— If we make a point of it, sir.
— His grandfather, sir, came from Salonika, which was in Turkey at the time and is presently in Greece.
— Why, of course, sir. We can definitely say Greece. But can we be sure they’ll take him if we banish him?
— Then you think, do you, Colonel, that the islands would be best?
— Of course, sir. Every westward-bound ship from Jaffa calls on them… Crete, perhaps… he can have his pick…
Biographical
Supplements
LIEUTENANT IVOR STEPHEN HOROWITZ served out the war with Allenby’s forces, with which he entered Beirut, Aleppo, and Damascus, and was even present at the final assault on Mosul, before the armistice with Turkey in October 1918. After the surrender of Germany on the eleventh of November, he was re-leased from the army to attend the spring term at Cambridge. He took a first class degree in Law in 1920 and chose, after being called to the bar in 1921, to work in the Crown Prosecutor’s office in Manchester. He did not remain in public service long, however, but soon joined a well-known chambers and eventually married a Jewish partner’s daughter. While continuing his practice he went on to get his doctorate, writing his dissertation on the judicial aspects of wartime espionage. This study was extremely well received and opened the way for an academic career. Dr. Horowitz joined the law faculty of Manchester University, and several years later, in 1930, moved with his wife and two small children to London, where he was appointed senior lecturer in Law at the University. In London he was active in the Zionist Federation, serving as its volunteer legal adviser. His academic career was highly successful and he was considered a spellbinding lecturer. In 1957, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, he visited Israel; subsequently, he returned several times and met with various Israeli leaders, among them David Ben-Gurion. A grandson of his even settled in the country, on the kibbutz of Revivim. He died at the age of seventy-six in London, in October 1973, after a brief illness following a stroke.
COLONEL MICHAEL WOODHOUSE served through the remainder of the war and then continued to sit on military courts throughout the British Empire. Since his vision grew steadily worse until he became completely blind, the army assigned him a personal aide who accompanied him on his judicial missions to Malaya, Burma, India, and Ceylon. In the mid-1930s he was knighted by King George V. Sir Michael’s reputation as a judge spread far and wide and was only heightened by his blindness. He presided at the trials of many British officers in the colonial service and was known for the originality and depth of his approach. Although when World War II broke out he was serving in Kenya, he insisted on returning to England at once to take part in the war effort. He was killed during an air raid on London in June 1941, at the age of sixty-four, and had a military funeral in his home village.
FOURTH CONVERSATION
The country estate of Jelleny-Szad
near Cracow, in Galician Poland
Friday night and early Saturday morning,
The Conversation Partners
DR. EFRAYIM SHAPIRO a twenty-nine-year-old bachelor, born in 1870 on the estate of his parents, Sholom and Sarah (née Pomerantz) Shapiro. Until the age of ten, Efrayim was taught Jewish subjects and a bit of arithmetic by private tutors; subsequently, he continued his education at a small Jewish school in a nearby town. Despite his humanistic tendencies, his parents convinced him to study medicine and helped arrange his enrollment at the famous Jagellonica University in nearby Cracow, where — although he showed little enthusiasm for his studies and was considered no more than a mediocre student — he finished the seven years of medical school. All of his vacations, no matter how brief, were spent on his parents’ estate.
In 1895 Efrayim Shapiro received his license to practice general medicine. Since he wished to live with his family, he declined an offer to acquire a specialization while interning in a Cracow hospital and chose to open a pediatric practice in his native district.
Efrayim was a tall, slender young man with the perpetual hint of an ironic smile on his face and a melancholic disposition. He was not particularly attached to the local Jewish community and attended synagogue only on the High Holy Days. Much to the displeasure of his parents (who had put a wing of their house at his disposal, in which he maintained his small clinic), he liked to spend his evenings in long conversations with the Polish servants, sometimes joined by his younger sister Linka.
In 1898 Efrayim’s father, Sholom Shapiro, traveled to Basel to attend the Second Zionist Congress. He returned brimming with impressions and experiences and firmly committed to the new movement, for which he helped organize Zionist soirees that he went to with Linka, since his wife Sarah’s health did not permit her to travel. In 1899 Sholom Shapiro planned to attend the Third Zionist Congress as the official delegate of his district; at the last minute, however, he had to cancel his participation as a result of his wife’s poor health and to send Linka and Efrayim in his place. When the Congress was over, the two of them decided to forego a planned two-week vacation at a Jewish boardinghouse in Lugano and to visit Palestine instead. They ^returned home to Jelleny-Szad two months after leaving it.
SHOLOM SHAPIRO was born in Vilna, in Lithuania, in 1848 to an extremely poor family. He studied in a heder and a yeshiva and was an outstanding pupil, but his family’s economic hardship forced him to stop his schooling without obtaining his rabbinical degree and to find work tutoring arithmetic and religious subjects in wealthy Jewish homes in the province of Pinsk. From there he wandered westward to Galicia, where in 1867 he was hired by Meir Pomerantz, the owner of a large flour mill in Jelleny-Szad, to tutor his daughter Sarah, who was three years older than Sholom. The two were married in 1869, when Sholom was twenty-one, and their eldest son Efrayim was born in 1870. The birth left Sarah confined for a long period and her recovery from it was slow. Meanwhile her father died, and Sholom Shapiro took over his father-in-law’s mill. He proved to be a gifted and resourceful businessman who within a few years expanded the family’s holdings, buying up more mills and acquiring the lumbering rights to several local forests while maintaining a reputation for fairness and reliability throughout the area. Although his son Efrayim was a joy to both parents, Sarah’s ill health kept her from having more children. Nevertheless, the Shapiros persisted, and in 1879, when Efrayim was nine, their daughter Linka was born. Yet although the family’s happiness was now complete, the birth damaged Sarah’s frail constitution even more.
From its inception in 1897, Sholom Shapiro was greatly interested in the new movement of political Zionism. He attended the 1898 Zionist Congress in Basel and was highly excited by the debates and new ideas he heard there. He also had the experience of being introduced to the Zionist leader Dr. Herzl and of chatting with him briefly in German. Shapiro planned to attend the 1899 congress as well, but had to ask his son Efrayim to take his place. Besides wishing him to see for himself what Zionism was, Sholom Shapiro secretly hoped that Efrayim might meet a nice Jewish girl at the congress, since he was increasingly troubled both by his son’s bachelorhood and by his avoidance of Jewish circles. Linka, who was twenty at the time and an ardent Zionist in her own right, pleaded to be allowed to go along. At first her parents had grave doubts about the matter, but at Efrayim’s repeated urgings they agreed.