Wilfrid Israel

.submitted by: Oran Azaria, Roee Mimran, Almog Ziv

.submitted to: Miriam Duanis

.submitted on: 20/2/2020

Introduction by Oran Azaria

Throughout history there have been people who have influenced the way we live. WILFRID ISRAEL is one of those people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Wilfrid Israel for several reasons. To begin with, he is a remarkable person who risked his life in order to save others. In addition, I would like to learn more about him.

There are a number of things that I already know about Wilfrid Israel. Firstly, I know that he saved tens of thousands of Jewish children. In addition, I know that he was a British-German businessman.

I expect to learn new and interesting thing about Wilfrid Israel. First and foremost, I expect to find out more about the way he saved those Jewish children. Also, I want to learn more about his personal life, what he liked to do in his free time etc.

Wilfrid Israel has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding more about him.

INTRODUCTION by Roee Mimran
Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Wilfrid Israel is one of these people.
I chose to prepare the research project on Wilfrid Israel for several reasons. To begin with I heard some stories about him that he was a great man who influenced a lot, he also has a movie about his actions that focus the last ten years in Wilfred’s life.
There are a number of things that I already know about Wilfrid Israel. Firstly, I know that he was a German Jew who saved other Jews in the holocaust. In addition, I know that after the first world war he flew around the world in order to buy arts.
I expect to learn new and interesting things about Wilfrid Israel. First and foremost, I expect to find out about the adventure he had in the holocaust and his fights and the help he gave to the Jews. Also, I want to learn about his deeds and his actions that he did on his adventures. Finally, I would like to discover his influence all over the world.
Wilfrid Israel has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

Introduction by Almog Ziv.

Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Wilfrid Israel is one of these people.

I chose to prepare the research project on Wilfrid Israel for several reasons. To begin with, from the very first days of Hitler’s victory, Israel used his ties to save Jews from the Nazi persecution. Moreover, Israel was an important figure in the movement and organization of the “Kindertransport” – a nickname for rescue shipments of ten thousand Jewish children from Nazi Germany.

There are a number of things that I already know about Wilfrid Israel. Firstly, I know that there is a short 30-minute documentary about Wilfrid Israel’s life and work. In addition, I know that he was recognized as an Israeli casualties of war.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Wilfrid Israel. First and foremost, I expect to find out about his fights he had in the holocaust. Also, I want to learn about his actions he did on his adventures. Finally, I would like to discover his influence all over the world.

Wilfred Israel has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

Biography – Israel Wilfrid

Wilfrid Berthold Jacob Israel was born in London, United Kingdom on July 11, 1899 and died on June 1, 1943. Wilfrid was an Anglo-German businessman and philanthropist. His family was Jewish and a wealthy Anglo – German. He was active in rescuing Jews from the Nazis during World War II. He also played a significant role in the Kindertransport. At the age of 22 Wilfrid entered the family business, the biggest and the oldest store in the city, Berlin. After World War II he started wandering around the world. He helped set up the “Habima” theater. In the 1930s, Wilfrid was active at the Jewish community in Germany, which organized migration of Jewish to other countries but not to Israel. In the summer of 1939 he migrated to England and he got a job as an investigator at Oxford University. His brother Herbert and his mother migrated to United States and his sister in 1920, three days after her child was born. He worked very hard to save Jews in England too.

With the rise of Hitler and the Nazi political party, and the rules that they forced the Jewish people to obey to. For example, they decided that the Jewish people had to stay in their house in restricted hours, afterwards they had to wear a yellow patch in order to distinguish between Jews and Germans. All of this led to sending Jews to the labor camps and slowly separating families, children from their parents. Wilfred couldn’t see the acts that the Nazis had done. He started kinder transporting which is saving children from the wrath of the Nazis.
In the progress he and the Kindertransport saved around 10000 children.

Flight 777 of the Dutch company was on their way back from Lisbon to Bristol on 1 June, 1943, in the morning. The flight was attacked by German combat airplanes. On that airplane were thirteen passengers and four crew mates, all of them died. One of the passengers was Wilfrid. Because of his acts he was recognized as an Israeli casualty of war. In his last will, he bequeathed his collection to kibbutz “Zorea” and now it’s in a museum called Wilfrid Israel Museum of Art and the knowledge of the east in the kibbutz. Despite his connection with famous people all around the world, he is not famous and his acts are known to very few but on the first of June, at the day of his death, the Jewish Savior Achievement was presented to him by the organization to respect the heroes from the holocaust.

our figure’s influence on us

Interview – Wilfrid Israel
By: Oran Azaria, Roee Mimran and Almog Ziv.

