(a.k.a. Bertie Albertino Raphael Alfandary; Raphael Alfandary; A. R. Alfandary)
HO 405/1206 and HO 334/404/44854
Albert Raphael Alfandary was born in Berlin on October 8, 1921 to Raphael and Lea Alfandary, née Caraco, Greek subjects who were originally Ottoman. The name Bertie Albertino Raphael Alfandary appears on both his birth and his naturalization certificates. According to the police report generated in 1956 through his application, Albert Raphael had one sister, Carmen K. Rachlin, née Alfandary, who in 1941 married Ezra Rachlin, a U.S. citizen, and lived in Texas.
Albert Raphael was educated in Berlin until April of 1935, when his father Raphael Alfandary disposed of his business interests and took the family to Brussels to escape the Nazi regime. Albert Raphael attended high school in Brussels and in 1939 commenced studies at Brussels University, where he remained until May 1940, the month the Nazis invaded Belgium. In May 1940, Raphael took his wife and family to the South of France. The Nazis had also invaded France in May 1940, but southern France was a “Free Zone” until it was overrun on November 11, 1942, effectively ending the autonomy of the Vichy regime. Raphael was subsequently shot to death in southern France by the Germans and his wife later died in a German concentration camp. In October 1940, Albert Raphael fled France for Portugal and remained there until his departure for the U.S. in June 1941. In New York, he was assisted by friends of his family and was almost immediately appointed a director of Intermares Corporation, a firm dealing in the export of steel and heavy chemicals to Brazil.
In September 1946, Albert Raphael left the U.S. for France in an attempt to document the deaths of his parents and claim their estate. Later, he went to Brussels for the same reason. After establishing his father’s death in 1946, Albert Raphael was appointed executor of his father’s estate, and particularly his interest in the London carpet dealer firm of Alfandary Ltd., which had been founded by Albert Raphael’s paternal uncles in London in 1890 under the names “Moise and Salomon Alfandary.” On February 14, 1926, the two brothers had registered the company, with a nominal capital of £40,000 divided into £1 shares, under the name Alfandary Ltd. Once this company was registered, Albert Raphael’s father Raphael Alfandary joined his brothers as a shareholder and director, and assumed management of a branch in Berlin. In November 1946, Albert Raphael came to England to visit relatives and claim his father’s business interests. It was at that time that he met his future wife, Estella Ruth Alfandary, commonly known as Ruth, who was also his second cousin.
Ruth had been born in Cologne on March 3, 1925 to Albert Alfandary (Albert Raphael Alfandary’s cousin) and Luise Alfandary, née Heuser, a German at birth and an Aryan. Albert and Luise had registered their daughter at the British consulate in Cologne, so she was a British subject when she met her future husband. Ruth remained in Cologne until the age of five and was then sent to school in Italy, where she studied until the age of eleven. In 1936, Ruth was sent to school in England and her parents relocated there permanently. She had one sister, Jeannette German, née Alfandary, who was married to a British subject and lived in Lorenzo Marques, Portuguese East Africa. Ruth’s parents, Albert and Luise Alfandary, lived at 101a Kensington Church Street, W.8. Ruth’s father was the British-born son of Moise Abraham Alfandary, one of the original founders of Alfandary Ltd. Moise Abraham had become a naturalized British subject in 1927. Ruth’s mother Luise had been the subject of enquiries by British police in June 1940 after it had been alleged that Mrs. Alfandary, an “aryan German,” was pro-Nazi and anti-British, an accusation she fully confirmed. While Albert Raphael’s application was being processed, however, MI5 could find no incriminating record of her nor of Albert Raphael, his wife, their respective families, or any of his referees.
Ruth Alfandary married Albert Raphael Alfandary at the Kensington Register Office in London on March 18, 1947. The newlyweds went to the U.S. immediately but returned to England in May 1947. They then settled in Belgium, where Albert Raphael became a partner in the International Corporation for Trade & Industry in Brussels, which imported radio and electrical equipment from the U.S. In September 1948, Albert Raphael severed his connection with the Belgian firm and returned to the U.S., where he resumed his association with the Intermares Corporation in New York. In June 24, 1951, Albert and Ruth returned to England, landing at Plymouth on the Secretary of State’s conditions. On January 10, 1953 in London, they welcomed a son, whom they named Peter Rafael Alfandary.
