More on Didsbury’s past ….. The Dawn of Didsbury Jewry 1861-1926

Now I have been waiting for The Dawn of Didsbury Jewry 1861-1926 to arrive in the bookshop.

I was alerted to Julia Maine’s contribution to the history of Didsbury last week and having bought a copy this morning I pretty much devoured the book in one sitting because it’s a fascinating account of the Jewish community here in Didsbury.

And while the author writes that “it is written for a broad readership” the scholarship is there in its content, glossary and extensive references, covering many aspects of Jewish life, the Jewish contribution to the community and a host of local Jewish men and women, culminating with the impact of the Great War.

Throughout Ms Main draws on the memories of residents as well as written records and the generosity of those who donated images and additional material.

So, having read it in an afternoon it will now sit on the bookshelf and become an invaluable reference to dip into.

The Dawn of Didsbury Jewry 1861-1926, Julia Main, 2026, £9.65 is available from most bookshops, including Chorlton Book Shop and online at Amazon and other retailers.

Stories from Middle Europe in the 1920s & 30s ........ Joseph Roth ....... on the wireless

Joseph Roth was a a journalist and author and to my shame someone who I knew nothing about.

Joseph Roth, 1926

All of which meant that today's edition of In Our Time is a fascinating introduction to the man.

“Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home.

Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned.

With Helen Chambers, Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews, Deborah Holmes Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg, and Jon Hughes Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson”

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; Joseph Roth, 1926, source, http://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2006/09/, posted in Joseph Roth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Roth

*Joseph Roth, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002vyjt

Strikes ….memories ….. and Miss Dannimac ….. more from the Manchester Jewish Museum

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single visit to a museum is never enough and must be followed by a second, third and fourth.

Window, 2026

Now, this is particularly true of the Manchester Jewish Museum which celebrates and records the history and culture of the Jewish community here and abroad.*

The Museum, 2025

I first discovered the museum soon after it opened in 1984 and followed that first visit with becoming a “Friend”, and have written extensively about it.**

But as so often happens other things get in the way, and I hadn’t been back for a very long time.

So, with a morning free I took the tram to Victoria and wandered up Cheetham Hill Road and was not disappointed.

I guess I was there for a couple of hours, learned a lot from the displays and enjoyed a series of conversations with some of the guides.

Of all the fascinating exhibits the one that drew me back was a page from The Waterproofer which was the official newspaper of the Waterproof Garment Worker’s Trade Union for July 1935 which recorded the end of 1934-5 strike.

The strike which was a response to the lowering piecework rates lasted nine months with the newspaper recording that the union would “not rest until every unscrupulous employer is dealt with and sweating abolished in the trade”. 

The Waterproofer, 1935

It is a story I was not over familiar with but it’s one I intend to follow up, and in that I may be helped by the memory maps of Jewish Manchester which are “a new digital resource where you can explore former sites of Jewish memory in the Cheetham Hill, Strangeways and Hightown areas of Manchester. Here you will find audio interviews, photographs, and information about more than 40 sites (we hope to include more in future) that consistently appear in people's recollections of these areas”.***

And then there is Miss Dannimac the “canvas Rain Coat … You’ve got to like Fashion to wear it”.  

Miss Dannimac. 2026

It was created by Ralph Levy who had “a vision of making rainwear not just practical but fashionable [and] new manufacturing techniques allowed Ralph to produce coats in lighter fabrics which were featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and modelled by fashion icons including Twiggy”.

And that I think is all for now, because while there is a great deal more in the museum, I think that should be for a visit.

Pictures; Thursday at the museum, 2026 & 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester Jewish Museum, https://www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com/

**Manchester Jewish Museum, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Manchester%20Jewish%20Museum

***Waterproof Garment Workers Trade Union, A Memory Map of Jewish Manchester, https://jewishmanchestermemorymap.org/?feature_type=point&id=320

Mornings at Manchester Jewish Museum …..

The Manchester Jewish Museum* is one of my favourite places and has been since it opened in 1984 and is a place I regularly write about.**

Almost soon after that opening I signed up to be a “Friend” and while the scheme has changed its name, I remain happy to support its work which as it says is “a registered charity (charity no. 1154353) and accredited museum (no. 179). 

We connect Jewish stories to the world and to our society, in order to explore both our differences and similarities, and to celebrate that which makes people unique and that which connects us all.

As well as preserving and presenting the history of Jewish Manchester, our programme helps us bring communities together to understand and share experiences. 

