“I am sure that your Editor will understand how fully occupied I am at the present time…”
Two typed, signed letters – one from Winston S. Churchill 10 days before he became wartime Prime Minister and one from Churchill’s Private Secretary less than a month into Churchill’s premiership – both regarding a German-Jewish journalist émigré who escaped Hitler’s Germany only to be deported by the British as an “enemy alien”

Admiralty House, London, 1940. Letter. This compellingly interesting item features two pieces of correspondence from early in the Second World War. The first is a typed, signed letter from then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston S. Churchill – just 10 days before he became wartime Prime Minister – to German-Jewish journalist and émigré Alfred J. Fischer declining an appointment to meet. The letter is accompanied by the original Admiralty envelope. The second typed letter is signed by Churchill’s Private Secretary, John Peck, dated 8 June 1940, on 10 Downing Street stationery, addressing an apparent request to make inquiries into “the case of Mr. Fischer”. Together, these two pieces of early Second World War correspondence are noteworthy for occurring during Churchill’s ascendance to the premiership, for featuring his signature on his Admiralty stationery in his final days as First Lord, and limning the fraught, perilous fate of German Jews, even those who made it to supposed haven on Allied shores.

Churchill’s letter is typed on a single sheet of Admiralty stationery, headed with a printed, blue Admiralty device and dated “30 April 1940” at the upper right. The salutation “My Dear Sir,” the valediction “Yours vy ty” [sic], and the signature “Winston S. Churchill” are all in Churchill’s hand. The letter politely rejects a request from journalist Alfred Fischer for a meeting, Churchill offering “I am sure that your Editor will understand how fully occupied I am at the present time…” The letter is accompanied by its original franked envelope, the flap featuring the raised, printed “ADMIRALTY WHITEHALL” device and still sealed with red wax imprinted with an Admiralty signet.

An additional “8th June, 1940” letter to Fischer is from John Howard Peck, the only one of Churchill’s wartime Private Secretaries to serve for the entirety of Churchill’s wartime premiership. This typed, hand-emended, and signed letter is on “10, Downing Street, Whitehall” stationery, printed thus at the upper right, with a “PRIME MINISTER” device at the upper left. The letter, written less than a month after Churchill became wartime Prime Minister, is addressed to a woman who made an appeal on Fischer’s behalf after Fischer was detained as a “Category ‘B’ alien. Peck writes: “…Mr. Churchill has had enquiries made into the case of Mr. Fischer but he regrets that nothing can be done in the matter at the moment…”

Each letter, as well as the envelope, is housed in its own clear, removable, archival mylar sleeve. The sleeves are housed in a rigid, crimson cloth folder.

Alfred Joachim Fischer

We know little about “Mrs. Hochner” other than her apparent concern and advocacy for Alfred Fisher. But Mr. Fisher’s story is known, at least in part, and is intriguingly interwoven with the general tragedy of allied internment of “enemy aliens” and the compound brutalities visited on German Jews fleeing Hitler’s Reich.

Alfred Joachim Fischer (1909-1992) was a German Jew working as a journalist for a liberal newspaper in Berlin at the end of the republic. In 1933, the year Hitler became German chancellor and the first concentration camps were established, Fischer began an emigration odyssey via Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia, the Balkans, Palestine, and Turkey. In 1939 he “fled at the last minute from Prague” to Great Britain. But his flight from one persecutor only delivered him to another.

Fischer was detained as a potential Category ‘B’ enemy alien. Eventually he was among those deported to Australia on the HMT Dunera. The 57-day voyage was not only under threat by German U-boats; detainees faced regular beatings and robbery at the hands of British soldiers and officers on board.

As Fischer later recalled, “I was only allowed to take a few items with me, including a personal letter from Winston Churchill.” Ostensibly that was this same letter. (Translated from Fischer, In der Nahe der Ereignisse, p.177)

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