On a trip down memory lane, I stumbled upon the heartwarming story of a refugee who, while cherishing his Jewish identity, also helped to make Britain great.
As a birthday present from my dear wife Linda, I was taken to the Great British Car Journey, a fascinating museum of classic motors made here from the 1920s to the 1980s.
Among the cars on show was a magnificent 1979 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow with only 14,000 miles on the clock owned by the late Leon Schaller, a hugely successful businessman and philanthropist who managed to escape from Nazi Germany as a teenager and subsequently contributed greatly to the rebuilding of our nation.
The Rolls was one of the few indulgences of a modest and content man who lived in Ilford, Essex, and rose to become a major supplier of Woolworth’s and was even once called upon to advise former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on business matters.
Of Polish/Romanian parentage, his mum and dad had ironically moved to Germany as teenagers to make a better life for themselves. But when all Jewish males of Polish descent were ordered to ‘register’ at the local police station in Cologne, a German policeman advised 16-year-old Leon and his father to slip away unobtrusively. But much of the wider family perished without trace in the Holocaust.
On Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) in November 1938 when Jewish people and property came under merciless attack, Leon witnessed the burning of his local synagogue before running home terrified and locking the doors.
After escaping to England, he was greatly distressed that he was unable to help friends who wrote harrowing letters seeking help before being deported to their deaths. But he soon found work at an East End clothing factory and later as a delivery boy for a kosher butcher.
During the war he was drafted into the Intelligence Corps as a staff sergeant translating German messages into English. But he remained loyal to his Jewish roots, was a generous sponsor of schools, hospitals and Jewish causes (both in London and Israel) and was awarded an OBE for his services to the Jewish community and education.
He was passionate in his support for Israel, helping to improve its hospitals and yeshivot. He was especially active in building up the desert city of Arad, donating both the Schaller Medical Centre and a state-of-the-art children’s day care facility, caring for the children of working parents. He was particularly keen to sponsor dozens of student scholarships in memory of Yoni Netanyahu, older brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was killed during the rescue of 102 hostages at Entebbe in 1976.
Always grateful for the welcome he had received in England, Leon saw his life as a gift which he used to enrich the lives of so many, both in the UK and Israel. He died in 2017, aged 94.
With grateful thanks to Ann Rosen of the Jewish Chronicle, Migrant Voice’s Judith Vonberg and Richard Usher, founder of the Great British Car Journey at Ambergate in Derbyshire who also took the photo.
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
