The Repair Shop is a BBC show about craftspeople bringing family heirlooms back to life. In the episode, renowned British actress Dame Helen Mirren takes her cello – damaged during the Kindertransport – for restoration.
The cello had belonged to her late friend, the theatre producer Martin Landau, and was broken by Nazi guards when he fled to Britain on the Kindertransport aged 14.
The 1800s cello had remained damaged (missing its neck) until it was brought to The Repair Shop’s luthier, Becky Houghton. In the episode, Mirren is also shown greeting the repaired cello, after which it is played by Jewish cellist Raphael Wallfisch.
Episode fails on reporting Jewish history
While the episode extensively details the story of the cello and the Kindertransport (for approximately a quarter of its 60-minute running time) it entirely fails to mention the Jews. The fact that Landau was forced to flee due to being Jewish is ignored.
The Kindertransport refers to the rescue of around 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi persecution between 1938 and 1939. The children were sent by their parents to countries such as Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The new life of the children in their host countries was facilitated by groups such as the Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF), the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, the Society of Friends, and the Polish Jewish Refugee Fund.
As The Jewish Chronicle noted, the word “Jewish” appeared to have been cut from the beginning of a sentence spoken by Mirren, which aired as: “…children were put on the Kindertransport.”
The BBC has since added the following correction to the iPlayer page of the episode: “This program is subject to a clarification. The Kindertransport was the organized evacuation of approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.”
On Monday, the words “Jew” and “Jewish” had not yet been included in the BBC media center’s article about the episode, which reads: “Originally from Germany, Martin fled the country on the Kindertransport, but unfortunately his cello was broken by the Nazis before he was able to get on the train.” No correction had been made.