Victor Cazalet

Colonel Victor Alexander Cazalet, MC (27 December 1896 – 4 July 1943) was a British Conservative Party Member of Parliament for nineteen years.

He promoted strong military ties with the United States before and during the war and was an outspoken advocate for creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

[2]: 2 The ancestors of the Cazalet family were Huguenots from Languedoc, in the south of France, who settled in England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had forced them out of the country.

[2]: 1 [2]: 174  Cazalet's mother, Maud, was the daughter of a Scottish baronet, Sir John Heron-Maxwell of Springkell, who when he died had left his family penniless.

[6] During the Spanish Civil War, Cazalet was a strong supporter of General Franco and the fascists,[8] serving on the Friends of National Spain committee.

[6] During the same period, he was made chairman of the House of Commons committee on refugee problems and was stationed at the British embassy in Washington.

[16] Defunct Cazalet had become chairman of the House of Commons Palestine Committee and described the plight of Britain under siege as connected to that of the Jews who were being driven from Europe by the Nazis.

[2]: 177  Weizmann tried to apply the feelings by championing the idea of creating a separate Jewish army that would support Britain's fight against Germany.

[18] "Although the war has held up our program as far as Palestine is concerned, in God's good time the Jewish State will be established and it will contribute as much happiness and prosperity to the Arab as to the Jew.

I believe that every unprejudiced Englishman could and should be grateful for the opportunity which his country has been given to fulfill the Scriptures and re-establish the Jewish State in the Holy Land.

"His knowledge of central Europe was probably unequaled," wrote The New York Times after his sudden death in 1943, at age 46, when his plane crashed seconds after takeoff from Gibraltar.

[2]: 287 Cazalet's family received a flood of tributes, many from unknown admirers and others from notables, including Churchill, Anthony Eden, Eleanor Rathbone, Hugh Dalton and Polish dignitaries.

[2]: 287  Chaim Weizmann speaking at a memorial ceremony in London, described Cazalet as "one of the few precious friends of the Jewish people in modern times who never was moved from his devotion to the (Zionist) cause."

He said that his grave at Gibraltar would become a place of pilgrimage for the Jewish people, while Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, agreed to plant 1,000 trees in Palestine to be named the "Victor Cazalet Grove.

"[25] A lead article in the New York Herald Tribune read: There can be few other Englishmen of our time who have touched so many nations and so many individual citizens upon terms of understanding and friendship.

To that post-war world, which must lean heavily upon men of goodwill if peace and justice are to prevail, Victor Cazalet is a heavy loss.

[2]: 287 Cazalet, who was homosexual,[26][6] was a member of the social circle of gay politicians derisively called the "Glamour Boys" by Neville Chamberlain.

[28] He was a landowner and a wealthy bachelor, whose numerous social and political connections included close friendships with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden.

[30] In 1936, Cazalet purchased the 400-acre Great Swifts estate near Cranbrook, Kent, demolishing the old house and building a new one in Georgian style, designed by architect Geddes Hyslop.

[33] When he arrived, recalled her mother, "Victor sat on the bed and held Elizabeth in his arms and talked to her about God," and soon after the fever had broken.

William Marshall Cazalet, John Singer Sargent , 1902
Cazalet's mother with sons Edward and Victor, painted by John Singer Sargent , 1900–1901, LACMA [ 3 ]
Shield displayed in the Commons chamber. [ 23 ] Azure a castle triple towered Argent between two fleurs-de-lis in chief and a boar passant in base Or. [ 24 ]