Didaktische Handreichung
Avraham Shomroni
geb. 1927 (früher Alfred (Fredi) HELFGOTT), ISRAEL8.3.1927: Born in Vienna. Enrolled in the Chajes-Realgymnasium in 1937.
10.12.1938: Left Vienna on the first Kindertransport for England, a month after my father was sent to Dachau concentration camp.
1939-1942: Cared for by the Bentham Refugee Committee (Quakers, Church of England members,
Methodists et al.) at Bentham Grammar School.
1942-1947: War-work as a laboratory assistant.
1947-1950: Dunlop Research Centre, Birmingham.
1948: B.Sc. (Special chemistry with physics and mathematics, University of London).
Many years later, M.Sc. studies (chemistry, education etc.) at Bar Ilan University.
1950-1953: General Secretary of Zionist-Socialist Youth Movement.
1953: Moved to Israel and joined Kibbutz Barkai, married and raised two sons 15 years in field-crops
(cotton, maize, potatoes etc.) 12 years in regional high-school (partly as principal).
6 years in Kibbutz plastics factory (partly as general manager) Several times Kibbutz Secretary.
1982-1986: Representative of the Zionist-Socialist Party Mapam and of my Kibbutz Federation, in England.
1994: Resident in Tel Aviv. Active in the Israeli-Palestinian Forum of Bereaved Families for Reconciliation and Peace, especially in meetings with high-school students. Seventy years after the Anschluss, I would like to offer young Austrians some words I have learned and tried to live by.
a) Evil raises its head wherever good people remain quiet and passive in the face of injustice and cruelty.
b) To the question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” I must answer “Yes”. Everyone’s death diminishes us and therefor we must not ask for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for uns (after John Donne)
c) From the Talmud, Hillel the Elder’s answer to the request “Teach me the Torah while I stand on one leg”: “What is hateful to you, do not to others; all the rest is commentary; now go study”. Also from Hillel: “If I am not for me - who will be? And if not now - when? But if for myself only - what am I?”
d) The words of Pastor Niemoeller who was a decorated U-boat captain in World War I, afterwards became a pastor and when the Nazis came to power, became an Anti-Nazi. As was their way, they threw him into a concentrationcamp like my father but unlike my father he was liberated at the end of the war and then said words to this effect: “When they came for the communists,
I did not speak up because I was not a communist. When they came for leaders of the trade-union, I did not speak up because I was not one of theirs ... When they came for the Jews, I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. When they came for me, there was none left to speak up.”
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