Sarah’s story

Both Sarah’s parents were born and bred in Russia. In the late 1800s her father lived through the pogroms – racist attacks on the Jews. Jews in Russia were treated badly because often they had jobs in business so were reasonably well-off and people envied this.

Some were political radicals which meant that they were against the Tsars, the rulers of Russia, who in turn orgainsed pogroms in which Jews were killed. These got particularly bad after 1881 and the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. This was blamed on political radicals and therefore many Jews. Governments liked to find scapegoats to blame for their country’s problems; often the Jews in Russia were blamed.

As a young boy he remembers his father’s beard being pulled at as a punishment and as a way to intimidate Jews. Life was generally bad for the Jews as a result of the persecution they faced; Sarah’s parents remember having little food and finding it difficult to get jobs.

It was this that made her father decided to move to Europe, and in particular he had heard that England would provide a safe base for him and his family and that he potentially might find a job possibly working in a market.

The family made the journey to London in 1902, with Sarah’s aunt who travelled with them. She contracted diphtheria on the boat and had to overcome it without medication.

Once in London the family settled initially in Whitechapel where her father opened a business. The children attended the local secondary school called Redman Road School. This was not a Jewish school.

During The Blitz the family were still in the East End and the children found shelter in the cellars of a local brewery when the bombs fell at night. The Blitz made their life very difficult and they longed for a change.

In 1952 Sarah moved to North West London with her husband to be closer to a bigger Jewish community. But her parents remained in the East End as they felt more comfortable with the community there.