We chose to interview Dr. Ilan Ber. He is a geriatrician and he works at Kibbutz “Zorea”.
There are several reasons why we chose to interview this person. First of all, when we called the “Wilfrid Israel Museum” and asked for information about Wilfrid they gave us Ilan Ber’s number and they said he is the best source of information about Wilfrid. Moreover, his connection to Wilfrid is very interesting, his father was a close friend of Wilfrid and when Ilan’s father came to Israel he was one of the managers in the museum at the time.

Q: What can you tell us about the “Kindertransport”?
A: Wilfrid, who was a Jew in Germany, worked toward helping other Jews of Germany in order to get them out of Germany and hopefully to Israel. Right after Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938) he thought of the idea of transporting mainly children out of Germany. He offered the English government to absorb Jewish kids without their parents between the ages of 3 – 17. Many people volunteered to adopt them, most of their parents were murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust.

Q: What can you tell us about his life in Berlin?
A: Wilfrid’s family had a department store of Linen clothing that was called “Natan Israel” after his father’s grandfather who opened this department store in 1815 and passed it from generation to generation. Wilfrid was the 5^th generation. He employed 2500 workers and about 700 of whom were Jews. When the Nazis took over Germany, they inserted fake employees for spying purposes. His father died in the 1930s, Wilfrid replaced him and used his connections and money in order to save Jews.

Q: What can you tell us about his relationship with Albert Einstein
A: First of all, Wilfrid had no relationship with a woman. He was homosexual, and He tried to keep it a secret because it wasn’t acceptable in the Jewish community. He went to Einstein’s lectures even though he wasn’t a physicist or mathematician. He went there to consume Einstein’s knowledge about life. After Wilfrid’s death, Einstein wrote a letter to Wilfrid’s mother in which he comforted and described how great Wilfrid’s life was and how brave he was.

Q: Is it right that Wilfrid died in an airplane crash?
A: There are a number of theories. According to some of them Wilfrid’s flight was a bait to the German’s fighter aircrafts to not fire at Churchill’s airplane which flew from north Africa to London.

Wilfrid’s description, “Wilfrid an ambassador without a country” has had an influence on us in a number of ways. Firstly, Wilfrid was indeed a Jew who helped other Jews but during the war he had no country to represent, but he still felt like he had to do more. Moreover, we felt he was not getting the respect he needed, he was not even announced as a Righteous among the Nations.

Interview – Wilfrid Israel

We chose to interview Dr. Ilan Ber. He is a geriatrician and he works at Kibbutz “Zorea”.
There are several reasons why we chose to interview this person. First of all, when we called the “Wilfrid Israel Museum” and asked for information about Wilfrid they gave us Ilan Ber’s number and they said he is the best source of information about Wilfrid. Moreover, his connection to Wilfrid is very interesting, his father was a close friend of Wilfrid and when Ilan’s father came to Israel he was one of the managers in the museum at the time.

Q: What can you tell us about the “Kindertransport”?
A: Wilfrid, who was a Jew in Germany, worked toward helping other Jews of Germany in order to get them out of Germany and hopefully to Israel. Right after Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938) he thought of the idea of transporting mainly children out of Germany. He offered the English government to absorb Jewish kids without their parents between the ages of 3 – 17. Many people volunteered to adopt them, most of their parents were murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust.

Q: What can you tell us about his life in Berlin?
A: Wilfrid’s family had a department store of Linen clothing that was called “Natan Israel” after his father’s grandfather who opened this department store in 1815 and passed it from generation to generation. Wilfrid was the 5^th generation. He employed 2500 workers and about 700 of whom were Jews. When the Nazis took over Germany, they inserted fake employees for spying purposes. His father died in the 1930s, Wilfrid replaced him and used his connections and money in order to save Jews.

