Arnold Remembers
Arnold Schwartzman, OBE, filmmaker. Image courtesy of AIGA LA
My great grand parents left their home in the Ukraine to escape the Pogroms against the Jewish population only to face yet another assault on their lives some 40 years later. Britain at war.
I was four years old on that fateful first day of the London Blitz, September 7, 1940.
It was a warm autumn evening when my mother had just set three salads onto our kitchen table. Out of the window I saw on the next door roof top our neighbor stripped to the waist washing in an enamel bowl. On spotting me he waved, I waved back as an air-raid siren began to wail. At this point my parents ran into the kitchen, my father picked me up as we hurried down the several flight of stairs to the ground floor. No sooner had we reached the downstairs hallway when there was an enormous explosion as the building was hit by an incendiary bomb. Thankfully the three of us were unhurt as we attempted to find our way out to the street through the rubble.
As the dust began to settle we made our way to the front door, and finding it blocked, we climbed through the adjoining building's collapsed wall into the back yard. My father lifted me through a window to the next door building which was the street’s general provisions store. I still remember the shop's large wooden counter on which sat a row of sweet jars of liquorice allsorts, wine gums etc. Some of the jars amazingly were still intact, I wished that I could have taken a few samples! Rescue workers soon assisted us into the street where there were hundreds of people scrambling about, plus items of furniture strewn everywhere. We spent that night in a standing-room only street bomb shelter. The non-stop constant loud thud of explosions continued, until a bomb dropped close by our shelter causing us to be transferred into the basement of a nearby home.
The following night we were accommodated in a local school, where they had designated separate classrooms for the men, and for women and children. My mother slept on the camp bed to my left, the woman in the bed to my right hysterically kept screaming, “I’ve swallowed a bomb, I’ve swallowed a bomb”.
The next morning the refugees were put on buses, our destination being the safety of the English countryside. My parents decided to alight at Egham, Surrey, just twenty-odd miles from London. There we finally found refuge thanks to the hospitality of the home of an elderly Scottish couple, the Milnes.
I recall that first evening seeing my mother in tears as we looked east towards London where the night’s sky glowed bright red. It was London burning.
We stayed with the Milnes' for the next couple of years before my parents obtained a house in the village.
Today, whenever I hear the sound of an air-raid siren, it still sends a shudder down my spine. I never thought that I would live to witness a repeat of those terrible times.
The free world must stand up for the Ukrainian people.
Arnold Schwartzman, March 2022
U.N. Peace Bell Monument, Korean War Museum, Seoul, South Korea
Designed by Arnold Schwartzman, 2010
In 2010 Schwartzman was asked to design a work for the Korean War Museum. Schwartzman served a year in South Korea with the British Army’s 1st Battalion, The Royal Sussex Regiment. The temporary memorial commemorated those who served in the Korean War in 1951.
His peace bell was inspired by the Bible quote, “… to beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks…”
Arnold Schwartzman OBE is a British designer, author and film director known for his documentaries. In 1982, he won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, for his most famous work, Genocide. His other films are Liberation and Echoes That Remain. He has designed countless campaigns and completed many creative endeavors over the years. He is a featured contributor in HUE.