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SECOND WORLD WAR - JEWISH EVACUEES
'From Here to Obscurity' A Novel About the WWII Jewish Evacuation to Soham by Yoel Sheridan
'From Here to Obscurity' - World War II Jewish Evacuation to Soham & District by Yoel Sheridan The novel "From Here to Obscurity" by Yoel Sheridan recreates the Yiddish speaking East End of London between the wars, and its war time destruction. It also covers in several chapters the experience of evacuees from the Jews Free Central School in East London to the Cambridgeshire villages of Soham, Isleham and Fordham during World War II. Nostalgic Return for Evacuees
Two men who were evacuated from the East End of London to Soham during the Second World War were reunited at Soham Village College on Monday 1st July 2002. Norman Leff, now living at Arnos Grove in London and Yoel Sheridan, who now lives in Natanya in Israel, were evacuated from the Jews Free Central School, near Shoreditch, in 1939. Norman stayed with a family in Sand Street and Yoel, who has published a book entitled 'From Here to Obscurity' which includes an account of his stay in Soham, lived in Downfields and the High Street, in Soham. They met Peggy Gibbon, who helped Soham Community History Museum write their new book 'Soham at War', Myrtle Fordham and Phylis Gibbon, who lived in Soham during the Second World War. Yoel, a retired accountant and writer, travelled from Israel with his wife and grandson, Joshua, who lives in Australia. They talked about their experiences in Soham during the war and answered questions from students at Soham Village College. Yoel said he was enjoying his stay and added: "The reunion has renewed a lot of old memories." Mrs Gibbon, of The Butts, met Yoel when he was just 11 years old. "I remember starting school the day after war broke out and that was when I first met Yoel. We used to go dancing together," she said. "It was good to meet up again after such a long while and discuss the times we used to go to the cinema in Soham. Everyone still has a great sense of humour, which you had to have if you lived during those times. Myrtle brought her autograph book that Yoel and the others had signed during the war." War-time Memories Caught on Film
Evacuees returned to Soham 60 years after spending their wartime childhood in the town. They came back as part of a major research project to recall their experiences for a film recording the 270-year history of their former school. Dr Nathan Blau and Professor Sam Shuster were 10-year-old pupils at the Jews
Free School in Camden in 1939 when they were forced to leave their homes and
move to Soham to escape the London bombings during the Second World War. For the next four years they joined hundreds of other youngsters who were
evacuated out of the city into East Anglia. A refugee centre in St Mary's Street, Ely also took refugees from Germany,
Poland and Czechsolvakia including the father of David Lerner from the Jews Free
School who is leading the film project. David said: "Children were scattered all over East Anglia. They went to Isleham,
Sutton, Soham, Littleport, even Black Horse Drove. During the filming, funded by a £44,000 lottery grant, David tracked down Soham carpenter, Don Brown, who remembered the evacuated children and how he was taught carpentry by the Jews Free School teacher. He showed the visitors one of the items he made as a child and presented them with a clock inscribed with the name of the school as a memento. They also tracked down a 93-year-old Sutton resident who remembers teaching the children. He told how as a newly-married man with a three-month-old daughter he went away to serve in the forces, returning when his daughter was six. David added: "I tell the children at the school that many of the youngsters who were evacuated had their education totally disrupted and yet we have doctors and professors. They have all risen to the top of their fields through sheer determination." The evacuees' memories will form a small part of the film which is due to be completed by September and will provide an archive for the 1,500 pupil school. An exhibition recalling some of the evacuees' wartime experiences opened at Ely Museum in March 2002 and runs until October 2002.