Q: What can you tell us about his relationship with Albert Einstein
A: First of all, Wilfrid had no relationship with a woman. He was homosexual, and He tried to keep it a secret because it wasn’t acceptable in the Jewish community. He went to Einstein’s lectures even though he wasn’t a physicist or mathematician. He went there to consume Einstein’s knowledge about life. After Wilfrid’s death, Einstein wrote a letter to Wilfrid’s mother in which he comforted and described how great Wilfrid’s life was and how brave he was.

Q: Is it right that Wilfrid died in an airplane crash?
A: There are a number of theories. According to some of them Wilfrid’s flight was a bait to the German’s fighter aircrafts to not fire at Churchill’s airplane which flew from north Africa to London.

Presentation

On 12.1.2020, we made a presentation in front of our classmates and teacher on Wilfrid Israel.

There were a number of things we wanted to achieve by making our presentation in this way. First, we wanted the english in the presentation to be an every day english so that our classmates would understand it in the best way possible. in addition, in the second part of the presentation we made a kahoot quiz this in order to test if our classmates listened to our presentation.

In order to prepare this presentation, we followed a number of steps. First of all, we prepared the text and checked whether we had grammar or vocabulary difficulties. then we started to make our PowerPoint presentation and adjusted it to match the text. after all was done we met and ran a simulation and if the presentation was long enough or if we remembered the text by heart.

The presentation in class was done in the following way. to begin with we started by presenting our self and Wilfrid and to talk about his life in general. when the PowerPoint presentation ended we asked our classmates to enter the kahoot quiz we prepared and answer the questions.

Immediately after the presentation, we received feedback from our teacher and peers. one of the many feedback was “your presentation was good, you spoke very clear, and it was very interesting. if I could describe it in one word I would say a ‘perfection’”, another one was “it is amazing how a person risked so much of his life in order to save people”. a common comment was that our english was easy to understand and this is what we aimed for.

We learnt several things about Wilfrid Israel while doing this section. For example we learnt that wilfrid was a homosexual and about his relationship with Albert Einstien and many other all over the world. 

Looking back on our presentation, there are several things that could have been made differently. Firstly, we think we could have been less stressed because this caused confusion during the presentation and we forgot a few sentences. moreover, we should have made the PowerPoint presentation longer, we feel that the presentation was to short.

In conclusion, we enjoyed presenting our research with the class, we are glad that we could present this amazing man to more people.

Reflective writing

we found the preparation of this project worthwhile for several reasons. First and foremost, we have enriched our knowledge by doing work on a person we didn’t know before. Also, we have improved our English by writing the paragraphs ourselves than copying them from sources of information.

We learnt many things while working on the project. First of all,we learnt a lot on Wilfrid Israel. Additionally,  we learnt how to work on teamwork by distributed our work.

We developed a number of skills during our work on this project. To begin with, we got better at standing in front of an audience, some of us thought we would be stressed and nervous but we practiced a lot and at show time, all of us remembered the text and presented it well. Furthermore, we developed our english by writing the project while reading information from a number of sources and combined it to one project. 

We enjoyed working together in a group for a number of reasons. no member of the group has known Wilfrid beforehand, therefore we enjoyed learning about him. every member of the group put effort and his skills in this project. In addition, we are good friends, and we enjoy each other’s company, as a result of it, we had fun doing this project.

On the one hand, there were things we enjoyed while preparing this project, we liked the interview section. We interviewed Ilan Ber and asked him many questions, we were interested in the information he gave us so we liked to talk with him. One question leads to another question and it became more of a conversation and not an interview because he was asking questions either, he was interested in us and asked questions like where are we from and why we are doing our project on Wilfrid Israel.

On the other hand, there were things we enjoyed less while working on the project. We enjoyed less in the biography section because we needed to search a lot to find information about Wilfrid Israel, he is not well known around the world. When we interviewed Ilan, we discovered a lot of new information since Ilan’s father was Wilfrid’s friend.

In conclusion, we are grateful that we had the opportunity to prepare this project. We learnt a lot about Wilfrid Israel and about each other. We developed skills that will help us in the future.

BIBILIOGRAPHY

Dr. Ilan Ber.

He is a geriatrician whom we interviewed

WILFRID ISRAEL museum.

http://www.wilfrid.org.il/en/?p=58

04-9899566

[email protected]

Wikipedia.

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%93_%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C