As aforementioned, Albert Raphael’s appointment as executor of his father’s estate in 1946 allowed him to assume his murdered father’s share in the London firm of Alfandary Ltd. At this point, Albert Raphael was the obvious choice as successor to the firm. Some of the company’s directors had passed away and others, who were ageing, asked Albert Raphael to assume management of the company, a move he had been resisting. However, his wife’s wish to return to England to be near her parents convinced him to take up the mantle. In 1949, he was appointed a director of the company. In June 1951, he, Ruth, and their son Peter immigrated to England. From that time onward, Albert Raphael occupied himself intensely in the business. By 1952, he had given up his other professional interests in the U.S. and Belgium so that he could focus solely on Alfandary Ltd. in England.
On August 30, 1955, Albert Raphael applied for and received a cancelation by the Home Office of his landing conditions (restrictions on his residency in England). Between the time of his settling in England in 1951 and the final stages of his naturalization application in late 1955, Albert Raphael had traveled abroad to Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and Holland, for a total of 166 days. Apart from brief visits abroad with her husband, Ruth remained in England.[1]
Albert Raphael decided to apply for British naturalization because he liked the way of life there, was happy being there with his wife and her family, and considered England his home. Additionally, his business interests were in England. Although born in Berlin, Albert Raphael had inherited his father’s Turkish nationality. He lost that nationality because he and his family had been absent from Turkey for many years. While living in Berlin, his parents had acquired Greek nationality and had included their then minor son in their application. Years later, Albert Raphael surmised that his parents had lost their Greek passports and could not obtain new ones due to the circumstances of war. Like other Ottoman Jews in a similar situation in wartime Germany, Albert Raphael’s parents died stateless. While living in the U.S., he had been naturalized as an American citizen on August 27, 1946. He was in possession of a U.S. passport, issued in London on September 15, 1954, which was renewed and valid until June 24, 1956. In his application for British citizenship, Albert Raphael indicated that his decision to become British was so definitive that he had let his U.S. citizenship lapse, and he became a stateless person, as had been his parents.
Albert Raphael Alfandary’s serial addresses in London were 6 Carlton Mansions, Holland Park Gardens (1951), 5 Harwood Court, Upper Richmond Rd., Putney (1951-1952), and finally 15 Clareville Court, Clareville Grove (from April 26, 1952). As part of his naturalization application, Albert Raphael included the trading, profit and loss accounts and balance sheets of Alfandary Ltd. The company earned net profits of £1,615.8.4; £1,656.8.3; and £2,237.4.8 for the years 1953-1955, inclusive. The company reported a favorable balance of £16,692.14.8 in the profit & loss account for 1952, which increased to £21,844.8.4 in 1955. The estate of Albert Raphael’s murdered father owed the company £12,517.12.0. Albert Raphael explained to the Home Office that all the directors of the company would borrow from the company from time to time, and from each other, but that their borrowings had always been more than covered by their capital interests in the business. In other words, the sum the Alfandary estate owed the company “was regarded as being more than covered by the value of the 10,000 £1 shares, then estimated at approximately £20,000, and undistributed profits. The company owed Albert Raphael £390 in 1956. As a director of Alfandary Ltd., Albert Raphael’s salary and bonuses totaled £1,650 in each of the years from 1953 to 1955 and £1,975 the following year. At the time of enquiry, he had saved $3,000 in his bank account in New York, with the permission from the Bank of England. He used this money to pay premiums of life insurance policies he held in the U.S.
Albert Raphael’s application also included a profile of company leadership. For the year 1955, the shareholders and directors of Alfandary Ltd. were listed as follows. The shareholders were Moise Alfandary (by then deceased) 3,500 shares. The Executors were Salomon Alfandary, a British subject of 34 Greville House, Greville Place, N.W. 6 and 10,000 shares; Raphael Alfandary, 7 Rue Charles Wickens, Paris, 10,000 shares; and Albert Raphael Alfandary, 10,000 shares, 15 Clareville Court, Clareville Grove, S.W.7 (total shares issued: 33,500). (Both Jacques Alfandary and Raphael Alfandary were deceased). The Directors were the aforementioned Salomon Alfandary; Albert Raphael Alfandary; and Albert Alfandary, a U.S. citizen of 245 Fifth Avenue, New York. The Secretary was Stanley Wallace Penwill of 70 Norfolk Avenue, Sanderstead, Surrey. At the time of his application, Albert Raphael anticipated that the shares of his late father would eventually be transferred to him and his sister. The Home Office anticipated that “if and when” Albert Raphael’s naturalization application was granted, a rearrangement of the shareholders and directorships would take place, given the anticipated retirement of at least one director.
