- "It is an extraordinary secret,
possibly the most remarkable example of concealment of identity in 20th-century
British political history."
-
- LONDON (AP) -- The British author of a key international document that
paved the way for the foundation of Israel covered up his own Jewish ancestry,
a historian says.
-
- Leopold Amery, a British MP who drafted
the Balfour Declaration, changed his middle name from Moritz to Maurice
in an apparent effort to hide the fact his mother was a Jew, Prof. William
Rubinstein of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, writes in the current
issue of History Today magazine.
-
- As assistant secretary to the war cabinet
in 1917, Amery drafted a letter for Lord Balfour, the foreign secretary,
expressing Britain's support for "the establishment in Palestine of
a national home for the Jewish people."
-
- The Balfour Declaration was endorsed
by the Allied powers and included in the British mandate over Palestine,
which was approved by the League of Nations in 1922.
-
- In his autobiography My Political Life,
which was published shortly before his death in 1955, Amery said only that
his mother had fled Hungary after 1848. He said his father came from an
old English family.
-
- Rubinstein said Amery's mother was Elizabeth
Johanna Saphir and was of purely Jewish descent.
-
- "It is an extraordinary secret,
possibly the most remarkable example of concealment of identity in 20th-century
British political history," Rubinstein said.
-
- One of Amery's sons, John, was a fascist
who was hanged for treason in London during the Second World War. Another
son, Julian, was a longtime Conservative member of Parliament who died
in 1996.
-
- Rubinstein speculated that Amery may
have covered up his Jewish ancestry to avoid harassment at school, or to
avoid being pressured by Jewish interests as a member of Parliament.
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