Read on Twitter
As promised, today I'm going to introduce 'Tess' from my play 'Tess and the Pest'. Pour yourself a nice cup of tea, get comfortable in front of the electric fire and come with me, I want to introduce you to the indomitable Esther Simpson. https://twitter.com/andraswf/status/1328781046750584833
Esther Simpson - to her friends, Tess - was born in 1903 in Leeds. Following her graduation from University she travelled to Switzerland and Austria, before finding employment in Vienna. She accepted the position for one of her true passions: chamber music.
At the time Vienna was a musically rich place, where you could easily find fellow music-lovers for a bit of "jamming" - although they never called it that. And Tess has been playing the violin since she was nine years old, for her Vienna was indeed, heaven on Earth.
But she did move on, became the secretary for the director of the YMCA in Geneva. And this is where Tess met Leo Szilard for the first time. She must have impressed him because as soon as Szilard returned to London, he sent Tess a telegram:
“ACADEMIC COUNCIL HELPING GERMAN SCIENTISTS NAMELY SZILARD'S WORK WANTS SECRETARY STOP IMPORTANT START NEXT MONDAY.”
Those were simpler times. And Tess did not think twice before boarding the night train to London.
Those were simpler times. And Tess did not think twice before boarding the night train to London.
For the Academic Assistance Council, Tess' arrival was nothing short of a miracle. William Beveridge writes, “of lasting and growing importance”. She had a rare talent for organization, for friendship and for persuading people to do what she asked without provoking resentment.
She had inexhaustible energy, resilience and patience, something which she had to rely on as the calendar turned into the year 1938. Yes, the Anschluss increased her workload tenfold. Just to give you a better idea, she didn't go for holiday for THIRTEEN YEARS.
Her job was incredibly difficult: trying to assert the applying scientists based on long forms and corroborating statements from experts, so she could give them a small grant, the little the AAC, later renamed Society for the
Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) could afford
Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) could afford
Before the terminally stupid barge into the thread, talking about "imperialist brain drain" let me remind everyone that the main goal of the AAC/SPSL was to rescue threatened scientists from danger; it was not the enrichment of British intellectual life as such.
So from the very beginning they were trying to enlist the help of the United States. It took them a fair few years to convince institutions and universities to take these expelled academics on board. But when they did - it changed the US forever.
Tess was the same age or younger than many of the refugees she assisted, but she called them, her “children”. She had no partner and no biological children of her own.
And then came the war. Which made everything worse.
And then came the war. Which made everything worse.
In September 1939 war was declared, borders of the UK were closed. And 200.000 immigrants who came from countries which have become the enemies of Britain found themselves to be declared by their host country "enemy aliens".
They had to sign up at their local police constabulary, and they were prohibited from living near any place that could be considered sensitive from a defence stand point of view. And that was just the start.
I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone when I say that The Daily Mail were running headlines in 1940 following France's capitulation reading “Act! Act! Act!”, and they didn't mean join your local theatre group.
The resident Julia Hartley-Brewer at the time, George Ward Price, had this advice for Jewish immigrants: “They should be careful not to arouse the same resentment here as they have stirred up in so many countries”.
So the police promptly began arresting everyone on their books who were "enemy alien". They were sent to detention centres. According to an apocryphal story, the most effective means to find refugees was to carry out sweeps through the public libraries of north-west London.
The British didn't really care about putting Jews and Nazis together: as far as they were concerned they were both "enemy aliens", which not surprisingly lead to violence among the inmates.
At the start of the war, the SPSL was relocated to Cambridge, and Tess found herself in a new role: a lot of the detainees were academics, almost all of whom she had helped to settle in the UK. A few names of the interned scientists:
Amongst others, architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, art historian Ernst Gombrich, and - later on Nobel-prize awarded molecular biologist, Dr. Max Perutz.
Finally the Home Secretary relented and it was announced that those who were contributing to the war effort were free.
Finally the Home Secretary relented and it was announced that those who were contributing to the war effort were free.
Well, sort-of: the process was protracted and various organisations were tasked to set up tribunals to process the detained academics. The SPSL had to prepare their cases. Once again, Tess needed references to vouch for each and every detainee.
Sometimes referees weren't helpful at all. H. G. Wells when asked to provide a character reference for Dr. Otto Neurath, a Marxist philosopher wrote "...no reason why Dr Neurath should be made the subject of a special campaign for preferential treatment”. Ouch.
But when a letter of support from Albert Einstein arrived in 1940, the authorities had to release him, which they did. Four months later. At least he made it out. Not all detainees were this lucky. Many have fallen ill in the internment camps, many have taken their own lives.
And Tess had to be relentless, even though the government was slowly realising that a lot of talent and intellect is being wasted away in the internment camps. As she wrote to a friend "One naturally has something to worry about when one has a family of six hundred".
It won't surprise many of you that she was a Quaker. And that she was a child of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. She wasn't born Simpson, her family name was Sinovitch Interestingly, she only changed her name by deed-poll in 1933, a month after she started working for the AAC.
When asked, why is she doing what she was doing she said "The people who were losing their jobs were the same sort as those I had played chamber music with in Vienna."
Good a reason as any.
Good a reason as any.
She was very proud of her "children", she kept tabs on their successes. Tess Simpson died on 19 November 1996, and until the day she passed away, she worked tirelessly to help academics and scientists who were displaced by wars, revolutions or other conflicts.
So, if you are intrigued, why not listen to my play 'Tess and the Pest'? https://anchor.fm/andras-forgacs
