COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
Tulips from Amsterdam at Schiphol Airport … the Netherlands extends to over 41 million square metres or 41,000 sq km (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures passed the 41 million point about 3:30 this afternoon (9 June 2026), having passed the 40 million mark at the end of last month (28 May 2026) and 39 million a week earlier (22 May 2026). These figures passed the million mark six times last month, and passed that mark four times in April.
These viewing and reading figures are overwhelming and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (20.5 million) have been within less than five months, since 13 January 2026. The total hits last month were the highest ever, with over 5.8 million hits in May 2026, compared with previous one-month highs in March 2026 (over 4.5 million) and April (almost 4.4 million). The figure of over 5.8 million in May was astonishing, considering it took almost 11 years, from July 2010 until 27 March 2021, to reach what I then thought was the staggering figure of 5 million hits.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 20 million hits or visitors in 2026.
I first began blogging back in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the ten days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were last month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, and one was in February:
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
The daily average was over 187,000 throughout May, although that figure was distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days that month. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month; ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.
Passing through Zurich Airport … Switzerland is about 41 million square metres or 41,000 sq km (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
To put this latest figure of 41 million into perspective:
The largest known prime number, discovered in late 2024, has over 41 million digits. It has 41,024,320 digits, and if you tried to print it out, the result would fill more than 10,000 pages.
The discovery that this number – known as M136279841 for short – is a prime was made on 12 October 2024 by Luke Durant, a from San Jose, California, who is one of thousands of people working as part of a long-running volunteer prime-hunting effort called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
Nearly 1 in five children, an estimated 41 million, are engaged in child labour in Eastern and Southern Africa, according to a new UNICEF Data Brief, with the region accounting for almost one-third of the global total and the highest number of children in hazardous work, including mining and construction.
Canada has a population of about 41 million people.
41 million square metres is 41,000 sq km, the size of Switzerland (41,291 sq km), the Netherlands (41,865 sq km) or Southampton Island (41,214 sq km) in Hudson Bay, one of the larger islands in the Arctic Archipelago in Canada, the 34th largest island in the world.
The National Diet Library in Japan and the National Library of China each has about 41 million items in its collection.
41 million minutes add up to 78 years and 2 days – with 40 minutes left over. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take 78 years, from 7 June 1948, to reach today’s figure of 41 million.
I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 120-140 people on average continue to read my daily prayer diary on this blog each morning. A similar number have been reading my recent series of postings on churches and local history in Staffordshire, and were reading my recent series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 850 to 1,000 or more people each week.
This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 41 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 120-140 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.
Tulips from Amsterdam, seen in Schiphol Airport … 23.5 million people speak Dutch as their first language (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Once again, this blog continues to reach more and more readers as it reaches the milepost of 23.5 million readers this morning (17 February 2026), having reached 23 million readers only five days ago (12 February 2026) and 22.5 million earlier this month (4 February). These figures follow so soon after passing the landmarks of 22 million hits late last month (20 January) and 21.5 million hits a week before that (13 January). At the end of 2025, this blog had 21 million hits by New Year’s Eve (31 December 2025), with almost 2.5 million visitors throughout December (2,423,018).
So far this year, there have been almost 2.5 million hits or visitors for 2026 by this morning. This means, this blog has passed the half million mark three times this month alone, twice last month, and five times in December.
I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached within the past week alone. It then took more than another year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. This blog reached the 10 million mark a year ago (12 January 2025), almost 15 years later. In less than 12 months since then, another 13.5 million hits have been counted.
Throughout last year, the daily figures were overwhelming on many occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in December last, three were in January 2025, and two are in this week in February alone:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 166,155 (15 December 2025)
• 146,944 (14 December 2025)
• 144,935 (16 February 2026)
• 144,866 (14 February 2026)
• 140,417 (16 December 2025)
• 122,398 (17 December 2025)
• 116,911 (30 December 2025)
• 112,221 (13 December 2025)
• 106,475 (27 December 2025)
The latest figure of 23.5 million is all the more staggering as more half of those hits have been within less than a year, since March 2025. The rise in the number of readers seems to have been phenomenal throughout last year, and the daily figures are overwhelming at times, currently running at more than 60,000.
With this latest landmark figure of 23.5 million readers, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 23.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 23.5 million people?
• What does £23.5 million, €23.5 million or $23.5 million mean?
• What would it buy? How far would it stretch? How much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?
Aston Villa paid 23.5 million in transfer fees for the Nice forward Evan Guessand last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Astronomers have also calculated that the diameter of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is around 23.5 million km . But this is tiny compared to the Milky Way itself, which is 100,000 light-years wide and 1,000 light-years thick.
Despite Trump’s persistent claims about ‘voter fraud’ in the US, a Brennan Center for Justice study of 42 jurisdictions, covering 23.5 million votes cast in the 2016 general election, found that election officials referred only 30 cases of suspected non-citizen voting for further investigation. This represented approximately 0.0001% of the total votes in those areas.
About 23.5 million people in the US live in low-income areas that are more than one mile from a supermarket, often referred to as ‘food deserts’.
An estimated 23.5 million people in the US are living with an autoimmune disease, and almost 80 per cent of them are women.
Climate extremes have been the main driver of acute hunger in eight African countries, pushing 23.5 million people into emergency levels of hunger. Humanitarian organisations say 23.5 million people in the Sahel face food insecurity, and that 23.5 million people in Bangladesh are facing high levels of food insecurity.
The number of households in England is projected to grow from 23.5 million in 2022 to 25.9 million by 2030.
The population of the New York Combined Statistical Area (CSA) or the New York Metropolitan Area is approximately 23.5 million. Both Syria and Taiwan have a population of about 23.5 million people.
A report this month estimates around €23.5 million in public money is paid to sitting Dáil politicians every year.
Aston Villa signed the Nice forward Evan Guessand last year, with the transfer costing an initial £23.5 million that was expected to rise to about £28 million.
The Netherlands and Belgium have a combined total of 23.5 million Dutch speakers with another half a million more Dutch speakers in former Dutch former colonies such as Curacao, Aruba, St Maarten, and Suriname.