Delivering meaningful and sustainable engagement projects with our diverse communities. [which it does through] “schools activities educating future generations about Jewish history and traditions”.

All of which is done in the “Grade II* Listed Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, which holds a fascinating collection documenting Manchester’s rich and diverse Jewish heritage.

And that is how I first came across the Museum in the 1980s when I was researching and delivering history courses on Jewish Manchester to school students.

Back then the museum was very helpful in lending material I could use.

More recently following a £6 million redevelopment the museum now has a new purpose built gallery to display our collection, which is presented  in three themes, Journeys, Communities and Identities.

All the stories told on gallery are Jewish but by framing them within these universal themes they hopefully feel relevant to all of our audiences, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Our Journeys Gallery tells the story of the different motivations that brought Jewish people to Manchester: looking for opportunity, escaping hardship, poverty or persecution, and ‘landsleit’ – the move to join existing communities that reflect your own identity. 

From 18th Century pedlars to 20th Century refugees and Holocaust Survivors, the collection reflects each wave of Jewish migration into Manchester.

Our Journeys Gallery also includes a newly commissioned 4-screen immersive film produced by Heritage Interactive and directed by Dan Lusby. Heritage Interactive produced all the digital creative content in our gallery including this film, our sliding digital panels on our organisations wall, and the Jewish identity tablets in our Identities Gallery”. 

The museum hosts a whole variety of events from cultural to comic, along special exhibitions and has an interesting policy towards those who live in the area which encourages local residents to become “one of our Museum M8s and get free admission to the museum all year round for you and your family”.

I took a trip up from Chorlton last week and was not disappointed.

Location; Manchester Jewish Museum, Cheetham Hill Road

Pictures; Thursday at the museum, 2026 & 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester Jewish Museum, https://www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com/

**Manchester Jewish Museum, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Manchester%20Jewish%20Museum

"The growth of antisemitism, the rise of economic nationalism" ………. from the perspective of 1938

I have come back to a book I first read over thirty years ago, and it seems as relevant today as it was when it was published in 1938.

It was written by Louis Golding, who was a very successful novelist as well as literary critic, essayist and film script writer.

He was born in Manchester in1895 to a Ukrainian-Jewish family, described his politics as “strongly to the left” and in 1938 wrote The Jewish Problem which was published as a Penguin Special.

The book examines the history of antisemitism, and Zionism, against the backdrop of “The Nazi Horror” and concludes with a final chapter on  “The Future”.

Reading that last chapter, written in 1938, before the outbreak of the last world war, and the Holocaust is not easy reading.

"A JEW cannot be blamed if, as he considers the present condition of his people, his heart is filled with despair. German Jewry, one of the oldest and most solidly established in Europe has been completely overwhelmed.  Another great Jewry has followed that of Germany into the chasm, within the past few months, with catastrophic suddenness; Jewry strains its eyes, in an agony of apprehension, to know who goes next.

The great Jewish masses of eastern Europe, above all, are in peril.  Today the doom involves more than half a million souls.  What if tomorrow it should involve five millions?  The prospect is too mournful to contemplate, but it is so far from remote that it must be contemplated.
The growth of anti-Semitism, the rise of economic nationalism, and the dark shadow of unemployment have made it increasingly difficult for even refugees from central Europe to find  a haven elsewhere.”*

There will be some who dismiss re reading the book, given that we know what happened, but that is the point, knowing what happened makes reading the book all the more relevant.

And that of course is set against the rising tide of antisemitism, the small but none the less active group of Holocaust deniers, and that bunch that set out to argue that the present wave of antisemitic attacks with reference to Israel, which of course by extension falls into that obscene logic of blaming antisemitism on the Jews.

So, having read this book I am also interested in Mr. Golding, and have on order, Magnolia Street, written in 1933, and set in the High Town area of Manchester a decade earlier.  It too is a book I read along time ago and while I am at it, I will also look out his films.

Picture; the cover of The Jewish Problem 

* The Jewish Problem, Louis Golding, November 1938, reprinted, November 1938, and January 1939

Spots of Lights: Women in the Holocaust ...... an online exhibition ..... one to view

An important new exhition Spots of Light.*

"The Holocaust was a watershed event in human history – an act of murder and violence that the Nazis and their accomplices unleashed against the Jewish people. 

Death awaited all who professed the Jewish faith, and the path to this denouement was paved with ghastly violence. In certain respects, however, women, men, and children followed different paths to death.

