National Holocaust Memorial Day- the fate of Ruth Schmerler

The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th year will be “Journeys”. The Memorial Day originated in 2001 with the aim of remembering the crimes, racism and victimisation committed during the Holocaust are neither forgotten nor repeated, whether in Europe or elsewhere in the world. It has been commemorated every year since.

The young woman whose picture that looks out at the reader is Ruth Schmerler whose journey began when she left her home in Poland as a 14 year old in 1939 moved to a home in Manchester for Jewish Refugee Children with her brother Klaus. Her family had lived for generations in Galicia in Poland. Ruth worked as a Land Girl picking fruit in Worcestershire. She was found murdered her body found at Counslow in late September 1944 on the Alton-Cheadle road. She was 20 years of age, her journey had ended.

She was last seen receiving a lift from an Army vehicle at Selly Oak in Birmingham on 21^st September. She was intending to see her brother in Manchester who was working as an optician’s assistant. When her body was discovered she had been stabbed as well as an attempt made to strangle her. Her clothes were disarranged and a stocking was missing. Robbery was not thought to be a motive. Ruth’s suitcase and other belongings were found 150 miles away at Shap Fell in Cumbria. Her murder was unsolved despite the best efforts of the Cheadle police. It was the first case that mine detectors were used in a vain attempt to find the weapon that killed Ruth.

Ruth’s story is a poignant one. She escaped the persecution of the Nazis who had killed all her relatives in Poland, for her to die brutally and her body to be thrown into a Staffordshire ditch. Her story is just one of the many millions of people who were forced from homelands where communities had lived for hundreds of years to be either killed or resettled distances away from their birthplace. The Jewish community of Eastern Europe ceased to exist and cities which had sizable minorities such as Prague, Warsaw and Lvov were entirely purged. Only 150,000 Polish Jews survived out of a population of over 3 million by 1945. After the war vast movements of populations occurred. Tony Judt in his seminal book on Europe “ Postwar” estimated that over 30 million people were dispossessed from 1939 to 1950 including 11 million Germans, millions in the Soviet Union such as the Crimea Tartars thought to be enemies of the state, Poles, Hungarians, Italians and many other groups in a massive attempt at “homogenising” vast swathes of the continent. Many Jews moved to the new state of Israel, but also to unbelievably escape further persecution in Eastern Europe . Some of the displaced people of Europe found homes in England as the Polish community at Blackshaw Moor testifies.

Writing about a massacre of Jews that took place in Stryl in Galicia in the summer of 1943 Schaje Schmerler concluded with this prayer. “Their extinguished souls that ascended to heaven and were transformed into stars shine now together will the souls of all those unlucky Jews martyred-- al kiddush hashem --they shine down on us lest we forget what was done to our people”.

Ruth Schmerler lies in a Jewish cemetery in Manchester. Perhaps some passer-by can say Kaddish for her and her people?

Do you remember April 1986?

The event of April 1986 happened about 1400 miles from Leek at 1.23am local time on the 26th April when a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union exploded releasing into the atmosphere 120 million curies of radioactive material- more than one hundred times the radiation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. The plume of atomic fallout was carried north west into Western Europe reaching the UK and exposing several million people to its effects. In addition to the 30 emergency workers killed on the spot , some 30,000 people would later die from  complications caused by exposure to radiation. The first reports that something was wrong were of aircraft landing in Manchester displaying high levels of radiation . The weekend that the cloud passed over the area was a rainy one. Precipitation landed on the hills and  days after locals were advised by Environmental Agencies not to drink rainwater as it would have contained fall out. Some locals still obtained their drinking water from local wells. A press release in an attempt to reassure holiday makers  went on to say 

“ People who are camping and drinking rainwater should not worry it is only those who are drinking rainwater all the time should take precautions”

On the subject of additions to the water there was news that the fluoride debate was coming to a head with demands from the Health Authority that the chemical be added to the water supply through reservoirs at Deep Hayes and Tittersworth. The reasoning being that North Staffordshire was the third worst district in the West Midlands for tooth decay and use of fluoride was an effective way of improving dental health. It would cost the authority £500,000.

The weather in the spring of 1986 was cold and wet which caused  concern at the National Garden Festival site at the former steel works at Etruria.  Officials were also worried that frogmen who were checking the water feature at the Moorlands Display on the site prior to the Queen opening the Festival in early May might damage the artificial lake. The bad weather had effected the shrubs that had been planted. A number had withered and were replaced. Pupils from Westwood High had worked on a Golden Pagoda on the site.

