings, which are undoubtedly Baroque. Angels abounded, each surrounded by smoky garlands of clouds. A huge panel above the carved wooden pulpit had the coat of arms of Charles the Second painted on it. The painting quality was definitely not up to the standards of Tiepolo, but its charming naivety made up for what it lacked in finesse.
After returning the keys to the custodian of the castle, a somewhat gruff eastern European, we joined the A5 and drove south eastwards to a junction at Tyn Mawr. We turned left there, and soon found ourselves in the car park of Rug Chapel. Beautifully maintained by CADW (the Welsh equivalent of English Heritage), this gem of a chapel has a most beautifully painted, carved wooden vaulted ceiling.
Our next destination was near a caravan site in the northern outskirts of the town of Llangollen. We had come to visit the ruins of Valle Crucis, a former Cistercian abbey. Over the years we have been visiting Cistercian abbeys, ruined in the United Kingdom as a result of the actions ordered by Henry VIII, and intact in France. In wales, we had visited the ruins Strata Florida and Cwm Hir Abbeys more than once, but this was our first visit to Valle Crucis. If one ignores the occasional glimpses of the neighbouring caravan site, this set of ruins is both picturesque and magnificent. We spoke to an elderly couple dressed up in mediaeval costumes. They explained to us some of the ideas behind mediaeval medicine, especially the importance of iron, which requires all the four elements - air, fire, earth, and water - to produce it. Mummified hands of recently executed criminals were also supposed to have healing properties, and were also used by burglars to induce deeper sleep in the inhabitants of the houses they burgled during the night.
We took a look inside the Church of St Collen in Llangollen in order to admire the carved wooden ceiling of its nave. This elaborately carved ceiling was supposedly removed from Valle Crucis when it was being demolished. St Collen, whom I had never heard of before, was a Welshman, who lived both in Brittany and Wales, and died in the seventh century. He established a hermitage at Llangollen, and then just when he thought that he could dedicate the rest of his life to prayer, his troubles began: “Collen thought the new hermitage and chapel he had built for himself were the prefect place for prayer and contemplation, until he discovered that a flesh-eating giantess lived in a nearby mountain pass, Bwlch Rhiwfelen, and was devastating the local population. Determined to rid them of this creature, the saint took his sword up to the pass and called for the lady to appear. They only exchanged a few brief words before battle commenced. Collen quickly managed to chop off the giantess's right arm, but she picked it up and started beating him with it. So he sliced off her left arm as well. She called out for Arthur the Giant of the Eglwyseg Rocks to help her, but Collen slew her before he could hear her cries. The saint then washed his sword in St. Collen's Well on the mountainside and lived a life of peace in his Welsh valley home.We followed the A5 on its way out of Wales and into England, passing Oswestry and Shrewsbury. At Much Wenlock, we visited the ruins of Wenlock Priory, which are well maintained by English Heritage. In between the ruins of what must have once been an enormous establishment, there was a superb collection of topiary. Bushes of hedge had been carved into the shapes of creatures including cats and mice.
The ruins of Buildwas Abbey are near to Much Wenlock. This was another Cistercian Abbey, which we had never visited before. Its architecture was much more austere than that of its neighbour in Much Wenlock. It was our last stop before beginning our long drive past Birminghamto our home in London.

A FRANCO - PRUSSIAN AFFAIR IN THE FAMILY

   
This is the story of some of the relatives of my matrilineal great great grandmother, Clothilde Rieser, who were involved on different sides of the Franco-Prussian War and its aftermath.


Historical background
In 1870, the French declared war on Prussia and her allies (these being many of the southern German states and Austria). They did this because they felt unduly threatened by the actions of the Prussians, including their increasing military strength, their desire to unify the states of Germany, and their attempt to put a Prussian prince on the recently vacated throne of Spain Click on this to see family tree relating the characters mentioned in this essay

Clothilde Rieser (née Wimpfheimer - lived 1841 - 1921) was born in Ichenhausen, near Augsburg in Bavaria
A Prussian soldier and colonist in Strasbourg
Leo Ginsberg, a brother-in-law of Clothilde Rieser's daughter Hedwig, was the only son of Dr. Nathan Ginsberg (1814 - 1890)
Friedrich becomes FrédéricWhile Clothilde Rieser's future
Frédéric Reitlinger and the Siege of ParisSoon Frédéric was a successful attorney in Paris. Jules Favre, who was the Vice-President and foreign affairs minister of France's National Defense Government from 1870, chose him to be one of his private secretaries.  In late October 1870, the Prussian Army had besieged Paris for almost two months, and Favre, feeling that public opinion in Austria and Great Britain was becoming sympathetic to the French, asked Frédéric to leave Paris and to go to London and Vienna in order to plead the French cause. Frédéric described his mission in a book, "A Diplomat's Memoir of 1870"
An aerial adventure
The only way to get out of the besieged city was by balloon. At nine o' clock on the 28th October Reitlinger's balloon, the "Vauban", was ready to leave the Gare d'Orleans. It was a sunny morning as the balloon was loaded. The wind was favorable, blowing towards the west, away from the east of France, which was behind Prussian lines. On board the balloon, in addition to Frédéric were Monsieur Cassier, a Belgian pigeon-fancier and Director of the French Pigeon Post, 23 of his pigeons and a sailor named Guillaume who was to act as "aeronaut"
A diplomatic mission
In Vienna, Frédéric must have realized that his mission was unlikely to succeed. The Austrian statesman Count Friedrich Ferdinand Von Beust told him, "…Prussia will listen to no one in Europe. She will be influenced by nothing except the number of soldiers whom Europe can send to the theatre of war, and she (i.e. Europe) has none to send." From Vienna, Frédéric went to London, arriving in early December. There, he met both the Foreign Secretary Lord Granville and the Prime Minister Mr. Gladstone who were sympathetic to the plight of the French but felt that they could not interfere in the conflict, as it was not Britain's problem. (In this and the preceding section all quotations are from Reitlinger's own published account).
After the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 1871)
Leo's children cross the Equator
Many Jews left the Reichslandto avoid military conscription
Louisa and Jacques Dreyfus
Clothilde Rieser's uncle Jakob Wimpfheimer, born in Ichenhausen, an uncle of Frederic Reitlinger, married Rosalie Frauenfeld, and before they emigrated to the USAhad a few children
The Dreyfus Affair
Jacques Dreyfus's youngest brother Alfred (1859 - 1935) joined the French army. By 1894, he was a captain with a very good service record. In October 1894, Alfred was arrested, and accused of having passed military secrets to the Germans. This was the beginning of the "Dreyfus Affair"
Sam Wimpfheimer steps in
In April 1896 Mathieu, a brother-in-law of Louisa Dreyfus, accompanied by her brother Sam Wimpfheimer, acting as translator, went to London to approach the Cook Detective Agency for help
Destination and destiny
Clothilde Wimpfheimer, her uncles and some of her first cousins were born in Ichenhausen, many of whose inhabitants, as many as 40% in 1806, were Jewish during the 19th centuryHowever hard the Jews in Germany tried to acculturate and assimilate, their compatriots did not reward their efforts wholeheartedly In this article, I have tried to show how family history research can illustrate in a personal way events that find their way into the history books, and how a migrant's choice of destination can affect his or her family's destiny.