Abingdon News No.50

The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxford OX14 1DE 01235 521563 • Edited by Jane Warne – [email protected] 01235 849123 • Design – www.petergreenland.com Abingdon Out of the Past The first edition of the Abingdon News was published at the beginning of the Lent term 2003. Among many other items, it reported on the demolition of the old Ingham Music School prior to the building of the Arts Centre; on the previous term’s production of Cabaret ; on the opening of the school uniform shop and on preparations for the exhibition, Secret Art, where anonymous postcard-sized works of art were sold for £5 to raise money for the Arts Centre. The 1950s Scien ce Block @abingdonschool @abingdonschool @abingdon_school A recent email from George Moschytz (Mosczytz) OA 1947, recalled a period in the School’s history when it educated a number of Jewish boys, refugees from Hitler’s Europe. The first to come was seventeen-year-old Wolfgang Schafer who arrived from Vienna in January 1939 under the sponsorship of Miss Tatham, an Abingdon Quaker. After university Schafer, a passionate supporter of Jewish aspirations in Palestine, joined the Israeli army and was killed in action on 26 December 1948. His father died in September 1942 in Mauthausen, an Austrian labour camp. Michael Moschytz came in November 1939 having been at school in Baden, Germany, 1936-38; Davos, Switzerland, February-April 1939, and Buxton, Derbyshire, May-June 1939. His brother, George Moschytz came in 1944. Their mother’s sister had married an Englishman who was their sponsor. Their father, Dr Norbert Moschytz, a lung specialist, spent the war in Switzerland. The family were not reunited until 1948. Josef Taglicht came to Britain from Berlin early in 1939 under the auspices of the Kindertransport. He only spent one month at Abingdon, October 1940. Peter Bodenstein came to Britain from Czechoslovakia. He was at Abingdon for a year, 1942-3. Harry Baecker also came from Czechoslovakia. He spent seven years at the school, 1943-1950, as did Wilfred Olscher, 1942-49. Olscher had previously been at school in Vienna. George Moschytz, emailing from Israel this January, remembered with gratitude how Abingdon and England had ‘essentially saved’ his family from ‘the havoc and chaos that Hitler and most of Europe brought upon us and our people’. Abingdon News Reaches its 50th Edition Time Remembered School photograph 1942, Peter Bodenstein , second row from the front, fourth from the left School photograph 1942, Michael Moschytz , second row from the back, third boy from the left Secret Art Ingham Music School Cabaret South Wall, Amey Theatre