Dialogue and Unity

Harry Kessler was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the New Year’s Honours List like our own Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald who got the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Harry is a lively ninety-one year old Jew originally from Vienna who came here in 1939. Harry has been active by giving hundreds of talks to schools, Universities, and clubs on his early life – Holocaust Memorial Day was 27th January and Harry’s story was featured in Granada Reports that day.

In 1934 by chance the Kessler family met an English couple (Mr and Mrs Jones) who were visiting Vienna – coffee, cake and chats were appreciated by them and Mrs Jones sent a kind note (in her poor German) thanking the Kesslers on their return. Miraculously the Kesslers kept the note written on headed paper from Mr Jones’s Dental Practice in Chester – no one could realise the act of grace that letter treasured by the Kesslers would mean.

In the mid-1930s anti-Semitism increased in Austria and heightened after Hitler’s annexation. The Kesslers had moved to Brno in present day Czech Republic (then part of Czechoslovakia) which then sadly was occupied by the Nazis. Jews again were persecuted with Jewish men likely to be picked up at random in the street. The Kesslers realised their only option was to flee but they would need proof that they had someone to support them probably in the UK or the USA.

Mrs Jones’ letter was their only lifeline and a thin one but Frank Kessler wrote and received a heart-warming reply ‘Come to England. We will do whatever you need.’

The Kesslers left their comfortable home and got a one-way ticket to England having gained permission to leave –however the train journey was traumatic fearing that they could be arrested every time they submitted their passports for examination.

The Jones family meanwhile were preparing with great efficiency and generosity – getting bedrooms ready, arranging for the Kesslers to be met at Harwich and arranging for a place for Harry at the local school (subsequently they got him a place at the Prep School their sons had attended, and that opportunity enabled Harry to go to a private school in Yorkshire later).

The Kesslers lived with the Jones’ for a year. The Jones’ priceless reward was saving a family from a despotic regime. Harry still speaks movingly of the Jones’s amazing act of kindness.

Frank Kessler joined the Free Czech Army; Annie found somewhere to live and got an office job. At the end of the war while still in the Army, Frank found his mother alive in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp.

Harry settled in England doing National Service, working in the Far East and then in the UK and and is now happily retired. Today Harry is married to Mary an Anglican who was for over a decade the volunteer adviser of elderly persons Issues and active in the Christian Council on Ageing. A devoted couple living in Southport known for their hospitality they celebrate every Jewish and Christian Festival - luckily, they are very active otherwise it would have a terrible effect on their waistlines.

Harry says kindness to strangers can produce such good things. The kindness of the Jones’ is replicated in the work so many churches, synagogues, and mosques do here in NW England to support refugees and asylum seekers. Today Catholic Schools and parishes mark Holocaust Memorial Day and we thanked God that the Christian Churches now reach out to Jewish Brothers and Sisters and those of other living faiths with warmth and friendship working together for a just society.

Here is a prayer for Holocaust Memorial Day but suitable for us on other occasions:

Loving God, we come to you with heavy hearts, remembering the six million Jewish souls murdered during the Holocaust.

In the horrors of that history, when so many groups were targeted because of their identity, and in genocides which followed, we recognise destructive prejudices that drive people apart.

Forgive us when we give space to fear, negativity and hatred of others, simply because they are different from us.

In the light of God, we see everyone as equally precious manifestations of the Divine and can know the courage to face the darkness.

Through our prayers and actions, help us to stand together with those who are suffering, so that light may banish all darkness, love will prevail over hate and good will triumph over evil.