'From the East End to Soham' Frank Rose, Jack Benjamin, Leslie Lewis, Bernard Statman, Norman Leff, Yoel
Sheridan Collected by Michael Rouse, The Resource Centre, Soham Village College, June 1998. The Planned Evacuation Preparations for Evacuation were well-advanced in 1939. In July a Civil defence leaflet Evacuation Why and How? explained the Government’s position: "We must see to it then that the enemy does not secure his chief objects - the creation of anything like panic, or 0the crippling dislocation of our civil life. One of the first measures we can take to prevent this is the removal of the children from the more dangerous areas.” Everyone was certain of one thing. The war when it came would involve the wide scale bombing of the civilian population in some of the major cities. Such bombing during the Spanish Civil War had given a stark warning of what could happen. The “evacuable” areas under the Government scheme were:- London, as well as the County Boroughs of West Ham and East Ham; the Boroughs of Walthamstow, Leyton, Ilford and Barking in Essex; the Boroughs of Tottenham, Hornsey, Willesden, Acton, and Edmonton in Middlesex; the Medway towns of Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester; Portsmouth, Gosport and Southampton; Birmingham and Smethwick; Liverpool, Bootle, Birkenhead and Wallasey; Manchester and Salford; Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Hull; Newcastle and Gateshead; Edinburgh, Rosyth, Glasgow, Clydebank and Dundee. It was going to be a massive operation involving all children of school age, and parents were urged to register their children. Children below school age had to be accompanied by their mothers or some other responsible person. Expectant mothers could register, as could the Blind. The areas where the children would go to, and their mothers in some cases, were called “reception” areas: “There is room in the safer areas for these children; householders have volunteered to provide it. They have offered homes where the children will be made welcome. The children will have their schoolteachers and other helpers with them and their schooling will be continued.” The scheme was voluntary but it was anticipated that as many as 3,000,000 could be involved. After weeks of waiting, the German invasion of Poland on Friday 1st September 1939 was the signal for the plans to be implemented. The Reception Areas Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, which were at this time separate county council areas, with the boundary falling about half way between Ely and Soham, were designated as “reception areas”. In January 1939 the Ely Standard was reporting that local authorities had been asked to make an immediate survey of the accommodation available. Householders would be paid by the Government at the rate of 10s 6d (52p) a week where one child was taken and 8s 6d (42p) for each child where more than one child was taken. Where a child under school age was accompanied by its mother or other responsible person the householder would be asked to supply lodging only at the rate of 5s 0d (25p) a week for each adult and 3s 0d (15p) a week for each child. It was urged that local authorities appoint “experienced persons, such as Health Visitors, Sanitary Inspectors and teachers, to do the work of visiting.” There was no right of entry to obtain information and “Any cases where preliminary difficulties cannot be overcome by the discretion and tact of the visitor should be reserved for further consideration.” As the year progressed, Billeting officers with supporting committees were in place at county, town and village level. The 1st September 1939 The destinations for the evacuees were kept secret. Sealed letters were given out to party leaders at the last moment. For many schools from the East End of London their journey into the unknown country would begin at Liverpool Street Station and lead northwards. Among the schools heading for Ely Station and Newmarket Station were: the Jews’ Free School, Boys and Girls, from Bishopsgate; the Davenant Foundation School, Whitechapel Road; All Saints School; Virginia Road School; Hoxton House School, Shoreditch; and the Robert Montefiore Junior Boys School, Underwood Street. Many of the children were Jewish. Soham in 1939 Soham, described in Kelly’s Directory in the 1930’s as “a town which is long and straggling”, was once on the edge of a mighty lake or mere. It is said that the origins of the name are in Sea-ham, the settlement by the sea or water. By 1939 the old mere had become a shallow basin of rich farming land and Soham was very much a large agricultural community, with many jobs linked to the land and supporting those who farmed. Two windmills for grinding corn, out of a line that once went through the town, survived as landmarks, corn milling was carried out at Clark and Butcher’s Mill at Waterside. There was the ancient church of St. Andrew dominating the skyline in the centre of the town, next to the extensive recreation ground and pavilion, acquired for the town and opened in 1929. There was a Baptist Church, a Congregational Church a Methodist Church and a Salvation Army Hall. There was the Soham Literary and Social Institute in Station Road containing reading and recreation rooms as well as a Liberal Club and a particularly well-equipped Conservative Club with a good billiard room and hall fitted with a stage. The Soham and District Gas Company provided gas for most of the town from the gas works at Station Road and there was some electric lighting supplied to the town by the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Electricity Company. The town had a railway station on the London and North Eastern