 In this exhibition we attempt to reveal the human story that lurks behind the historical account of what happened. Within this story, we chose to tell about the Jewish victims and create space for the unique voice of the women among them".

*Spots of Light: Women in the Holocaust, https://wwv.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/women-in-the-holocaust/index.asp

**Yad Vashen News, https://trailer.web-view.net/Show/0X4E1D458259BD54E71004CF2497F58A57E931A597041167D73457FFF0FB57D3AAFC7B75182448CBB4.htm

Walking the streets of Hightown .... a full century ago

I remain in awe of those writers who can sum up someone in a few simple sentences.

Outside lavatory, Back Percival Street, 1951

Dickens could do it, and today I came across a short description of a Mrs. Poyser which is up there with the best.

It comes from the novel, Magnolia Street by Louis Golding, which was based on the streets in Hightown in Manchester during the 1920s.

These were the streets he remembered from his youth, and in particular the uneasy relationship between Jew and Gentile.

He was born in the city in 1895 to a Ukrainian-Jewish family, described his politics as “strongly to the left” and in 1938 wrote The Jewish Problem which was published as a Penguin Special.*

The Jewish Problem, 1938

The book examines the history of antisemitism, and Zionism, against the backdrop of “The Nazi Horror” and concludes with a final chapter on  “The Future”

But he was also a prolific popular novelist, and I can see why, because his description of Mrs. Poyser  who ran a grocery shop on Magnolia Street perfectly recreates one of those people we have all come across.   “The Jewish women met socially in Mrs. Poyser’s grocery shop, facing the Lamb and Lion.  

There they forgathered in between the washing up after one meal and the preparation for the next; or they called in on their way from the market, to show what a fat chicken they had picked up or how fine a silver hake for chopping and frying.

On a certain Sunday morning in May in the year 1910, there was news and news of the Mrs. Poyser’s sort.  News was, in a sense, Mrs. Poyser’s prerogative.  She weighed it, she sorted it out into bags, she handed it over the counter, along with a pair of kippers or a pound of sultanas”.**

Back Percival Street, 1951

The book, which was written in 1932, had its roots in a series of short pieces he had sent into the Manchester Guardian a decade earlier, describing life from the Jewish side of Magnolia Street which the newspaper had rejected as “nonsense”.

His response was in his own words “to mobilise the Jews on one side of the Street and the Gentiles on the other side and make of them – and this is a thing which has been ignored in references to the book – a study not of Jew-Gentile problems but of the problems which assert themselves when two communities are found in close proximity to one another.  The sort of thing which happened in Magnolia Street to the dwellers on one side or the other are what happened exactly in a street in Belfast in which Orangemen lived one side and Catholics on the other and in Tunis where at the end of a certain area the French lived on side and the Italians on the other”.***

At present I am only on chapter two, with a full 500 pages a head of me, and not wanting to spoil the experience, I haven’t turned to the back, but my spoiler alert, with help from another Manchester Guardian article is that Didsbury features along the way.

Percival Street, Holt Town, 1953

Well, we shall see.

What did intrigue me, was that Mr. Golding was participating in “the formal opening of the new library set up by Messrs. Kendal, Milne and Co. in their Deansgate establishment [to a large audience] “on The workshop of the novelist’s brain”.****

Now that I would have liked to have been part of.

And in a sort of way I should also have liked to have walked those streets in Hightown that he knew so well.

Of course, they have mostly gone, cleared away in the clearance programmes of the second half of the last century.  But there are a few pictures, and in particular the two that appear here.  Both are of Back Percival Street, a small slip of a place which didn’t warrant a listing in the directories and doesn’t get recorded by name on the maps.

But my Facebook friend Bill Sumner, swiftly located the street where I thought it might be beside Percival Street, which was off Waterloo Road which in turn connected Bury New Road to Cheetham Hill Road.

Leaving me just to reflect on those two images of Back Percival Street, which are a powerful reminder of just how tough the area could be, whether you were Jew or Gentile.

Location; Hightown

Pictures; Outside lavatory, Back Percival Street, 1951, m08286 and m08291, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, cover from The Jewish Problem, 1938 and extract from the OS map showing Percival Street in Holt Town and surrounding streets

* The Jewish Problem, Louis Golding, November 1938, reprinted, November 1938, and January 1939

**Magnolia Street, Louis Golding, 1932

***The Making of a Novel - Mr. Louis Golding and “Magnolia Street”, Manchester Guardian, March 9th, 1935

****Ibid The Making of a Novel

A synagogue ......Mr. & Mrs. Solomon ....... and Manchester's Corporation Street

So long before the construction of motorways and airports wiped out some of our favourite buildings  there was Corporation Street. 