On the 14th August 1914 the Old Leek Battery left town heading for the front in the opening days of the First World War. They were the first territorial division to go into action. In  four years of war 27 members of the battery were killed. The survivors of the 3rd Battery, 231 Brigade, 46th North Midland Division chose to remember their  dead by holding an annual dinner from 1920 onward. On Saturday 19th April 1986 their were only 5 veterans left- Ernie Taylor, Jack Robey, Walter Serrell, Charlie Spratt and Harry Goldstraw who met at the Izaak Walton Hotel, Ilam for the 66th time to raise glasses to fallen comrades.

A previous conflict was recognised in Leek when members of the Sealed Knot the English Civil War re-enactment society came to the town to drum up- literally- interest in 17th century History. They bought with them examples of medicines herbal preparation that would have been used in the war. The aim of the society was to raise funds so that a Civil War Museum could be built in Worcester.

Two brothers met after a gap of 53 years when Franciszek Szmuniewski 77 welcomed his brother Kazik to his Staffordshire Moorlands home. Their wives Janina and Zosia also met. After the Second World war over 1.6 million Poles preferred to stay in resettlement camps in Western Europe than return to a Communist homeland. Western European states short of labour and in the midst of economic and material reconstruction were initially open to importing certain categories of stateless person. Britain especially needed coal miners and took in 86,000 people in this way. Franciszek had settled at the Blackshaw Moor and had run a Polish school at the camp. His daughter Barbara told the local paper that his level of English despite all the years was lamentably poor

The man who feared Vampires- Jan 1973

As befits a former Navy man Frederick Hails ran a tight ship. As the Coroner for North Staffs from the 1960s to 80s  he was known for asking awkward, probing questions especially in the cases of death arising from working in the pottery or mining industry. On one occasion he was so interested in conditions underground that he arranged a visit down a local mine to see for himself. He was involved in a number of groundbreaking cases including the first inquest into a death caused by the contraceptive pill. He was the first Coroner to call for the introduction of childproof drug containers. Later his investigation into a death revealed that a chemical was responsible for giving workers stomach cancer- the chemical was speedily withdrawn from usage. He was not averse from using technology in his cases and he introduced a tape recorder to take down evidence.

 But it was a bizarre case that he heard on the 8th January 1973 that must be regarded as such by this experienced public servant to ever to have come across. The matter concerned the discovery of a body some weeks before in a bed sit in 2 the Villas off London Road in Stoke. The corpse was that of Demetrious Myiciura a 56-year-old pottery worker who was found dead in his small dimly lit bedroom. The scene surrounding the corpse that was met by Police Constable John Pye will have probably stayed with him his entire career. Around the body on the floor was laid out sheets of newspaper. A bag of salt was wrapped around the dead man’s neck and another was placed between his legs. The man had mixed salt with his urine and put it in various containers around the room. There were a number of crucifixes hanging from the wall.  On the window ledge was a bowl containing a mix of human excrement and garlic. In the mouth of Myiciura was what appeared to be a pickled onion on which he had apparently choked to death. At the inquest the pathologist reported that Myiciura had choked to death on the onion. Frederick Hails thought this unusual, but commented that it was not unknown for people "to bolt their food and die." Meanwhile the young policeman could not forgotten what he had seen. He had gone to Hanley Library and read books on vampires and vampirism. His suspicions were confirmed; the salt and garlic are traditional vampire repellents, and the mixture on Myiciura's window ledge was intended to attract vampires who would then be poisoned by the garlic. When told of this, the coroner ordered a re-examination of the pickled onion. It was found to be a clove of garlic. As a final desperate measure to ward off the vampires, Myiciura had slept with a clove of garlic in his mouth, and the garlic had choked him to death. Fear and dread killed him: the vampires did get him in the end.

There is renewed interest in vampires as this year is the 100th anniversary of the death of the creator of the modern vampire myth Bram Stoker whose 1897 novel Dracula did a great deal to ignite the modern day interest in the cult. A film set in 1972 staring Johnny Depp as the Count is being released. Of course the fear of vampires lies deep in the psyche of Central and Eastern Europe especially in rural areas. The Coroners report in the Sentinel in early January 1973 states that Myiciura was a farmer before the Second World War from the Southern Polish town of Mysienice. It should be also worth noting that as he was born in 1917 he would have seen a great deal of blood shed. In his early years the Poles were engaged in a conflict with Soviet Russia. The war led to atrocities on both sides and in 1939 both the Nazis and the Soviets invaded the country. Poland's population losses during World War II were proportionately by far the greatest of any nation participating in the war. Of its 35 million people before the war, Poland lost 6.5 million. An estimated 664,000 were battlefield deaths (this figure exceeds combined losses of the United States and Great Britain in the Second World War), and the remainder, or 90 percent, were civilians of all ages. His hometown saw the massacre of its Jewish population in 1942. It is not surprising that his mind harboured dark thoughts of mayhem and loss of blood that led to his squalid death in a bed sit in Stoke.