And 23.5 million minutes is 44.68 years, or roughly 391,666.67 hours or 16,319.4 days. In other words, if this blog was getting one hit a minute, it would take almost 45 years to reach today’s 23.5 million mark.
So, yet again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.
Once again, a continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach up to 70-90 people each day.
It is almost four years now since I retired from active parish ministry, but I think many of my priest-colleagues be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 500 to 600 people or more each week.
Today, I am very grateful to all the 23.5 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
23.5 million people in the Netherlands and Belgium speak Dutch as their first language (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Most people of my generation read Anne Frank’s Diary in our teenage years, and I remember how read it over a few days as a 14-year-old during the summer months on the beach in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry, 60 years ago.
Perhaps this explains, in part, why I paid special attention to news reports in recent days of the death of Eva Schloss (formerly Eva Geiringer), a Holocaust survivor, educator and bestselling author, who was a step-sister of Anne Frank and a co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust UK.
I began this occasional blog series, ‘Tales of the Viennese Jews,’ in November 2019. I last returned to that series almost a year ago (7 February 2025), when I told the stories of Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), the archetypal ‘wild child’ of the 1960s, of her brave battle for recovery from addiction and against cancer, and of her mother, Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch (1912-1991), a self-styled baroness who resisted the Nazis in Austria. My previous posting in this series had been the story of Max Perutz (18 May 2021).
The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written more than a century and a half ago in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Strauss family’s Jewish identity.
However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of these stories are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.
Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two postings, I decided after a visit to Vienna to re-tell some of these stories through this series, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.
Eva Geiringer was born in Vienna on 11 May 1929 into a middle-class Jewish family, the daughter of Elfriede Markovits, known as Fritzi, and Erich Geiringer, a businessman. The family observed the main Jewish festivals and did not eat pork, but they were not orthodox.
Their lives changed overnight with the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria, in 1938. After Eva’s older brother Heinz was beaten up at school because he was Jewish came home blood-soaked, the Geiringer family decided to leave Vienna and moved first to Brussels and then to Amsterdam.
Eva was 11 when the family arrived in Amsterdam in 1940. Anne Frank, who was a month younger, lived with her parents, Otto and Edith Frank, and her sister in the same block of flats in Merwedeplein: Anne lived at flat 37 and Eva at 46. They were not close, nor were they alike – Eva was athletic, while Anne was more interested in fashion, films and flirting.
When the Netherlands fell to the Nazis, they were forced to wear yellow stars. As life got worse, the two families found false papers and went into hiding, moving seven times in two years before ending up in an attic flat with a secret compartment behind a trapdoor.
While the Geiringer family were having breakfast on Eva’s 15th birthday, the Gestapo stormed in and marched them to their headquarters, where they were beaten before being sent from Westerbork to Auschwitz. Eva and her mother were separated from Eva’s father and brother, their heads were shaved and Eva was tattooed with the number A/5272.
Eva later recalled in detail the repeated humiliations, the starvation, the rats, beetles and lice, the brutal beatings, frostbite and diarrhoea, being forced to watch prisoners being hanged, and being forced to carry away dead bodies.
When Eva went to the hospital block in Birkenau with a high fever, she met her cousin from Prague, Minni, a nurse who interceded with Josef Mengele to save Fritzi, who had been selected for the gas chambers. Without Minni, neither Eva nor Fritzi would have survived.
When Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945, Eva and Fritzi returned to Amsterdam. There they learned that Eva’s brother Heinz had died in Mauthausen of exhaustion in April, after the forced march from Auschwitz, and that her father had died three days before the end of the war.
Eva returned to school but felt bitter, angry and depressed. Otto Frank, who had learned of the death of his wife Edith and his daughters Anne and Margot, began to get close to Fritzi, especially after the discovery and the publication of Anne’s diary in 1947. When they married in 1953, Otto became Eva’s stepfather and he gave her the Leica camera he had used to photograph Anne and Margot.
At Otto’s suggestion, Eva went to London to take a photography course. There she met Zvi Schloss, a Bavarian-born Israeli citizen. They married in 1952, became the parents of three daughters, and Eva opened an antiques shop in Edgware.
Eva and Fritzi were invited to the opening of the exhibition ‘Anne Frank and the World’ at the Mall Galleries in 1986. The event was chaired by Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London Council, who called on Eva to speak. She had never spoken publicly about her experiences before, but went on to speak at events throughout the UK and co-founded the Anne Frank Trust UK with Gillian Walnes Perry.
Eva lived with survivor’s guilt in relation to her brother Heinz. In 2016, she spoke in Tralee, Co Kerry, at an International Women’s Day event organised by the Kerry Businesswomen's Association and the Bon Secours Hospital. In 2017, she organised an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London of 30 of his paintings she had retrieved from their hiding place in Amsterdam.
She seldom spoke in public about Anne Frank apart from quoting the her diary where she said ‘I still believe that deep down human beings are good at heart’, commenting: ‘I cannot help remembering that she wrote this before she experienced Auschwitz and Belsen.’ Her books included The Promise (2006) and the bestselling After Auschwitz (2013).
Eva Schloss was appointed MBE for her work with the Anne Frank Trust and other Holocaust charities. She became an Austrian citizen again in 2021. Her mother Fritzi died in 1998 and her husband Zvi died in 2016. Three years ago, she danced with King Charles when he visited the JW3 centre on Finchley Road in December 2022. Eva died on 3 January 2026 and is survived by their daughters, Caroline, Jacky and Sylvia, and five grandchildren.
‘I have worked very, very hard to change people’s attitudes,’ Eva Schloss once told the BBC. ‘Each person you convince not to be racist is a positive.’ She believed that ‘we need to learn to live with each other in harmony, to accept each other for who and what we are. We must learn the lesson that human differences actually enrich our lives. We should not be afraid of people who are different from us, but we need to embrace their faiths and ways of life so that we can give our children and future generations a safer life to live’.
As for Anne Frank, many of the observations in her diary seem so relevant to events playing out today. For example, she wrote: ‘Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way.
‘Families are torn apart; men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone … Everyone is scared … the end is nowhere in sight.’
When the Jon S Randall Peace Page on Facebook cited this quotation in June 2019, it was labelled ‘fake’ and denied and the page was suspended by Facebook for some time. Snopes, the online fact-check site, researched and investigated the quote, and verified it. Eventually, when the suspension was lifted, Jon S Randall cited another quotation from Anne Frank that was often quoted by Eva Schloss: ‘It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.’