The synagogue on Halliwell Street, 1849

It runs from Cross Street and was cut in the late 1840s, and like all such major developments resulted in the demolition of buildings and the loss of smaller streets.

One of those buildings was the synagogue on Halliwell Street which had opened in 1825.

The inaugural stone had been laid the year before at a ceremony which had started with prayers at the “temporary place of worship on Long Millgate  …. [after which] the reader and congregation walked in procession to Halliwell Street to perform the laying of the first stone of the intended new synagogue when very appropriate and impressive prayers, composed for the occasion were said by the reader, after which thirty persons sat down, at the Wilton Arms to an excellent dinner”.*

Just over a year later in the September the Manchester Guardian reported on the consecration of the new synagogue which it wrote “is in every respect suitable for the performance of divine worship”. *****

It was according to one observer an unpretenious red brick building which replaced a temporary place of worship which had been in Ainsworth Court off Long Millgate.

Access to the Court was through a narrow passage.

Sadly the Manchester Guardian didn’t comment on its closure or demolition but did give a detailed account of the new synagogue on Park Street Cheetham Hill Road on March 25th 1858.**

Halliwell Street on which the early synagogue was built was swept away with the coming of Corporation Street, but the 1851 census provides us with a very clear picture of its inhabitants, including Soloman Philips who was the appointed overseer for the synagogue, along with a Miss Levy who described herself as a Professor of Hebrew.

In all there were seventy four residents living on the street, twenty-one of whom were children under the age of 14. The seventy four had  birth places which ranged from Manchester and Salford to Liverpool, Warsaw and Hamburg. 

Their occupations were varied but erred on the side of skilled artisan, including watchmaker and milliner to a professor of Music and a veterinary surgeon alongside the more humble jobs of launderess, matchmaker and traveller along with the delightful “Ender and Mender”.

Mr. Philips had come from Warsaw, and his wife Sarah from Koosemer in Poland  No pictures have survived of their home on Halliwell Street but it commanded an annual rent of £18  which translated into a weekly rent of six shillings which was above that of properties in the surrounding streets.

And it does appear that their house survived the destruction of the synagogue and part of the road it stood on because in 1861 Philip and Sarah are still here at number 9, which sometime during the decade before had been renumbered as no. 4.

Now that remanent is part of Balloon Street which has also been much truncated, but as Balloon Street it is a reminder of that 18th century pioneer of all things ballons.  

This was James Sadler who according to my Annals of Manchester "ascended in his balloon on May 12th 1785 from a garden behind the Manchester Arms Inn Long Millgate, which was then a private house”***. 

And not content with that seven days later “made his second balloon ascent, but on alighting was obliged to let it drive in the wind”.

Indigo Hotel, Todd Street, 2025

Leaving me just to say that there is a plaque commemorating the synagogue on the wall of the Indigo Hotel on Todd Street, close to where the synagogue stood. The text says, "Manchester's First Synagogue, 1825-1858 stood near this site until its demolition in the construction of Corporation Street".

Location; Shudehill

 Picture; the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1844-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Indigo Hotel, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Manchester Guardian, August 14th, 1824

** The Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1825

***The Manchester Guardian, March 26th, 1858

****Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885

***** Davies, Ethan, Manchester's first synagogue recognised with plaque in special ceremony, Manchester Evening News, July 13th, 2022, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchesters-first-synagogue-recognised-plaque-24477558

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 2 .... The Talmud Torah School ....Bent Street

Now keeping the negatives never really seems worth it, but when the original prints get lost or damaged those negatives can prove very important.

All of which just points up how pleased I was that I found the set which I took of the streets around Cheetham Hill Road in the mid 1980s.

Not only have the prints gone but so have the notes I made of the research into the area.

This is the old Talmud Torah School opened in 1880, for “the teaching of elementary education in
Hebrew, the Scriptures and the Talmud and in the principles of the Jewish faith and practise. Talmud Torah schools were traditionally for boys only. Girls were admitted in modern times. 

