‘We need the archive of history.’ Photo: Book cover for The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi Hitlist, by Sybil Oldfield
The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi Hitlist, by Sybil Oldfield
Author: Sybil Oldfield. Review by Peter Speirs
Learning how to recognise the seeds of conflict and of peace is vital to Friends. Learning from history is an essential part of the process. In the late 1930s, while parliament considered allying with Germany to defeat communism (the greater threat, as some saw it), the Nazi party prepared a list of 2,600 people to be arrested, or worse, when Germany invaded Britain. This was followed in 1940 by a second list for use by the occupying troops.
Sybil Oldfield lists many of these people: politicians, social reformers, medics, scientists, writers, economists, historians, etc, together with some of the organisations to be proscribed, giving brief biographies. Among religious groups, Jews were particular targets; Quakers too would have had a hard time. Oldfield, whose mother was classified as an ‘enemy alien naturalised by marriage’, writes an illuminating and cautionary story, combining fascinating individual portraits with timeless lessons.
No element of society was ignored. Trades unions, arts associations, relief organisations, educational charities, social welfare bodies, Freemasons, scouts and esperantists were all listed. There are many well-known names: Virginia Woolf, Jacob Epstein, EM Forster, Violet Bonham Carter, Vera Brittain, Bertrand Russell.
Some of the stories provoke profound admiration. Others are too harrowing for easy digestion. Most of the people were simply carrying out their occupations, openly and without hindrance, as is the pattern of British democracy, but in the suspicion, if not knowledge, of the possible consequences should the war end with defeat.
There is tragedy, as in the case of the journalist and lawyer Rudolf Olden, who was followed through Czechoslovakia, Switzerland and France before reaching Britain. Arrested and interned as an ‘enemy alien’ at the outbreak of war, he eventually obtained permission to leave for the United States. He and his wife drowned when their ship was torpedoed in the Atlantic. And there is triumph, as with Fritz Saxl, who, with other members of staff, managed to leave Germany with thousands of books from the Warburg Library, along with countless other artefacts. There are glimpses of character, too. When the existence of the list became known, Noel Coward treated his inclusion as a hilarious joke; Nancy Astor was ‘relieved’ to find herself included.
Sybil Oldfield asks ‘Why care about what did not happen?’ We need the archive of history to learn how we arrived at our present place. If history is ignored (or, worse, erased) then how do we recognise truth? Britain today, along with others in the democratic west, is deeply divided. It is divided within, and it views those ‘without’ with suspicion. In 1940 we interned thousands of refugees. How do we treat asylum seekers now? Dissidents? Protestors? Do read this book, Friends, it is important.
