The Art of Resistance: Defending Academic Freedom since 1933 | Page 150

Schwitters painted his portrait. One of his old quartet playing
friends, Walter Zander, was intensively involved in developing
education projects there. He made friends with the famous pianist
Marjan Rawicz who came to his house to make music and celebrate
his birthday in 1945.
Whilst Opa was interned my mother and Oma were evacuated to
the Lake District. Returning to London after the war, the regular
chamber music afternoons in the house by the Heath became a
meeting place for a wide variety of people, many of whom were
immigrants like them. He worked as an international lawyer, largely
with refugees who were entitled to compensation under the postwar agreements. The Beveridges were family friends, and it was
through them that my mother got her first job at the LCC having
gained her geography degree at Edinburgh University. It was at the
LCC that she met my father and thus ‘here am I’.
Though born in London I have never really thought of myself
as British and tend instead to primarily identify myself as middle
European. I now live in Scotland, where I have been for much of
my adult life, and I am finding the current debate about Scottish
independence very challenging. What is nationhood? What does it
mean to belong? How does it serve a nation to join with others and
how does it serve to be independent of others? Can we find a way
to be separate enough without having to go to war over resources
in this increasingly overpopulated world?

148 The Art of Resistance? Defending Academic Freedom

In 1940, the British Government introduced internment for
‘enemy aliens’ despite most being Jewish and unlikely to be
Nazi sympathisers. CARA (then The Society for the Protection
of Science & Learning) worked tirelessly to prevent the
internment of refugee scientists and scholars, to support
those at risk of deportation and to secure the release of those
who had already been interned.
Each case involved a vast amount of work and the compiling
of complex documentation for submission to the Home Office.
As well as being known for its interned artists, Hutchinson
Camp was also known for holding the largest number of
university professors and lecturers. They set up an informal
camp university and delivered daily lectures to fellow prisoners.

From 1940 to 1941, over five hundred refugee
scholars were released from internment camps
thanks to the efforts for CARA.