One of Albert Raphael’s referees was Harold Arshag Bodigian, a merchant born in Harrow on March 24, 1918 to Arshag Bodigian, who had become a naturalized British subject in 1926. Judging from an editorial about the Ottoman government and Armenia, which he published in a London newspaper in 1915, Bodigian père was likely a genocide survivor.[2] In 1956, the Home Office asked Bodigian fils, then living at 37 Sandy Lodge Way, Northwood, London, to explain how he knew Albert Raphael Alfandary and whether he was worthy of British citizenship. Bodigian responded that members of Messrs. Alfandary Ltd. had shared his London office after the Alfandary company was bombed out in 1940 and 1941. From about 1946 onwards, Albert Raphael visited his uncle’s office on numerous occasions while traveling to the U.K. He had met Bodigian at that shared office. After Albert Raphael settled in the U.K., Bodigian carried on his business in the same room as Alfandary Ltd. and came to regard the young immigrant as both “friend and workmate.” Bodigian attested: “I have found Mr. A. R. Alfandary kindly, even tempered, quiet and well behaved at all times. He has a somewhat nervous and timid disposition. He always takes considerable care to do what is proper and lawful in conducting his business or private affairs and is honest and straightforward. He appears to be on good terms with his wife and is fond of his son Peter.”
Another referee was Wilfred Archibald Gosling of Chiswick, a salesman in antique works of art, who had known Albert Raphael for fourteen years. They first met in business and subsequently became friends who frequently exchanged social visits. Referee Arthur Edward Munday of Hammersmith was a civil servant who had known Albert Raphael for fifteen years. They first met in business and became intimate friends who occasionally exchanged social visits. Referee William Raleigh Kerr Gandell of Pembroke Gardens, a retired civil servant, had known Albert Raphael for over fifteen years. They first met through business and then became “intimate friends” who occasionally exchanged social visits. Referee Abraham Mendoza was a wholesale bespoke tailor who had met Albert Raphael 20 years previously. They were first introduced socially and then became “intimate friends” who frequently visited each other. Referee, Stanley Clements, a “representative” by profession, met Albert Raphael at the home of a mutual friend and had “maintained a close social friendship” with him for five years. Stanley Wallace Penwill, a chartered accountant who had serviced Alfandary Ltd. since 1924, also wrote on Albert Raphael’s behalf. Renwill also knew Albert Raphael as the secretary of The Association of Oriental Carpet Traders of London, of which Alfandary Ltd. was an affiliate. The final referee, Aubrey Koffman, an advertising agent, met Albert Raphael four years previously when the latter was moving into the block of flats where Koffman also lived. Koffman developed a close friendship with Albert Raphael, his wife, and their family.
To deal with his naturalization application, Albert Raphael hired solicitors Menassé & Tobin of 194 Bishopsgate, E.C. Quite unusually for naturalization agents, these gentlemen submitted their own recommendation letter. In their estimation, Albert Raphael was “a person of the highest repute.” J. M. Menassé had known Albert Raphael personally for the previous ten years and both Menassé and Tobin had for thirty years or more counted Alfandary Ltd. among their clients. Menassé had been born in 1893 in Liverpool to Nathaniel and Bathsheba Menassé, both of whom were natives of Constantinople.[3]
Albert Raphael Alfandary had much in common with his contemporary Isaak Behar, another Berlin native whose family originated in Constantinople and ran a carpet business in the German capital.[4] Like Isaak, who survived the Holocaust in hiding in Berlin, Albert Raphael was suspected by post-war officials of being a Nazi or Nazi collaborator. His Jewish background and the murder of his parents by the Nazis did not exempt him from the distrust and intense scrutiny of the Home Office. He began the process of applying for British citizenship in 1953 and was naturalized in 1957. Subfiles 1-2 were destroyed. This file was closed until 2058 and declassified at my request on October 23, 2025.
[1] On January 21, 1957, Albert Raphael notified the Home Office of a change of business address from 170 Bishopsgate, London, E.C. 2 to 10 Devonshire Row, in the same neighborhood.
[2] Arshag Bodigian, “Armenia and Turkish Domination,” London Daily Chronicle (September 25, 1915), p.6.
[3] 1901 Census, 112 Elizabeth Street, Manchester, England, Menassé family (via ancestry.com).
[4] Isaak Behar, Versprich mir, dass Du am Leben Bleibst: Eein jüdisches Schicksal (Berlin: Ullstein, 2002).