Margaret Kroch Frischmann 1897 - 1972 and the Nakba - Iqrit and it's destruction Christmas Eve 1951

Feliks Topolski was a Polish artist born in Warsaw. He arrived in the UK in 1935 and had a successful studio near Waterloo Station. His free, loose drawing style coupled with water colour and gouache highlighting was a very popular, he also did over 100 portraits many of which are in Public collections. His son Daniel captained Oxford rowing boats and successfully trained their crews for many years.

Remarks in comments below in the preceding post, has jogged Lord Patel's increasingly disordered memory and he recalled that in his immense collection of post war British art Lord Patel has nothing by Topolski but he has remembered this oil painting some 32" square by his pupil / friend Margaret Kroch-Frischman.

This is described a "Deserted Hill Village in Judaea"by the artist . This bears a remarkable resemblance to Plate 14 of Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine which was recently published - and of which this is an absolutely crap reproduction.

Pappe writes page 186 .." The village was close to the Lebanese border, perched high in the mountains, about 30Kms from the coast. An israeli battalion occupied it on 31st October 19478. The people surrendered without a fight - Iqrit was a Maronite community and they expected to be welcome in the new Jewsih state." This occupation was contested on the courts ..." In order to settle the matter for once and for all, on Christmas Eve 1951 ( a date of very great religious significance to Christian Maronites of coure) the Israeli Army completely destroyed all the houses in Iqrit, sparing only the church and the cemetery.... this was repeated later in nearby villages, Qaddita, Deir Hanna, Kfar Bir'im and Ghabisiyya."

This is the follwing Plate 15 taken in 1990 showing , just the remaining and derelict church.

In the villages of Kfar Bir'im and Ghabisiyya the villagers had obtained court rulings but the military claimed they were conducting military exrecises in the area which including aerial bombardment , somehow it seems, leaving the villages in ruins and uninhabitable.

Apologies for the piss poor quality photographs which will be remedied ASAP. It appears that this picture requires wider circulation and the tale of Iqrit to be more widely publicised. Suggestions are welcome how that might be done.