Tulips from Amsterdam, seen in Schiphol Airport … 18 million people live in the Netherlands (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and reached yet another staggering total at the weekend, with 18 million hits by late Sunday afternoon (2 November 2025). I first began blogging back in 2010, and the 17.5 million mark was passed on 18 October and the 17 million mark about three weeks earlier (30 September 2025). In all, there were almost 900,000 hits (887,314) last month (October 2025).
The latest figure of 18 million is all the more staggering because about half of all those hits have been within the past 12 months, since October 2024. The rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal throughout this year, and the daily figures have been overwhelming at times. With this latest landmark figure of 18 million readers yesterday, I once again found myself asking questions such as:
• What do 18 million people look like?
• Where do we find 18 million people?
• What does £18 million, €18 million or $18 million mean?
• What would it buy, how far would it stretch?
A welcomes sign at Athens International Airport … Greece welcomed nearly 18 million foreign tourist in the first half of last year, January to July 2024 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Netherlands has 18 million inhabitants. Other countries with a similar populations include Guatemala, Senegal and Ecuador. Cities with a population of around 18 million include Mexico City, Mumbai, Delhi and Shanghai.
About 18 million Sikhs live in the Indian state of Punjab, about 58% of the total population, making it the only Indian state where Sikhism is the majority religion.
A new airport being near Kastelli, south of Hersonissos in Crete, is due to open in 2027. It is going to replace Greece’s welcomed second-biggest airport at Iraklion, and it is designed to handle up to 18 million passengers a year. That’s the same as the number of people who visited all of Greece in the first half of last year (January to July 2024). For all of 2024, Greece welcomed about 36.9 million foreign travellers. So this new airport could transform not only Hersonissos, but quiet mountainside village resorts I have known for the past 30 years or so, including Piskopiano and Koutoulafari, perhaps even the whole of Crete.
About 18 million people visit the Lake District each year.
There are plans to build a new £18 million primary school with spaces for 630 children in Milton Keynes. The school will be on the fast-growing Whitehouse South estate, where hundreds of new homes are being built. Milton Keynes City Council agreed in October to start the process of choosing a contractor to build the school, with an anticipated start date of summer 2027. The school is expected to open in September 2028.
Sub-Saharan Africa hosts over 18 million of the world’s refugees, a number that has grown due to crises in regions like the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Nigeria. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, sub-Sahara Africa hosts more than 26% – over 18 million – of the world's refugees.
The number of refugees has soared over the years, partly due to the crises in the Central Africa Republic, Nigeria, South Sudan and Burundi. The causes include conflicts, civil unrest, environmental disasters, oppressive regimes and the abuse of human rights. The countries with the highest refugee burdens are: Ethiopia (659,000) Kenya (551,000), Chad (453,000), Uganda (386,000), Cameroon (264,000) and South Sudan (248,000).
Nearly 18 million people in Sudan, or almost one in three people there, are grappling with acute food insecurity, due to the armed conflict there.
In Yemen, over 18 million people are dependent on humanitarian assistance and protection due to the civil war.
Over 18 million adults in the UK are deaf, have hearing loss or have tinnitus. In other words, over half the population aged 55 or more has hearing loss. Researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of Nottingham have found that 18 million people are affected by hearing loss, 6 million higher than previously reported.
Another study of 18 million people by the University of Bristol last year found increased mental illnesses incidence following severe COVID-19, especially in unvaccinated people.
Aston Villa rejected an £18 million bid from Everton for captain John McGinn in August. Villa made its first signing this year with the £18 million fee paid to move Donyell Malen from Borussia Dortmund.
18 million sq metres is 18 sq km, the size of Iraklia, a quiet island in the Cyclades, near Naxos and Amorgos and with fewer than 100 residents.
18 million minutes adds up to about 34.2 years.
Donations from crypto-currency executives and companies to Trump’s inauguration fund totalled about $18 million. His insistence on spending his weekends in Florida playing golf cost US taxpayers in excess of $18 million in his first two months in office alone. Which just goes to show that $18 million can buy influence and indolences, power and conceit all at the same time.
The Jewish population across the world reached the highest figure of around 18 million immediately before World War II. But figures show that although World War II ended 80 years ago, the Holocaust continues to has had a lasting and devastating effect. Based on population data from late 2024 and early 2025, depending on the criteria used, the number of Jewish people in the world today is estimated at between 15.7 million and 15.8 million.
Once again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.
A continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics continues to be the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach up to 80-90 people each day. It is 3½ years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 560 to 630 people a week.
Today, I am very grateful to all the 18 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott … Shanghai has a population of 18 million people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Sarawak State Legislative Assembly on the north bank of the Sarawak River … we arrived safely in Kuching after a 48-hour odyssey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter. – TS Eliot, Journey of the Magi
It’s not certainly not yet winter. But the journey was such a long journey at this time of the year. As Eliot might say, ‘A hard time we had of it.’
The journey from Stony Stratford to Kuching has been an arduous odyssey that took almost 48 hours from door-to-door and that involved two taxi trips, one train journey, four flights and five airports. Along the way there was one unscheduled hotel stay in Amsterdam but lost another planned stopover in Singapore, where we lost our hotel booking.
Our flights were booked through Air France and KLM and were supposed to involve a flight from Birmingham to Amsterdam late on Sunday, connecting immediately to a flight from Amsterdam to Singapore, arriving late on Monday afternoon, with a planned overnight stay in Singapore.
But I should have been aware of the red flags at the check-in process. Despite having booked in many weeks in advance, Air France/KLM told us the seats at the price we had booked were all gone, and demanded we pay extra to keep our booking on the flight from Amsterdam.
The queues for security at departures are still a nightmare at Birmingham International, and there is nothing pleasant about travelling from that airport these days. On the train from Milton Keynes, we received texts telling us our first flight was delayed by over an hour. We were not going to catch the second, connecting flight.
At Birmingham, we asked at check-in to be rebooked, and, it seems with great reluctance but with much waving of hands, we were eventually rebooked with an early morning flight from Amsterdam to Charles de Gaulle in Paris, connecting with a later morning, overnight flight from Paris to Singapore.