The School was founded in 1880 and established in purpose built premises at No. 11 Bent Street, Cheetham, Manchester. In 1958 the Bent Street school was sold and in 1959 the new headquarters of the Manchester Central Board for Hebrew Education and Talmud Torah was opened in Upper Park Road, Salford. It closed in 2005”.*

I had half expected that the building would no longer exist but it does, still in commercial use as it when I came across it, but looking a lot better.  All but two of the big signboards have gone and these are neat and discreet.

Added to which a fair amount of the school’s records have survived, including account books payments and registers of contributions and a description of the damage done to the building during the Blitz.

And now its an exciting events place.

Location; Bent Street, Manchester

Picture; The Talmud Torah School, 1984, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 1 .... the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Jewish Soup Kitchen

Now long after the prints have been damaged or worse still lost, there are always the negatives.

Manchester Jewish Working Men's Club, Empire Street, 1986

Of course most of the time, these are consigned to the back of a cupboard.

And so it was with a collection I took in the mid 1980s on the streets off Cheetham Hill Road.

They were part of a research project on the Jewish Community and sadly the pictures and the notes have long gone, but the negatives have survived.

Not so the Club which was on the corner of Empire Street and Wooley Street.

I don’t know when the building was demolished but it has been replaced by a warehouse and factory.

The club was formed in 1886 and it was here in “November 1895 a meeting was convened at the Manchester Jewish Workingmen's Club to consider ways and means to alleviate suffering in the Jewish community. The creation of the Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen in 1896 was the
result of this meeting. 

The Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen, Southall Street, 1986

In December 1906 a building in Southall Street was completed, with a purpose built dining hall. 

The meals consisted of soup containing meat and vegetables, together with bread. 

Mrs Dolly Phillips (1903-) and her husband, Harry, were at the forefront of the organisation. Mrs Dolly Phillips first became involved in the Soup Kitchen in 1920 at the age of 17. As Honarary Secretary she introduced the meals on wheels service in 1942. 

The building on Southall Street was sold and the kitchen of the Manchester Jews Benevolent Society was used. In 1978 the service moved to Holy Law Synagogue in Rita Glickman House, Prestwich. In 1997 they had about 200 clients”.*

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Soup Kitchen, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

King Winter’s Birthday ……….

At 76 I know I have never really grown up.

Or perhaps after doing the business of working for 40 years, bringing up kids, and being serious I can revert to that other time.

But that would be to ignore that I have always enjoyed reading the comics of my childhood along with the books that took me far from Peckham, Eltham, and later Manchester.

So, with that out of the way it’s the book King Winter’s Birthday which captivated me.

The publisher’s review described as “An achingly beautiful, timeless picture book by bestselling author Jonathan Freedland and illustrated by Emily Sutton, inspired by a story from Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, author of The Passenger

It's King Winter's birthday, and he wants his party to be really special. He asks all of his brothers and sisters to be there: Queen Spring, King Summer and Queen Autumn.

But the wind and the trees whisper a warning, and as the four play magical games, something strange begins to happen outside.

Inspired by a story from Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, written while he was interned on the Isle of Man during the Second World War, this timeless fairy tale is a celebration of nature's rhythms, and of a chaotic world restored to balance”.

And it is wonderfully retold by Jonatham Freedland and accompanied by a magical set of illustrations by Emily Sutton which are in the style of pictures I remember from the 1950s and 60s.

And it ends with a short biography of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz who was German and Jewish and who wrote the powerful novel The Paasenger which is to my knowledge the first fictional account of the events which led up to Kristallnacht.*

Alexander Boschwitz, wrote the book in 1939, and it details the experiences of Otto Silbermann a German Jew caught up in the growing nightmare of  state sponsored antisemitism just before the Night of Broken Glass in 1938.

In an effort to evade arrest, Otto takes a series of train journeys from his home in Berlin across Germany. 

In the course of which he encounters a cross section of the population, from rabid Nazi antisemites, to “regular” Germans getting on with their life, and minding their own business.

But there is no doubting the danger he is in, which at one point involves an attempt by an acquittance to cheat him out of the true value of his home, and by the actual appropriation of his business by his partner and long time friend.

Much of the book revolves around his own internal debate about whether he should have left Germany earlier, and the contradiction between those he meets who appear “decent” and those who at best are indifferent and those who are hostile.

And while he flips from despair to optimism that things can’t get any worse, there is also a sense of incredulity that in his own words “in the middle of Europe in the twentieth century” this could be happening.

Along with that observation is the chilling fact that he is trapped, because Germany  won’t let him out  and other countries won’t let him in. "For a Jew, the entire Reich has become one big concentration camp".

