For Britain’s Jewish war heroes the juxtaposition of images emerging from Auschwitz, Treblinka and other death camps with the realisation that Hitler’s British fellow travellers were once more flourishing was profoundly shocking.

Mr Beckman said: “At that time one could be sickened by newsreel documentaries showing bulldozers in concentration camps shovelling mounds of bodies into limepits, and then later encountering fascist speaker saying things like, ‘Hitler was right, but not enough Jews were gassed’.”

Julius Konopinsky, one of the 43 Group’s founding members, had more reason than many to see the virtues of such an approach. Having arrived in Hackney from Poland in 1939, he learnt in 1945 that his nine maternal uncles and aunts had been murdered by the Nazis. A year later, another uncle, who had survived Auschwitz, came to live with him.

Now 85, Mr Konopinsky said: “Call them fascists, call them Nazis, they only seemed to understand one thing – to hurt you or to be hurt. And we believed in hurting them first before they hurt us. I still believe that.” Continue reading →