My father’s parents came from Poland, they came from a town called Kutno, which is in central Poland. My grandfather was a journeyman tailor, someone who does relatively unskilled work in the tailoring trade, and I have reason to suppose my grandparents may have been illiterate. Almost certainly their first language would have been Yiddish and as far as I know they didn’t speak Polish, although I don’t know that for certain. My best guess is that they would have thought of themselves as Jewish people who came from Poland or more accurately, from the Polish part of the Russian Empire, which was what it was known as at the time. There was a lot of persecution of Jews in the 1890s, we call them militias now or even mobs, and they would from time to time attack Jewish villages, sometimes commit murders, rapes and so on, they were pretty serious acts of violence. Although life was hard and there was quite a lot of unemployment, nevertheless, Britain was a much better place to be than Russia or Poland.
My father’s parents went to Leeds. My best guess is that they came sometime in the early to mid-1890s, because that’s when most East European Jews came. There was never any talk in our family, no question of going back. I think there was a certain cultural atmosphere of wanting to put the past behind and to assimilate into British society, to maintain, certainly, the religion, for many people, and the customs which are sometimes connected, like keeping the festivals, but also to be part of British society.
My father was born in Leeds in 1898, I believe he left school at 14, which was the school leaving age at that time and I believe he went to work originally in a textile mill in Leeds. I think life must have been very hard, because I remember his father died when he was 9 and I don’t know the detail of this, but if you can imagine a poor, illiterate, immigrant woman with four children, life must have been really difficult. He also told me that there were anti-Semitic incidents, for example, local youths would smash the windows of Jewish shops.
My mother grew up in London and I believe they met when she was on holiday in Harrogate. When my father got married he came down to London and got a job working in a shop that sold suits and coats, and at some stage, and I don’t know how he managed to do this, he actually bought out his boss, he actually bought the shop. He seemed to do quite well. My father, I think, wanted to keep religious customs, but he had a problem that a lot of his business was done on Saturday, which of course is the Jewish Sabbath, so he always worked on Saturdays. My guess is his parents were more religious than he was.
I certainly have a memory of my childhood of being aware that Jews were very badly treated in Germany and I’ve been to Poland since the end of the Communist period, I think it’s four times, and the fact of going there actually activated a certain connection. So I now feel a little bit, in a way I didn’t before, this relationship with that country, I feel I have a connection with Poland, which is somewhat different with my relationship with any other European country.
