One of the Kitchener descendants lent us an incredible document for the project a little while ago. It’s an article on Kitchener camp in what was basically Le Soir‘s ‘colour supplement’ of its day. It was published in Belgium.
The article is titled (in translation) ‘Kitchener Camp is not a Ghetto’, and was published in February 1940.
The caption for the photograph above, which is from the article, states that it shows the Kitchener camp rabbi. He also appears in a number of Kitchener photographs sent in and in archival photographs I have seen.
However, it doesn’t look like Dr Werner van der Zyl, as far as I can tell from photographs findable on Google images, which tend to be of him in later years. And van der Zyl’s materials are archived at Southampton, which I can’t get to for the time being.
The other Kitchener rabbi we know about was the Orthodox Isidor Broch, but I haven’t been able to find out anything about him – let alone what he looked like in 1939/1940.
If anyone can help – or if you could spread the image around relevant Facebook sites, etc – please do let me know if you find anything out.
You can see his image again (front row, seated) in the photograph below. This photograph is held by a number of families. If you have a copy, could you possibly check the reverse, just in case anything helpful has been written there.
Many thanks!
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Update – I have been informed that this is Rabbi Cohen of Margate synagogue. Which suggests that this was the man who performed some of the Kitchener marriages – given that we know some of the refugees married at Margate synagogue.