When author Meriel Schindler became a ‘Next Generations’ member of the AJR, she could not have dreamt that she would meet a brother and sister who remembered visiting the Café Schindler in Innsbruck as children. This famed café belonged to Meriel’s family before being requisitioned by the Nazis, and it is central to her 2021 memoir, The Lost Café Schindler.
At a reception to celebrate our 80th anniversary hosted by Ambassador Michael Zimmerman at the Austrian Embassy in London on 1 December, Meriel met AJR members Ruth Jacobs and Harry Heber, siblings born in Innsbruck. Harry told Meriel, “The café was often frequented by our parents and their friends.” Ruth, 93, remembers going to the café herself as a ten-year old child but thinks that her younger brother Harry (now 90-years-old) might have stayed at home “because he wasn’t old enough to go.” Ruth and Harry came to the UK on a Kindertransport in December 1938. Meriel said: ‘ It was truly an honour to meet Ruth and Harry. I can well imagine Ruth at the Café Schindler seated on a banquet and tucking into the Sachertorte she remembers so well.’
Guest of honour at the celebration was author and artist Edmund de Waal who spoke movingly about being the child of a refugee from Vienna (his 93-year-old father was sadly not able to attend himself) and ultimately about books, a subject about which he feels most comfortable talking. Before the reception, Edmund gave his testimony to AJR’s Next Generations Refugee Voices project.
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg lit the Chanukah candles and AJR Chief Executive Michael Newman commented later, “Singing Mo’az Tzur in the Austrian embassy will live long in the memory, as will the generous hospitality of the Austrian Ambassador this evening.”
Photography by ASL Corporate Photography