When we arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam gave us a voucher for €15 each for food and beverages in the airport, but refused pointedly to help us find overnight accommodation. I pointed out our rights, and was told my rights were irrelevant, it simply was not within their budget to pay for our hotel overnight.
We were caught over a barrel. Other passengers had been offered a room in the Sheraton, but we were too far down the queue to count for anyone to bother about our plight.
By then, there only three rooms were left in the Sheraton Hotel. We were told if we kept the receipts we might (there seemed to be an emphasis on Might) be able to claim back our outlay at a later stage. We made the booking and went back to the KLM help desk in the transit area. They had closed, and the staff had left.
Talk about being left high and dry. It is not as though KLM and Air France did not know about this problem. They had flagged it up early on Sunday afternoon. We were abandoned to our own devices. Our rights did not seem to matter and we were left feeling were a mere inconvenience.
Waiting in Paris for a flight to Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
We stayed overnight in Amsterdam, the vouchers we were given barely covered the cost of two breakfasts on Monday morning, and, yes, we managed to make the connecting flight from Paris to Singapore. But we had now lost our overnight hotel booking in Singapore, and a visit I had been looking forward to was no longer going to happen.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
The glass panels of the dome of the Jewel at Changi Airport in Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Six hours waiting in an airport is long enough to be bored, but not long enough to risk travelling into a city centre, look around and still get back in time for check-in for the next flight – particularly as our anxiety levels had been raised with the previous cancellations and rerouting.
Changi Airport is at the eastern end of Singapore and about 20 km from Singapore’s Downtown Core. So, we headed from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 at Changi Airport, to make sure we were still on the connecting flight to Kuching. And then decided to enjoy the few hours we had been the terminals.
Changi is one of the busiest transit hubs in the world and one of the largest hub airports in south-east Asia, serving over 100 airlines and more than 60 million passengers a year. Its impressive amenities include a butterfly garden, a free 24-hour cinema, and a rooftop swimming pool.
We decided to have lunch at Jewel Changi Airport, a nature-themed entertainment and shopping complex where the centrepiece is the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, the Rain Vortex, surrounded by a terraced forest setting. The Shiseido Forest Valley is an indoor garden spanning five storeys, and the Canopy Park at the top level has gardens and leisure facilities.
Jewel was officially opened on 18 October 2019 and has about 40 to 50 million visitors a year. The toroidal glass-and-steel façade was designed by a consortium of architects, led by Moshe Safdie. The landscape architect was PWP Landscape Architecture, who co-designed the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City. The Rain Vortex was engineered by the water design firm WET Design. It has a 360-degree light and sound show projected onto it.
Jewel was planned to combine a marketplace and an urban park. The glass panels of the dome are framed in steel that rests on a complex latticework.
The Shiseido Forest Valley is one of Asia's largest indoor gardens, spanning five stories and approximately 22,000 sq m in the heart of Jewel Changi Airport. It includes around 3,000 trees and 60,000 shrubs of 120 species that live in high-altitude tropical forests from around the world.
The Rain Vortex at Changi Airport is 40 metres high and the world’s largest and tallest indoor waterfall (Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The Rain Vortex is 40 metres high and the world’s largest and tallest indoor waterfall. Recirculating rain water is pumped to the roof to free fall through a round hole at up to 37,850 litres per minute to a basement-level pool. An acrylic funnel at the bottom prevents splashing and insulates the sound of the cascade.
The toroid-shaped roof has more than 9,000 pieces of glass spanning 200 by 150 metres, with a sloped oculus as the mouth of the waterfall acting as ‘a continuation of the building … completed in a liquid form.’
At night, the circular walls of the waterfall becomes a 360-degree stage for a light-and-sound show.
To prevent excess humidity in the Jewel, the waterfall’s flow alternates between cascades and trickles that reduce air turbulence. The Changi Airport Skytrain connecting the terminals passes above ground near the waterfall, allowing passengers to see the Vortex and Jewel.
The park includes a suspension bridge, the Canopy Bridge, 23 metres above the ground which offers a panoramic view of the Rain Vortex.
Terminal 4 opened seven years ago in 2017, and has gained a reputation for its culture-centric boutique design and technology-driven innovations. T4 offers a visually immersive and theatrical experience with specially curated art and entertainment features by local and international artists.
The collection of art and entertainment formats was designed to be accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. Inspired by the orchid, the national flower of Singapore, the interior design is shaped through symmetrical petal designs. The designs on the petal-shaped skylights, ceiling lights, marble flooring and carpets create a cohesive design language. The project is led by the SAA Architects Pte Ltd in collaboration with the award-winning UK-based international architecture firm Benoy Ltd.
The landscaping in the terminal covers 2,000 square metres, with 186 large trees, and 160 ficus trees form a ‘green’ boulevard along the boarding corridor, separating the boarding area from the common space at the departure gates.
‘Petalclouds’ is a kinetic artwork of six identical metallic in the Central Galleria in Terminal 4 at Changi Airport in Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The highlights of T4 include ‘Petalclouds’, a kinetic artwork of six identical metallic structures rotating overhead in the Central Galleria, spanning the 200 metre stretch linking T4’s public and transit areas.
The work is designed to evoke the impression of clouds moving through the sky. Each identical ‘cloud’ consists of 16 individual petal elements suspended on wires that slowly rotate the structures while transmitting power to lighting elements inside them. It was designed by the German artist collective ART+COM and undulates is in tandem with a soundtrack by the contemporary composer Ólafur Arnalds, aimed at creating a soothing antidote to pre-flight stress.
The Heritage Zone in the transit area offers a glimpse into the evolution of shophouse architecture from the 1880s to the 1950s, including the rich and colourful Peranakan heritage once often seen in Singapore’s Katong and Chinatown areas.
A row of boutique storefronts are designed to resemble the historic Peranakan shop-houses around Singapore. Each façade traces the evolution of shop-house architecture, starting with the baroque designs from 1880 to 1900, through to the post-war décor of the 1950s.
