This article highlights the importance of Belsize Square Synagogue (BSS), founded in 1939 in London and, from 1940, known as the New Liberal Jewish Congregation, for the German-Jewish refugee community in the UK. The congregation provided a space of community and mutual understanding for its members with a specific sense of religious, cultural, and intellectual continental continuity.

My findings are based on interviews conducted in the year 2000, when a substantial number of first-generation German-speaking Jewish refugees were still actively involved in the BSS. Most of those interviewed were either founding members or had family members who were closely involved from the start. A few joined later – in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1980s. The interviewees’ ages ranged from the early 70s to over 90, with years of birth spanning from before 1910 to the early 1940s. Most interviewees came from Berlin, with others from cities such as Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Freiburg. Interviews were conducted primarily in people’s homes and lasted between one and four hours. Using an open oral history approach, I allowed conversations to develop naturally, but BSS consistently emerged as a central theme. All interviews were conducted in English.

When I started interviewing members from the synagogue, I was looking for the signs that link BSS of today to the past of its founders, who were all Jewish refugees, mostly from Germany. In the interviews, my impression was not that of discontinuity and loss but of continuity and change. I suggest that the BSS community is perceived as the ‘cultural heir’ by the refugee generation, which gave its members a link to the past and the future.