In an emotional evening for 600 supporters of World Jewish Relief, there were three stand-out contributions at the charity’s annual fundraising event.
One was a 21-year-old Jewish student, Samuel Gorman, who spoke passionately of his visit to Rwanda as part of Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis’s Ben Azzai project, which is now run in partnership with WJR.
Another was the rarely heard Lady (Valerie) Mirvis, standing in unexpectedly for her husband, who had made a rapid trip to Israel for the brit mila of the couple’s 18th grandchild.
And the third, touching the hearts of all who heard her, was the remarkable pianist Daria Golovchenko, who fled her home in war-ravaged Ukraine to make a new life for herself and her tiny daughter in Yorkshire, arriving with a suitcase in one hand and her daughter in the other.
The evening was chaired by the BBC’s head of arts and classical music, Suzy Klein, who, like many others present at the Roundhouse arts centre in Camden Town, is descended from family helped by WJR’s predecessor organisation, the Central British Fund, in the 1930s.
She told diners that she had found details of her grandfather’s perilous arrival in Hungary — his registration certificate — in the WJR archives. “Sixty-five thousand Jews were saved in the 1930s”, Ms Klein said. Today, WJR, leaning heavily on “Jewish values” and its mission to help wider society, supports 140,000 people across the world, in Israel, Ukraine, Moldova, Ethiopia — wherever there is conflict or hardship or poverty.
Ukrainian pianist Daria Golovchenko at World Jewish Relief dinner February 2025 (C) Blake Ezra Photography 2024
Maurice Helfgott, the WJR chair, is another beneficiary of the charity’s historic work, as his late father, Sir Ben Helfgott, was famously one of “The Boys”, brought to the UK in 1945 by CBF. His “remarkable” aunt, Mala Tribich, also a camp survivor, was reunited with her brother after the war.
For Helfgott, working with the charity is something “deeply personal” and he said he could frequently hear his father’s voice in his head as he spoke about WJR’s work.
Referring to the recent visit of the WJR patron, King Charles, to the Jewish community centre in Krakow, launched at the king’s initiative, Helfgott recalled speaking to the king’s staff about the monarch’s decision to visit the JCC, before going on to Auschwitz for the 80th anniversary commemoration ceremonies. “The king didn’t just choose to visit,” Helfgott was told. “He insisted.”
In Israel, Helfgott explained, WJR had helped the Israel Trauma Coalition deliver essential services after 7 October 2023. But he noted that WJR did not only help the Jewish community: in accordance with Hillel’s principle of “If I am only for myself, what am I?”, the charity had extended its work “over a very narrow bridge.
“With the encouragement of President Herzog, and the co-operation of the Israeli authorities, we secured special funding to give mothers and babies access to essential neonatal healthcare in two Gazan field hospitals. This is what I believe it means to be Jewish.”
Paul Anticoni, WJR’s chief executive, spoke emotionally about the “so many grieving widows” that the charity was trying to help in both Ukraine and Israel. He said that WJR was “a charity of hope” and that its mantra should be “not to have more, but to be more” — and to do more.
Details of the amount raised at the event were not yet available but last year WJR was supported to the tune of £1.6 million, and hoped to match that this year.