Which just leaves me to return to King Winter's Birthday which stands as a reminder of the imagination of Alexander Boschwitz.

King Winter’s Birthday, Johnathan Freedland and Emily Sutton, Pushkin Children's Books.

Pictures; courtesty of the publishers

*The Passenger, Alexander Boschwitz, 1939, published by Pushkin Press 2021

Trapped …… in a country that won’t let you out……. and countries that won’t let you in

I am rereading The Passenger by Alexander Boschwitz, which is to my knowledge the first fictional account of the events which led up to Kristallnacht.*

Alexander Boschwitz, wrote the book in 1939, and it details the experiences of Otto Silbermann a German Jew caught up in the growing nightmare of  state sponsored antisemitism just before the Night of Broken Glass in 1938.

In an effort to evade arrest, Otto takes a series of train journeys from his home in Berlin across Germany. 

In the course of which he encounters a cross section of the population, from rabid Nazi antisemites, to “regular” Germans getting on with their life, and minding their own business.

But there is no doubting the danger he is in, which at one point involves an attempt by an acquittance to cheat him out of the true value of his home, and by the actual appropriation of his business by his partner and long time friend.

Much of the book revolves around his own internal debate about whether he should have left Germany earlier, and the contradiction between those he meets who appear “decent” and those who at best are indifferent and those who are hostile.

And while he flips from despair to optimism that things can’t get any worse, there is also a sense of incredulity that in his own words “in the middle of Europe in the twentieth century” this could be happening.

Along with that observation is the chilling fact that he is trapped, because Germany  won’t let him out  and other countries won’t let him in. "For a Jew, the entire Reich has become one big concentration camp".

What I like about the book is that it offers up no easy key to how he should have acted when the Nazi’s first came to power.

Both he and his wife who is not Jewish found reasons not to leave.

Shop damage in Magdeburg, following Kristallnacht, 1938

Some rest on relatively trivial reasons, while others get to the heart of how most of us might react, balancing the antisemitic policies of the Nazi’s with measured judgements on how far the new Government would actually go, and indeed how long they would stay in power.

It is not an easy read, but it is  fascinating one, which I suspect owes something to the translation, as to the subject matter.

And as a result, I read half the 256 pages in one sitting.

All of which is more poignant because Alexander Boschwitz saw the writing on the wall just two years after the Nazis seized power, and judging that the Nuremburg Laws were just the start, he and his mother left Germany, finally arriving in Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.  

Being German, they were interned, and Alexander transported to Australia.

Later with the relaxation of control of who was interned, he was given permission to return to Britain, but his ship was torpedoed by a German U Boat and he perished along with the crew and his fellow passengers.  He was twenty-seven years old.

Pictures; cover The Passenger, 2021, and Kristallnacht, shop damage in Magdeburg, 1938, from Kristallnacht, Wikiperdia, supplied by The German Federal Archive, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

*The Passenger, Alexander Boschwitz, 1939, published by Pushkin Press 2021

On the night of Kristallnacht .... November 9-10th, 1938...........Life Before the Holocaust

Life Before the Holocaust “aims to share stories of the Jewish communities that were built and the lives that were lived by Jewish individuals living in countries and towns across the European continent before the start of the Holocaust”. *

The 8th night of Hanukkah, Kiel, Germany, December 12th, 1931

I came across it by chance, and continue to find it a compelling and powerful site.

Members are welcome to share stories about their families, their experiences, and things they may have heard or learned along the way.

The first image I have chosen to reproduce is from William Miconnet who wrote, “Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner lit this menorah on the 8th night of Hanukkah in full view of the Nazi headquarters in Kiel, Germany, 12 December 1931”

Chava Hochrad

The second was posted by Elaine F. Miller, who added “The young woman on the left was my father’s paternal cousin, Chaya Hochrad. 

She was the daughter of Yachov Hochrad and Khaia Leiter Hochrad of Frampol, Poland. She was one of seven siblings. She did not survive”.

The site is hosted By The National Library of Israel, which was founded in Jerusalem in 1892.*

The National Library of Israel (NLI) "serves as the dynamic institution of national memory for the Jewish people worldwide and Israelis of all backgrounds and faiths.

While continuing to serve as Israel's pre-eminent research library, NLI has recently embarked upon an ambitious journey of renewal to encourage diverse audiences in Israel and around the globe to engage with its treasures in new and meaningful ways.

