Robert Rinder`s Gt/Grandad Israel.

[PhilB]

I missed the WDYTYA last night when Rinder`s gt/grandad Israel "had a rough time and finished up being sectioned and confined". Can anyone add anything about this poor chap? Rifle Brigade?

[Steven Broomfield]

Anybody help in telling me who Robert Rinder is?

[stiletto_33853]

Certainly not an RB cap badge, more like a KRRC badge or one of the affiliate Regiments.

 

Andy

[Chris_Baker]

It’s all explained in the programme.

[Bart150]

I don't think the programme explained how long the man served (was he perhaps conscripted in 1916?), nor why he was never sent to fight at the front.

Could it be because he was already recognised as mentally unstable? But if so, would they have kept him in the army?

 

 

 

[michaeldr]

1 hour ago, Steven Broomfield said:

Anybody help in telling me who Robert Rinder is?

 

Not surprisingly, I'd not heard of him either

but, as ever, Wiki has obliged https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rinder

[Steven Broomfield]

1 minute ago, michaeldr said:

 

Not surprisingly, I'd not heard of him either

but, as ever, Wiki has obliged https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rinder

 

Ah. 'The Simon Cowell of the bench ... the British Judge Judy'.

 

Can't believe we've missed him. Our loss.

 

 

[IPT]

17 minutes ago, Steven Broomfield said:

the British Judge Judy'.

 

That's not fair. Judy Sheindlin was an actual judge.

[stiletto_33853]

Just watched it on i-player. One of the better episodes with his grandfathers family all being wiped out in the holocaust. 52nd KRRC but no service overseas.

 

Andy

[helpjpl]

WDYTYA (Robert Rinder) repeated on BBC1 tonight at 11.25pm.

 

BBCiPlayer:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone

 

JP

[PhilB]

21 minutes ago, IPT said:

 

That's not fair. Judy Sheindlin was an actual judge.

Robert Rinder was an English criminal law barrister.

 

[Ron Clifton]

58 minutes ago, IPT said:

 

That's not fair. Judy Sheindlin was an actual judge.

Well, he is an actual barrister.

 

Don't worry, Mr B. Once you have retired you will be able to see him on daytime TV. One episode will be enough.

 

Ron

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Ron Clifton said:

Well, he is an actual barrister.

 

Don't worry, Mr B. Once you have retired you will be able to see him on daytime TV. One episode will be enough.

 

Ron

............. to have you watching every day for the rest of your life. It's  basically Jeremy Kyle mated with the Lord Chief Justice.  

[Heid the Ba]

I only know him because he did Strictly last year (two years ago?). 

[Gardenerbill]

3 hours ago, Bart150 said:

I don't think the programme explained how long the man served (was he perhaps conscripted in 1916?), nor why he was never sent to fight at the front.

Could it be because he was already recognised as mentally unstable? But if so, would they have kept him in the army?

 

 

 

From memory called up 1917 served 13 months another good WDYTYA well worth a watch.

[MBrockway]

I don't have much on Rfn Israel MEDALYER ...

Deemed enlisted: 31 Dec 1917

Served, HOME, 07 Jan 1918 to 21 Jan 1919

52/KRRC, Service Number = (?TR?/)13/60824  (that in brackets being my own interpretation base on the KRRC schema and not shown in any record)

Demobbed: 24 Jan 1919

 

I could not find a service or pension record, and the military material shown in the programme appeared to come from his Home Office naturalisation file, which is HO 144/1533/386412 if anyone fancies getting a copy from TNA.

 

52/KRRC eventually went out to the Rhine Army to be amalgamated with 18/KRRC out in theatre, but this was not until April 1919, well after Rfn Medalyer's discharge.

 

I must admit I got a much better impression of Robert Rinder from the programme, than I've had from his TV work heretofore.  The 'expert' talking about the 'King's Rifle Regiment' did grate, mind, but he said it first and perhaps she was too polite to correct him.

 

Mark

 

[phsvm]

He may be a moden 'celeb' but he's also an extremely successful and respected international barrister.  Every time I've heard him in interview he's been very articulate (as one would expect from a barrister) but when talking about his personal life, very humble.  In an interview I heard with him last week he said what a huge impact the WDYTYA discoveries had had, not only on him, but on his whole family.  

[PhilB]

I thought RR was lightweight (& camp!) after seeing him on the judging show but, as phsvm says, saw a quite different person when he was talking normally. Bright, witty, polite and humble.

[depaor01]

A gripe if I may... his tv court has a Union flag in the background and he uses a gavel.

Grrrrr...

Back to topic.

Dave

 

[Martin Feledziak]

I found the episode most gripping. Although very sadly most of his Malenicky family were sent to death camps.

There is a possibility that the Grandfather born 1897 could have served in the German Army WW1.

He certainly would have been the right age.