An LED screen embedded in the façade brings it to life with regular showings of Peranakan Love Story, a six-minute cultural theatre piece featuring an array of virtual characters that appear to mill about in the shop-house windows and living rooms. Narrating the story of an unlikely romance between two passionate musician-neighbours set in 1930s Singapore, the musical without dialogue is a collaboration with the Singaporean composer and artist Dick Lee.
The Heritage Zone in Terminal 4 at Changi Airport offers a glimpse into the evolution of shophouse architecture from the 1880s to the 1950s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on image for full-screen viewing)
T4 is also home to three physical art sculptures depicting a common theme of travel or aviation. Chong Fah Cheng, a sculptor from Singapore, created ‘Hey Ah Chek!’ in the check-in hall. The artwork shows a mother and her son hailing a trishaw after a visit to the market.
The French artist Cedric Le Borgne has created ‘Les Oiseaux’ (‘The Birds’) in the arrival and departure halls. The three bird sculptures are made from a collection of 3D-wire luminous characters that metaphorically represent the different emotions one tends to feel at an airport.
I could identify with the ‘Travelling Family’ by Kurt Laurenz Metzler, one of the many sculptures and artworks in the Departure Transit area at Terminal 4. In these sculptures, the artist seeks to capture the feelings of excitement and energy he felt with his family as they transited through New York and later at Changi Airport. It is representative of the familiar emotions passengers feel when setting off from an airport to experience the world.
The ‘Travelling Family’ is a set of aluminium sculptures Metzler created in 2017. He shows the joys and tribulations of a family on a journey, their excitement and frenzy that always go with travel.
This is Metzler’s fourth public sculpture in Singapore. His previous works, including ‘Building People’ (2008) and ‘Man on the Bench’ (2010), at Capital Tower in the Central Business District, and ‘Urban People’ (2009), at Orchard Road, a bustling shopping district.
T4 has been designed to make the airport visit a delightful experience that is fun, vibrant and full of surprises. I almost regretted the call for boarding. But I was happy to make the flight to Kuching, and we have arrived safely after a marathon than turned into an odyssey.
The ‘Travelling Family’ by Kurt Laurenz in the Departure Transit area at Terminal 4 in Changi Airport in Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
‘Let these holy mysteries open the eyes of our understanding’ (Post-Communion Prayer) … an icon of the Mystical Supper or the Last Supper in a shop window in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XX).
I am on a long odyssey since Sunday afternoon, having left Birmingham on a delayed flight yesterday to Schiphol in Amsterdam. We ought to be arriving in Singapore later today, but instead we are in Schiphol, hoping to board a flight that is going to get us to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. There, in turn, we hope to get a rebooked flight that gets us to Singapore some time tomorrow (Tuesday). But, as we wait for our flight in Amsterdam this morning, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
‘The people of Nineveh … repented at the proclamation of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32) … a whale depicted in the Saint Brendan window in Saint Michael’s Church, Sneem, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 11: 29-32:
29 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! 32 The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!’
‘The people of Nineveh … repented at the proclamation of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32) … a reconstruction of the gates of an Assyrian palace in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s reflection:
Signs are part of the humour throughout Monty Python’s Life of Brian, also known as Life of Brian, a controversial 1979 film by the Monty Python team, including Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
Scene 18, ‘The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem’, includes this dialogue:
FOLLOWERS: … Look! Ah! Oh! Oh!
ARTHUR: He has given us a sign!
FOLLOWER: Oh!
SHOE FOLLOWER: He has given us … His shoe!
ARTHUR: The shoe is the sign. Let us follow His example.
SPIKE: What?
ARTHUR: Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do likewise.
EDDIE: Yes.
SHOE FOLLOWER: No, no, no. The shoe is …
YOUTH: No.
SHOE FOLLOWER: … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance.
GIRL: Cast off …
SPIKE: Aye. What?
GIRL: … the shoes! Follow the Gourd!
SHOE FOLLOWER: No! Let us gather shoes together!
FRANK: Yes.
SHOE FOLLOWER: Let me!
ELSIE: Oh, get off!
YOUTH: No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!
SHOE FOLLOWER: Give me your shoe!
YOUTH: Get off!
GIRL: Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!
FOLLOWER: The Gourd!
HARRY: Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us!
ARTHUR: It is a shoe! It is a shoe!
HARRY: It's a sandal!
ARTHUR: No, it isn't!
GIRL: Cast it away!
ARTHUR: Put it on!
YOUTH: And clear off!
How often do we pray unusual signs as indications of God’s blessing, favour, approval or intervention, or even God’s judgment?
In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus faces this sort of request too. with that in his own day. People wanted some spectacular sign from him to establish beyond doubt that he was who he said he was.
In today’s reading, Jesus addresses the crowds who gather around him as a wicked generation because they are asking for a sign. Today people can be very impressed by visionaries who claim to have visions that are denied to the rest of believers.
The church has traditionally been very wary of all such claims. In the Gospel reading Jesus accuses his contemporaries of failing to see what is there before them. They want signs and yet all they need already stands in front of them in the person of Jesus, someone greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, greater than all the prophets and kings.
If the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah and if the Queen of the South responded to Solomon, how much more should Jesus’ contemporaries respond to him?
God has already given us all we need in and through the church, in Word, in Sacrament and in the community of believers. There we find the living word of God. There we find the Eucharist and the other sacraments. There we find Jesus present among us and within his followers.
In the Eucharist, Christ is present to us in the bread and the wine, saying, ‘This is my body … This is my blood’.
In coming to Christ in the Eucharist, we are coming to one who is greater than Jonah or Solomon. He is present to us in other ways also. We take his presence seriously by responding to his call and following in his way, as the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah’s call. And, in response to Christ’s presence, we are called to respond to his presence by living in as a sign of his presence in the world.
‘Hold up the sandal, as he has commanded us!’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … sandals outside a shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 14 October 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is the ‘Mission hospitals in Malawi’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update by Tamara Khisimisi, Project Co-ordinator, Anglican Council in Malawi.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 14 October 2024) invites us to pray:
Almighty God, thank you for the service of the doctors, nurses and everyone involved in the mission hospitals.