This is taking place through a range of innovative educational, cultural and digital initiatives, as well as through a new landmark campus next to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in Jerusalem. The new campus is currently under construction and on schedule to be completed in 2021.

The National Library has four core collections: Israel, Judaica, Islam and Middle East, and the Humanities. Highlights include significant handwritten works by luminaries such as Maimonides and Sir Isaac Newton, exquisite Islamic manuscripts dating back to the ninth century and the personal archives of leading cultural and intellectual figures including Martin Buber, Natan Sharansky and Naomi Shemer.

The National Library holds the world's largest collections of textual Judaica, Jewish and Israeli music, and maps of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, as well as world-class collections of manuscripts, ancient maps, rare books, photographs, communal and personal archival materials, and more".**

*Life Before the Holocaust, https://www.facebook.com/groups/299090977346058/?epa=SEARCH_BOX

**The National Library of Israel, https://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/english/Pages/default.aspx

Jewish Women in Britain ……. the poster

Now I had quite forgotten the exhibition ……… Jewish Women in Britain, which ran from May 1992 through till the January of the following year.

But then it was a full 33 years ago and so I think I can be excused.

The poster hung for years in the kitchen until steam and age made me take it down with the intention of having it professionally mounted.

But as often happens the plan never happened, and it shuffled around the cellar until I came across it recently.

So for no other reason than I like it, here it is, scanned in two sections, waiting to be skilfully re-joined.

Location; The Manchester Jewish Museum















Picture; Jewish Women in Britain ……. the poster, 1992

The painting ... a film ... and correcting an injustice ...... Adele Bloch-Bauer ...and the Woman in Gold

 Now like many people much of what I know about art and literature has come about by a mix of accident and curiosity.

And so it is with the painting of  Adele Bloch Bauer, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907.

"Adele Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy society woman, hostess of a renowned Viennese salon, art patron, and philanthropist. Her famous portraits by Klimt are historical witnesses to the significance of Jewish patronage during the Golden Era of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Among the famous guests in her salon were composer Gustav Mahler, journalist Berta Zuckerkandl, author Stefan Zweig, and socialist Julius Tandler. She supported socialist causes."*

She died in 1925, and during the Nazi occupation of Austria, her family’s collection of art was stolen, by the German Government.

And in 2015 the story of the painting and the attempt by the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer to have the art work returned to its rightful heirs was the subject of the film, Woman in Gold, which is where I come in, because having seen the film on a wet Sunday afternoon, I went looking for more.

Like all fictional accounts, the film toyed with the events and in particular underplayed the role of Hubertus Czernin the Austrian journalist and publisher who found the historical documents which allowed the family to the begin the process of reclaiming the collection.

But the film and two earlier documentaries highlighted the part played "by Jewish patrons in shaping Viennese modernism and …. the historical injustice in handling their restitution claims.”*

And led me to explore other such claims for restitution, as well as discovering the work of Gustav Klimt.

Not bad for a wet Sunday afternoon.  

Never being one to lift other people’s research, the full account of Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the attempts by her niece, Maria Altmann, and the lawyer,  E. Randol Schoenberg can be read by following the link.

Location, Austria, and California

Picture; Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustav Klimt in 1907

* Adele Bloch-Bauer, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bloch-bauer-adele

The Secret Suitcase ... today .... for ten days on the wireless

This series of The History Podcast, The House at Number 48 creeps up on you and peels back a dark period in European history.

Mr. & Mrs Bux, undated but circa 1930s

It starts today and runs over ten days on Radio 4.

"After the death of his enigmatic and distant father, Antony Easton finally gets to go through his Dad's secret suitcase: 'This was his life,' Antony says. 

As he forensically trawls through its contents, Antony discovers a series of clues which are about to change his life forever. 

And, after decades, a woman from Antony's childhood gets in touch. For her, time is running out. She says she must see him one last time...

The House at Number 48 is presented by Charlie Northcott.

The series producer is Jim Frank.

Sound design and mixing by Tom Brignell.

Family, undated

The Editor is Matt Willis".

And having just binge listened to all ten episodes I can confirm it is a fascinating and at times frightening account.

It is part detective story, and  part the human tragedy  of a Jewish family dispossed of almost all they possesed by the Nazis, who managed to escape from Germany via Czechoslovakia and Poland to Britain.

At each stage the family  were just one step a head of the German army,  arriving in Prague just months before the country was occupied and having settled in Warsaw they left  just weeks before the  invasion in September 1939.