[David26]

I too found the episode gripping and, not being a Daytime TV watcher, had only seen him on Strictly, where, for me, the jury was out.  But as others have said, he came across as extremely intelligent, modest, kind and generous. 

 

I tried looking up Israel Medalyer's MIC while watching the episode but as I was doing so discovered he had never served abroad.  Mark on post #16 has done some super research and that appears to confirm the brief entry Ancestry gives from the British Jewry Book of Honour which lists a J Medalyer, KRRC, service number 60824 as being him. 

[Martin Feledziak]

30 minutes ago, David26 said:

modest

 

I completely agree. I did see him on the Dancing show and those TV judgement shows too and gave him very little attention.

Now, with just this episode he has revealed his true self.

 

Brave of him to run the risk too. He must have known the potential of what was to be revealed, Good on him. 

 

I can understand why the revelations impacted on him and his family.

 

[MBrockway]

3 hours ago, David26 said:

I too found the episode gripping and, not being a Daytime TV watcher, had only seen him on Strictly, where, for me, the jury was out.  But as others have said, he came across as extremely intelligent, modest, kind and generous. 

 

I tried looking up Israel Medalyer's MIC while watching the episode but as I was doing so discovered he had never served abroad.  Mark on post #16 has done some super research and that appears to confirm the brief entry Ancestry gives from the British Jewry Book of Honour which lists a J Medalyer, KRRC, service number 60824 as being him. 

 

The KRRC cap badge was what caught my attention, but with unblackened GS buttons, my initial thoughts were he'd be from one of the many TF units that used variants of the KRRC Maltese cross, not the regiment itself.  Discovering he was from the 60th a few minutes later drove me to my books!

 

Another example of the maxim that while blackened buttons can prove a Rifleman, unblackened buttons cannot DISprove one.

 

His full service number would have been TR/13/60824. 

 

There is a useful comparison soldier three digits further on in the SN sequence - Rfn Harry BRENBLOOM, TR/13/60827.

 

Like Israel Medalyer, he was born in 1890 and appears to have been brought into the Army through conscription.  It's unclear if Brenbloom was a naturalised British citizen or an Alien, but IIRC, by 1917, resident Aliens were subject to conscription anyway.  Brenbloom was deemed to have enlisted in Sep 1917 when he had an initial medical receiving Medical Grade CII, but like Medalyer he was not called up until Jan 1918, in his case on the 3rd, and he was posted to 52nd (Graduated) Bn., KRRC on 10 Jan 1918.  52/KRRC were at Canterbury at this time.  Presumably they were in the same conscript cohort due to their birth year.

 

Brenbloom had catarrh problems and chronic otitis media with a running discharge.  As is often the case with middle ear infections, this also seems to have caused serious dizziness and Brenbloom was very quickly discharged No longer physically fit for war service on 06 Mar 1918, so no medals and no MIC.

 

The parallels are even closer: 

1. Medalyer was living at Wentworth Buildings in Wentworth Street, E1, which is off Commercial Street in the Spitalfields/Aldgate area and was a tailor in the rag trade.  Brenbloom was a bootmaker living in Varden Street, Commercial Road E1, only about three quarters of a mile away.
2. Brenbloom was born in Warsaw, then under Russian occupation and given the East End location and his history, almost certainly also Jewish.

Fascinating.

 

Mark

 

Edited 15 August , 2018 by MBrockway

[Guest]

 

     Following on from Mark, there is some interest in East London as to where men of the Pogroms went. Of course, the Germans went often to the Middlesex Regiment and were kept away from direct frontline service-at least, those who were conscripted were. There might be some mileage as to whether un-naturalized  Poles and Russians-predominantly but not exclusively Jewish were allocated to reserve home battalions  after the Russian Revolution knocked Russia out of the war -considering the troubles that there were with the Russians in France.  Just a thought. 

[MBrockway]

The whole subject of the Russian Jews, the MSA and the Military Service (Conventions with Allied States) Act of 1917 is fascinating.

 

This 1917 Act specified that Russian subjects resident in Britain must report to the local police station and register either to join the British Army or to be repatriated back to Russia (then an ally still actively fighting, but also the regime that many of these Russian Jews had fled from)

 

Medalyer and Brenbloom 's apparent synchronised call-up in Jan 1918 could well have had more to do with the 1917 Act than the MSA itself.

 

Plenty of the unnaturalized Russian Jews served in front line units - there were the various RF Jewish battalions and the Zion Mule Corps - but serving away from the Western Front in the Middle East an Gallipoli.

 

Medalyer incidentally had not fled a pogrom, but czarist reaction to the political revolutionaries active in the town in the 1905 Revolution.  The programme makes clear there were no anti-Jewish pogroms in Latvia 1900-1914, though clearly Latvian Jews would have been as affected by the anti-Semitic legislation passed by the Russian government during this period as Jews everywhere in the Russian Empire.