The Collect:
God, the giver of life,
whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church:
by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ
and make us eager to do your will,
that we may share with the whole creation
the joys of eternal life;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God our Father,
whose Son, the light unfailing,
has come from heaven to deliver the world
from the darkness of ignorance:
let these holy mysteries open the eyes of our understanding
that we may know the way of life,
and walk in it without stumbling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God, our light and our salvation:
illuminate our lives,
that we may see your goodness in the land of the living,
and looking on your beauty
may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord.
‘The shoe is … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … collecting shoes in Carlow for Syrian refugee children (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The women’s balcony in the synagogue in Córdoba … Abraham Nuñez Bernal was burned alive by the Spanish Inquisition in Córdoba in 1654 … one of my photographs in the forthcoming edition of the ‘Old Limerick Journal’ (Photograph Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
I was delighted earlier this week to receive the final proofs of a substantial paper I have written for the Winter 2023 edition of the Old Limerick Journal. The journal is edited by Tom Donovan and published by the Limerick Museum at the Old Franciscan Friary on Henry Street, Limerick.
My eight-page paper, ‘The Sephardic family roots and heritage of John Desmond Bernal, Limerick scientist,’ is to appear on pp 46-53 in the forthcoming edition of the Old Limerick Journal. It includes 10 photographs, including photographs I have taken of places associated with Bernal’s ancestors, in Córdoba, Venice, London, Limerick and Nenagh.
John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was one of the most interesting and important Irish-born scientists of the twentieth century. He was a crystallographer, molecular physicist, social scientist, committed Communist, campaigner for world peace, and friend of Pablo Picasso.
Many people thought Bernal was a member of the family of the prominent Victorian politician, Ralph Bernal Osborne (1808-1882), of Newtown Anner House, Co Tipperary, who was a Liberal MP for a number of English constituencies (1841-1868) before becoming MP for Waterford (1870-1874). But, in fact, his grandfather, John Bernal (1819-1898) of Limerick, was born Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese.
The ancestors of this family were Sephardic Jews who lived in Venice from at least the mid-17th century, and before that they had lived in the Ancona area of southern Italy for many generations. The family moved through Amsterdam to London, and Jacob arrived in Ireland in the 1840s from London.
Their synagogue membership in Venice shows the Genese family were of Italian Jewish (Italkim) origin rather than a family of Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Italy. This fascinating family with a long lineage married into some of the most eminent Sephardic families of Europe, with names like Lopes, Mendoza, Isaacs, Castro, Tubi, Nunes Martinez, Crespo and Levy.
The Ponte de Ghetto Vecchio leads into the Campo de Ghetto Nuovo in Venice … one of my photographs in the forthcoming edition of the ‘Old Limerick Journal’ (Photograph Patrick Comerford)
In my genealogical research on the Comerford family, these two brothers almost slipped under the radar. They were involved in stage, theatre, show business and early films at the beginning of the last century, but they used stage names, Harry Ford and Bert Brantford, which disguised their family origins.
Eventually, as I traced their families, I realised that Rosina and Agnes, the two sisters who married these two brothers, were Jewish by birth through their mothers. Although their grandparents were from the heart of the Jewish East End in nineteenth century London, they were descended from a long line of Sephardic families, associated for many generations with the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London.
At some stage in tracing this branch of the family through the East End, Amsterdam and Seville, I also came across the story of Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836), once one of the best-known and most celebrated boxers in sporting history on these islands. One hunch led to another, as is so often the case in genealogical research, and within weeks of visiting the Jewish quarter in Seville, I ended up tracing a very long-tailed family with links to Jewish communities throughout Europe.
When Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese settled in Ireland, he changed his name to John Bernal, and he moved to Limerick he became an auctioneer and a city councillor. His son, Samuel George Bernal (born 1864), bought a farm in Brookwatson on the Portumna road outside Nenagh, Co Tipperary. He was the father of five children, including John Desmond Bernal, the eldest child.
In his paper in that edition of the Old Limerick Journal, the historian Des Ryan wrote about searches for ‘The Origins of the Limerick Jewish Community’ (pp 13-15), and asked whether the local newspapers were right in the 1890s to describe them as ‘Polish’ or even, on one occasion, ‘a Polish colony.’
He looked at the background of the 31 Jewish families living in Limerick at the time of the 1901 census, and found that while one family gave Poland as their place of origin, the other 30 families recorded Russia as their place of birth. In reality, most of them came from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire.
At the time, more than 5 million people were living in an area known as ‘the Pale,’ which stretched from parts of Latvia in the north, to Odessa and the Black Sea in the south, including large parts of present-day Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Poland. Many of Jewish families in these regions fled the persecutions and pogroms that intensified after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.
Des Ryan, the longest-running contributor to Old Limerick Journal and a member of the journal’s editorial committee, provided an interesting and invaluable list of the Jewish families living in Limerick in 1901, many of them in Collooney Street (now Wolfe Tone Street) and the surrounding area.
My research on John Desmond Bernal was first presented at lunchtime lectures in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, on 11 February 2020, and in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, on 18 May 2021 (https://youtu.be/kx0OIY2J4oU)
I am looking forward to seeing the latest edition of the Old Limerick Journal when it is published in the coming weeks. I hope the responses to my story of JD Bernal’s Sephardic ancestry will include support for my belief that Limerick needs a Jewish Walking Trail, like those in many European cities.
The Winter 2023 edition of the Old Limerick Journal should be available within the next few weeks in all good bookshops in Limerick and through the museums in Limerick.
The Scuola Italiana or Italian synagogue in the heart of the Ghetto in Venice … the Genese family were members of this synagogue … one of my photographs in the forthcoming edition of the ‘Old Limerick Journal’ (Photograph Patrick Comerford)
The sculpture of Anne Frank by Doreen Kern in the British Library (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
The death toll from the Hamas assault last weekend has risen to over 1,300 people in Israel and 1,500 dead in Gaza. According to the World Jewish Congress, this is the largest number of Jewish people killed – because they are Jewish – in any one single day since the Holocaust.
Teenagers, children and infants are among the dead and the hostages in Israel, all on Simchat Torah, a day that should have been filled with rejoicing and celebrations in all Jewish communities. But the attack also came on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which I am old enough to remember in detail.
It is only a short while since I visited the British Library in London to see the bronze bust of Anne Frank by the sculptor Doreen Kern. Some weeks before, I had found the Anne Frank tree in the library courtyard, planted 25 years ago on 12 June 1998 and now difficult to find.
