by Nicole Lampert, Telegraph
After another anti-Semitic attack, we hear more platitudes from politicians. I’m sick of platitudes, action is required
The helicopter thrums above my mother’s home; there has been another attack on the Jews. This time it couldn’t be more personal. Four ambulances set alight outside the Hatzola office in Golders Green. Just a few weeks ago, one of their ambulances was outside the house trying to save my father after he suffered a heart attack.
Then, the first responder from Hatzola arrived in five minutes. He stayed, as more ambulances and, later, the police arrived after my father was pronounced dead. He steered my mother through the shock of the night, explained what needed to happen next, lit a candle and stayed until it was light and people arrived to take my father’s body away to prepare it for the funeral.
Hatzola are good people. They are volunteers who spend hours of their free time helping others. First created in New York’s ultra-orthodox community in the 1970s when an ambulance arrived too late to save a man, there are now branches almost wherever there are Jews.
Like the St John’s Ambulance, Hatzola works alongside the NHS ambulance service. Some of the volunteers from the community are paramedics and doctors; others are accountants, lawyers, restaurateurs, shop workers – they come from every walk of life. They work only in Jewish areas but can be used by anyone in them; often the overstretched NHS will ask for their help to get to an emergency in one of their districts.
Their volunteers are the best of us. People who will drop anything, day or night, to help others. To help strangers. There is something particularly sick about this attack. It is a symptom of a dying culture.