Leaving me just to explain the choice of images.

The pictures accompanying the BBC series is not mine to use, and instead I chose two from the German side of our family who have no connection to the story other than that they were German and against the Nazis.

Location; Radio 4

Picture; the Bux family from the Simpson Collection

*The House At Number 48, The History Podcast, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002l45x

Memoirs from Munuch .... 90 years ago ... one to listen to

This is one of those podcasts from BBC Radio 4 that I dipped into but kept missing the follow up episodes, so having tuned into episode 7 today*, I am now going back to listen to all 9.

The Pitter Hotel, Saltzburg, undated

It starts with the unpublished memoirs of the great grandfather of writer Joe Dunthorn.

"Drawn to a family legend about his German-Jewish family’s dramatic escape from Nazi Germany in 1936, the writer Joe Dunthorne accidentally discovers a far more unsettling history". 

There is the story of how this great-grandfather worked on a chemical weapons factory for the Nazis, and the inspirational account of the 17 year old sister of his great-grandfather who set up a Jewish kindagarten for children she encountered on the streets of Munich. 

From ssmall beginnings it grew into a "full Jewishsocial care organization".

"Episode 7. The City Forgets

In Munich, Joe traces a very different side to his family history, events that were left out of his great-grandfather’s memoir.

Written and presented by Joe Dunthorne, Produced by Eleanor McDowall, Music by Jeremy Warmsley, Mixing engineer, Mike Woolley, Story consultant, Sarah Geis, Executive producer, Alan Hall, A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.*

And is avaialble from Penguin Books.**

Picture; picture post cards of the Pitter Hotel, Saltzburg, from the collection of the Simpson family

*7. The City Forgets, The History PodcastHalf-Life Episode 7 of 9, Half Life The History Podcast BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002cfqb 

**Children of Radium, A Buried Inheritance, Joe Dunthorne

Yom Hashoah Holocaust Memorial Day

 April 23 April 24

Light the Darkness ............ today from 4pm ...... Holocaust Memorial Day

 Each year people from across the UK take part in a national moment for Holocaust Memorial Day.

Imperial War Museum North,  lights the darkness for HMD

At 4pm on 27 January people across the nation will light candles and put them safely in their windows to:

remember those who were murdered for who they were

stand against prejudice and hatred today

Salford Quays Millenium Footbridge, lights the darkness for HMD

Iconic buildings and landmarks will light up in purple during this powerful national moment of commemoration and solidarity.

Follow the link for details.

Light the https://hmd.org.uk/take-part-in-holocaust-memorial-day/

Picture; Imperial War Museum North,ights the darkness for HMD, photo Credit Emma Phillipson,  Salford Quays Millenium Footbridge, lights the darkness for HMD, photo Credit Emma Phillipson

Remembering ……. Holocaust Memorial Day

 There will be many different ways people will mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

The 8th night of Hanukkah, Kiel, December 12th, 1931

One way will be to light a candle and put it in your window tomorrow evening  you can participate in the UK Ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 which will be streamed online  by registering with the Holocaust Memorial Trust online.*

“The Trust encourages remembrance in a world scarred by genocide. We promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) – the international day on January 27th  to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

January 27th marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation, and genocide must still be resisted every day. Our world often feels fragile and vulnerable and we cannot be complacent. Even in the UK, prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all”.**

Chaya Hochrad

And for those who want to explore the human tragedy you can join The I Remember Wall which, “when you join, your name will be randomly matched to a Holocaust victim from Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names. 

This unique project allows you to remember a specific victim, learn their name, read their story, and see their picture. You can then share the story of a Holocaust victim with others, as we join together to spread Holocaust awareness on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January27th). 

Together, we can ensure that the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust is never forgotten".***

You can join https://hmd.org.uk/=

Pictures, The 8th night of Hanukkah, Kiel,  William Miconnet who wrote, “Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner lit this menorah on the 8th night of Hanukkah in full view of the Nazi headquarters in Kiel, Germany, 12 December 1931” and Chaya Hochrad  Elaine F. Miller, who added “The young woman on the left was my father’s paternal cousin, Chaya Hochrad.  The National Library of Israel****

* Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, https://hmd.org.uk/

** Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, https://hmd.org.uk/

***I Remember Wall, https://iremember.yadvashem.org/?p=1068&&utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter-english&utm_campaign=iremember-2022&utm_content=email-01

****The National Library of Israel, https://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/english/Pages/default.aspx