History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | jewish history

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Name and shame: how I reclaimed a lost identity

The history blog is very pleased to host this guest blog.  In it Jeremy Schultz explains the reasons behind his grandfather’s decision to change his Jewish surname at the outset of World War II, and his own recent decision to change his name back again.  Jeremy is a psychotherapist, and the brother of Deborah Shaw, Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Portsmouth.  Jeremy’s family history illustrates many of the historical issues encountered by our history students in their study of twentieth-century history: the pogroms in Tsarist Russia that drove many Jews to emigrate; racial prejudice during the 1930s against Jews in both Germany and Britain; the […]

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Could Churchill have done more to prevent the holocaust? The evidence of a personal letter

Callum Chinn, now in his final year studying history at Portsmouth, wrote this blog piece for the second-year Introduction to Historical Research module last year.  In it, he examines a letter written by Winston Churchill in July 1944, and what it reveals about the allies’ knowledge of and response to the holocaust. The twentieth century witnessed one of the most horrific atrocities of all time, the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis across Europe; known worldwide as the Holocaust. With a ‘recent estimate that 5.4 million to 5.8 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust’, it raises questions about the speed of the allied response to the situation, whether […]

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Jewish persecution in Russia and its influence on Jewish immigration to London

The history team are excited to learn that recent UoP history graduate Emily Burgess has set up her own consultancy, Midas Tomes, for historical research and writing.  Emily produced an outstanding dissertation on the female South London gang known as the Forty Elephants so it is great to see her prosper! Checkout this blog post from another UoP history graduate Ben Humphreys on the website. https://www.midastomes.com/themidastomesblog/blogpostone   Click here to see previous posts by Ben and Emily on the UoP history blog.    

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