The sculpture of Anne Frank was commissioned to commemorate the 70th anniversary of her birth on 12 June 1929. When she died in Bergen Belsen in 1945, Anne Frank was as young as many of the young people taken hostage or murdered last weekend.
Annelies Marie (‘Anne’) Frank (1929-1945) is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary has become one of the world’s most widely read books, and it has been the basis of several plays and films. Her diary documents her experiences hiding during Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany and lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazis gained power in Germany. By early 1940, the family was trapped in Amsterdam by the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Anne Frank was a German national officially until 1941, when she lost her nationality under the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany.
As the Nazi persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms in the office building of Anne’s father, Otto Frank. They were betrayed after two years and were transported to concentration camps. Anne and her sister Margot were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen, where they both died of typhus in February or March 1945.
Otto Frank, the only surviving member of the family, returned to Amsterdam after World War II to find that Anne’s diary had been saved. Her diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944.
Otto Frank’s efforts led to the publication of her diary in 1947. It was translated from Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since been translated into many languages.
Doreen Kern had help from Anne’s step-sister Eva Schloss and her step-mother while she was working on her bronze bust of Anne Frank. The piece was placed at the British Library on the 70th anniversary of Anne’s birth, on 12 June 1999. It was a gift of Richard and Yvonne Sherrington.
Doreen Kern (1931-2021), who lived in Edgware, was a sculptor in bronze. She acquired her technical knowledge while working at the Morris Singer Foundry, and she also studied at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. She showed at Bristol Cathedral, London University, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Waterloo Fine Arts, and widely abroad, and also did consultancy work for the British Museum.
The inscription on the base of the sculpture reads: ‘Anne Frank, 1929-1945, Sculptor Doreen Kern’. An inscription on a nearby plaque reads: ‘Anne Frank 1929-1945, “A triumph of the spirit.” To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the birth of Anne Frank 12 June 1999. Gift of Yvonne and Richard Sherrington. Sculptor: Doreen Kern.’
There is also a life size bust of Anne Frank by Doreen Kern in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. A second copy was made for a museum in Israel.
Doreen Kern’s sculpture of Anne Frank stood in the forecourt of the British Library in 1999 and stood there until 2003. However, it was subjected to vandalism, and when it was repaired it was moved to the lower ground area, near the cloakroom.
The crisis in Gaza demands a humanitarian and compassionate international response, that it is unquestionable.
But the cruelty and barbarity of last weekend’s attacks in Israel were cruel and barbarous beyond words. Babies were maimed and beheaded, elderly people were burned to death. People who tried to hide like Anne Frank in secure rooms were burned out of their homes. The sad irony is lost on many commentators that the residents of the kibbutz that was attacked were committed to peaceful solutions and negotations, and many were involved in working actively for peace and for Palestinian rights.
Revenge and retribution or ‘collective punishment’ have no moral underpinning, and are contrary to all principles of international law. Nor can anyone be silent in the face of the kidapping or slaughter of innocent civilians, whether they are people or cramped into a tighly-controlled and overpopulated tiny strip of land, or the young people enjoying a weekend music festival, elderly peace activists who have retired to a rural kibbutz that they thought was their idyll, or babies sleeping peacefully. We need to avoid terms like ‘innocent casulaties.’ In any conflict, all civilians are innocent. There should never be such a phrase as the ‘wrong person in the wrong place.’ All of us have a right to live in peace, without the threat of violence, hatred, racism, revenge, retribition, antisemitism or murder.
I have not been silent when it comes to the Nethanyahu government’s police and actions in Gaza. I am vocal in condemning Nethhanyu’s corruption and his efforts to destroy the democratic, judicial and legal structures of Israel. I have long been committed to and active in both Jewish-Christian and Christian-Muslim dialogue. But the events of the past week are a heart-breaking reminder, and also an alert, that antisemitism is rife and that we must always separate it from any political programme or cause.
Antisemitism is always a hate crime, it is always racist, and it can never be extended any understanding, under any pretext.
May their memories forever be a blessing, זיכרונם לברכה זיכרונן לברכה
Shabbat Shalom.
Anne Frank depicted in a mural in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Anne Frank Tree planted at the British Library 25 years ago is now almost hidden from sight (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
I am from a generation that became engrossed in Anne Frank’s Diary just at the stage in our teenage years when we realised the importance and excitement of reading books.
Anne Frank was 13 when she was given her diary as a birthday present. I was 14 when I read her Diary from cover to cover on the beach, day after day, during a formative summer in Ballinskelligs in the Kerry Gaeltacht.
I have passed by the British Library a few times in recent weeks, walking between Euston and King’s Cross. On one of those afternoons – the sme afternoon I attended a family commemoration for my ‘cousin’, the Jewish historian Kevin Martin – I decided to look for Anne Frank's Tree, planted at the British Library 25 years ago on 12 June 1998.
I was disappointed to find that the tree itself is virtually impossible to see, lost almost entirely and half buried in a modern planting scheme that gives priority to the high brick walls surrounding each area of greenery.
Up to 10 years ago, there was a statue of Anne Frank by Doreen Kern (1999) in the forecourt of the British Library. Sadly, it was a victim of vandalism, and so, it was repaired in 2003 and moved to the lower ground area, near the cloakroom.
Although the tree is almost impossible to see, the plaque unveiled when it was planted remains for all to read:
Anne Frank's Tree
Planted on 12 June 1998
To commemorate Anne Frank and all the children killed in wars and conflict in this century.
‘It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions …
‘In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps one day will come when I’ll be able to realise them.’
Anne Frank’s Diary, 15 July 1944
Planted by the British Library and the Anne Frank Educational Trust UK.
The plaque is now on a red brick wall in the British Library plaza. The tree is less easy to find! It is behind the wall that is about two-metre high that has a privet hedge along the edge.
A life-size bust of Anne Frank, sculpted by Doreen Kern for the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, was placed at the British Library on the 70th anniversary of Anne’s birth, 12 June 1999.
