Special 70th Anniversary Issue

January 2016 marks the seventieth anniversary of the first appearance of our Journal, then known as AJR Information, in January 1946. The year 2016 is also the 75th anniversary of the founding of the AJR. The Journal was a bold venture for an organisation as young as the AJR, which had only been founded in 1941, when a handful of Jewish refugees from Hitler, recently expelled from their home countries and still classed as ‘enemy aliens’ by their British hosts, decided to establish their own representative association. Few would then have guessed that what appeared to be a small and struggling publication would outlast almost all its counterparts to survive and flourish well into the twenty-first century. Over the decades, the Journal has devotedly performed its core function of keeping its readers informed about matters that concern and interest them; its reports, editorials and reviews have been of consistently high quality. It has also developed an enviably high standard in its many articles on cultural and historical themes. The quality of the Journal owes a great deal to continuity. Its first editor, Werner Rosenstock, held the position from 1946 until 1982, initially together with Herbert Freeden and Ernst Lowenthal. After an interregnum filled by Murray Mindlin (1982-86) and C. C. Aronsfeld (1986-88), Richard Grunberger became editor in 1988, holding the position until 2005. In 2006, Anthony Grenville was appointed consultant editor – sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that he has now been editor for exactly ten years – though Howard Spier, the executive editor, has been compiling the Journal for considerably longer. In this anniversary issue, we present a selection of pieces designed to illustrate the Journal’s past record for our readers.