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Britain’s national broadcaster issued a clarification this week after the outlet faced criticism for airing a Christmas special on the Holocaust-era evacuation of Jewish children from Europe that removed all references to Jews.
On December 26, the BBC show The Repair Shop aired a special segment devoted to the Kindertransport, the evacuation of some 10,000 children, nearly all of them Jewish, from Nazi-controlled territory in 1938 and 1939.
The segment centered on a 19th-century cello that had been damaged by the Nazis, and was brought to Britain aboard a Kindertransport convoy.
Shortly before the convoy’s departure, Nazi guards smashed the cello, which remained damaged until it was repaired for the segment.
Critics pointed out, however, that nowhere in the segment was it mentioned that the children evacuated to Britain during the Kindertransport were Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, or that the owner of the cello, Martin Landau, who fled to Britain at age 14, was Jewish.
Despite 16 minutes of the hour-long program being dedicated to the cello’s history and the context of the Kindertransport, the BBC segment made no mention of Jews, and reportedly purged a reference to the word “Jew” made by actress Helen Mirren, who presented the cello to the show’s repair team.
According to a report by the London-based Jewish Chronicle, Mirren’s reference to Jews was edited out of the aired version of the segment.
Amid a backlash over the omission of any reference to Jews, the BBC issued a clarification to the episode’s iPlayer page, noting that “the Kindertransport was the organized evacuation of approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish.”
Despite this, however, the BBC‘s official website still does not note the Jewish nature of the story or Landau’s Jewish heritage.