The former children’s poet laureate Michael Rosen wrote a poem specially for the planting of the Anne Frank Tree:
We hope that anyone who knows of this tree
will remember Anne Frank
We hope that anyone who knows of this tree
will remember how from her attic window
Anne Frank watched a tree growing outside
and was so moved and entranced
She couldn’t speak
We hope that anyone who knows of this tree
will remember how Anne Frank lost her life
We hope that anyone who knows of this tree
will never let such things happen again
We hope that anyone who knows of this tree
will have as much hope in their hearts and minds as Anne did.
Anne Frank’s Diary was first published as a book in Dutch in 1947. Since then, millions of people have read the thoughts and hopes of this one young girl and have been inspired by them.
Ann Frank was born in Frankfurt in 1929, and her family moved to Amsterdam when she was four after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933.
Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, and the Frank family went into hiding in 1942. Anne wrote about receiving her diary as her birthday present that year: ‘I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.’
Anne Frank and her sister Margot and their mother Edith died in Bergen Belsen. Her father Otto Frank was the only member of her family to survive. When he returned to Amsterdam he found Anne’s diary, and decided to publish it so people would remember his daughter and the millions of other people who died in the Holocaust.
‘It’s difficult in times like these; ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.’
Shabbat Shalom
A plaque on a red-brick wall in the British Library plaza is a reminder of the Anne Frank Tree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Anne Frank’s ‘Diary of a Young Girl’ was first published 75 years ago in 1947
Patrick Comerford
Last Saturday (25 June 2022) marked the 75th anniversary of the publication of Anne Frank’s diary, Het Achterhuis, or The Secret Annex, in 1947. Otto Frank, the only member of the Frank family to survive World War II, posthumously fulfilled his daughter’s wish to publish a novel about her time in hiding based on her diaries.
Later, Otto Frank wrote about the publication of The Secret Annex: ‘How proud Anne would have been if she had lived to see this.’
Anne Frank wrote on 11 May 1944: ‘You’ve known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. We’ll have to wait and see if these grand illusions (or delusions!) will ever come true, but up to now I’ve had no lack of topics. In any case, after the war I’d like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. It remains to be seen whether I’ll succeed, but my diary can serve as the basis.’
‘This is the legacy of your daughter Anne,’ Miep Gies told Otto Frank when she handed him Anne’s diary and documents on 18 July 1945. Otto had just heard that his daughters Margot and Anne had died in Bergen-Belsen.
At first, Otto could not bear to read Anne’s diaries, but one month later, he changed his mind and found himself unable to put them down. Otto decided to copy excerpts for the family in Basel and started working on a translation into German.
Reading her diary, Otto realised that he had not known his daughter as well as he once thought. ‘The Anne that appeared before me was very different from the daughter I had lost. I had had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings.’
Otto’s excerpts were read by his family and friends. They felt Anne’s writings were ‘an important human document’ and that Otto should not keep the work to himself. But it was some time before Otto agreed with them.
Two historians Jan and Annie Romein helped Otto Frank find a publisher. Jan Romein had wrote a short piece, ‘A Child’s Voice,’ for a Dutch newspaper Het Parool. This stirred
the interest of Contact, an Amsterdam publishing house, and the book was first published in 1947, five years after Anne’s 13th birthday, when she received her first, red-checked diary.
The Dutch edition received positive reviews, such as ’a war document of striking density,’ and ‘Parents and educators are strongly advised to read this diary.’ Three editions had been published by the following February, and this success encouraged Otto Frank to look for publishers abroad. Soon there were editions in French (1950), German (1950) and English (1952). Today, Anne Frank’s Diary is available in over 70 languages.
Otto Frank was tireless in his efforts to make the world a better place. He died in 1980.
I was in my early teens when I first read Anne Frank’s Diary, a little more than a decade after it was first published in English, and just two decades after the end of the Holocaust and the end of World War II.
As I reflect this Friday evening on the impact of my first reading of Anne Frank’s Diary, I am taken aback to realise how a recent survey shows that almost two-thirds (63%) of young American adults are unaware that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and that more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust.
According to the survey, nearly half (48%) of the respondents could not name one of the more than 40,000 concentration camps or ghettos set up during the Holocaust, and nearly a quarter (23%) said they believed that Holocaust is a myth, exaggerated, or were unsure of the response. Ten percent answered either that they did not believe the Holocaust or were unsure if it happened. About 12% admitted to not knowing about the Holocaust.
Another report this week shows that there are over 20,000 Holocaust survivors living in New York alone today, almost half of them at the federal poverty level.
Perhaps last weekend’s anniversary will help to introduce a new generation to Anne Frank’s story, awaken a renewed interest in the Holocaust and its horrors, and remind us that the Holocaust continues to take its toll on the lives of its survivors.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, winner of the International Booker Prize (2020) has written a poem, ‘Swimming freely,’ to mark last week’s anniversary, translated by Michele Hutchison:
While interpreting my breaststroke as unrestrained,
my self-inflicted suffocation affords a sense of life,
the other side, the sunny destination, always in sight,
sometimes I’m a pike, other times an ornamental fish,
I realize afresh what freedom of movement, what value!
Coots paddle past me like feathered cargo vessels,
their instinct to lie low, to hide from birds of prey, from air raids,
I let them pass, contemplate their chicks for a moment, then myself;
in wartime one thinks too much of one’s self or too much of the other,
save those you love, the way the coot sends its babies into the reeds.
Sometimes I suspect that history is repeating itself, it is stupid,
its conscience is shaped by humanity, but it is oh so forgetful,
and all this described, filmed, and so many lessons learned,
why do we keep on selling war cut-price,
a weapon, a battle, foisted upon us for a trifle.
We know that power multiplies in heads suited to it,
and though we are years further, have a diary filled with wisdom,
we strike lines through words like rule, regime,
there's always someone who thinks his talk is the best,
who wants the highest grade, applause, and authority, of course.
I suspect, too, there are people who never pick up a watering can,
who don’t know how a thing grows or what it needs to grow,
you don’t just flatten a life, tear it from the ground or kill it,
they shun the garden of life, spit on it, see rain as the enemy,
I want to hand out watering cans, say that evil grows only in dark places.
One thing we never lose: the taste of freedom,
our great heroes who paved the way for us,
so that we know what we are fighting for, or swimming away from,
who can make us boldly proclaim: never again!
Though war is on special offer, sometimes hope costs more than battle.