line. Many pupils travelled in daily to the old-established Soham Grammar School which had about 160 boys, some of them boarding. For local boys there was the Shade School with its long-serving head Mr P W Lovering. In Clay Street there was the Church of England Girls’ School and the Infants School. In March 1939 the Parish Council Chairman, Councillor Mr E Leonard, was defending the reputation of the town: “We all saw in the paper that Soham was considered a slum. While I know we have got one or two dark spots, I maintain that was a very false remark. I think if you take Soham, apart from one or two of the black spots, Soham is not a slum. It is considered a clean and healthy place. We have only to look at the average age of the poor old people that die to see they don’t die through any neglect, or filth or anything you can term a slum. We have had no outbreak or epidemic in Soham for some considerable time, and I think whatever County Councillor made that remark, it was unjustifiable.” At that same meeting under the County A.R.P. scheme the Council was asked to recommend two first aid posts. Mrs Bland, of the Red House, Fordham Road, was willing to allow a room in her house to be used as one of them and Mrs W A Slack would allow the use of St Etheldreda’s Hall for the other. Soham was quite a self-sufficient town with a good range of shops and a plentiful number of public houses. There was the Regal Cinema in Clay Street, the Central Hall in Fountain Lane, which had been a cinema, and a new cinema was being built in Clay Street almost opposite the Regal. When war came this small Cambridgeshire town with a population of under 5,000 would face one of the biggest challenges in its history, to find homes for several hundred unaccompanied children from London, as well as many mothers with children and a number of adult helpers. Wellington Boots and Bicycles Frank Rose was born in July 1927, the second of three boys, in East London. Both his parents were born in this country, as were both his father’s parents. His father, who had served in the army during the First World War, was a synagogue official and a strictly religious Jew. August 1939 was a time
of unparalleled anxiety and confusion in this country, not least for the
children of the big cities and their parents. Parents faced the agonising decision of whether to hold onto their young children or allow them to be evacuated for safety in the countryside with their schools, as they were being officially urged to do. My own parents made a last-minute decision to let my brother Cyril, who was aged ten, accompany me, issuing constant pleas: “Whatever you do, don’t let him be separated from you.” We made our way to school each morning in that last week of August not for lessons but with an improvised kit-bag each, a gas mask, a label of identification; ready to move off into the unknown or to be sent home again an hour later. Such was the situation as that extraordinary month drew to its close. Bliss was it not in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was - learning to accept the unreal as real, the abnormal as normal. Then on the morning of Friday, 1st September Hitler’s troops stormed into Poland and we knew that the waiting was over. In a way it was a relief. The growing tensions and fears of recent months - and years - were replaced now by a kind of resignation, a spirit of adventure almost. We were going to be sent into something called the “country”, known more from picture books (kindly-looking cows, fluffy white clouds, a darling lamb) than from any first- hand contact. It was possible to feel guiltily excited. Our school was situated in the heart of the old Jewish East End, a stone’s throw from Petticoat Lane market. That morning we marched out of its gates for the last time, past streets lined with weeping mothers and waving hands, a long orderly line of children and teachers on their way to nearby Liverpool Street Station. We brought the Bishopsgate traffic to a halt. All over the Capital similar scenes were being enacted. It was goodbye for ever to a world that died that weekend. Our world. “I hear,” my teacher’s wife said to me as we waited for the train to leave, “that we are going beyond Cambridge.” “Really?” I said, trying to sound suitably impressed. I had no idea where Cambridge was. The day was warm and sunny. We sat huddled together in the small compartment under the benevolent eye of Mrs Harris, but the predominant memory of that journey is of thirst. At Newmarket, our destination, the platform was abuzz with local people being helpful. Ladies from voluntary organisations were busy supplying much-needed glasses of cold water, boy scouts supervised by scout masters were helping with our luggage and handing out large bars of milk chocolate and other goodies. My brother remembers a tin of (non-Kosher) corned beef which tasted “delicious”, but I have no memory of this. Our reception at the station was to make a lasting impression on me. I was to revise my attitude towards strange big boys because of it. Clearly it would be silly to suggest that all previous encounters with unknown older boys had led automatically to physical or verbal abuse, but in the pre-war East End one kept a wary eye open. What was new was the experience of being actually helped by unknown bigger boys, strange polite youths going out of their way to be helpful...to us! Our school - historically a rather famous one on the Anglo-Jewish scene - split up in those hours never to reassemble again in its old form. Coaches took some classes to Isleham, others to Fordham, while we ended up in Soham’s Church Hall to sit watching a whispering group of adults who stood watching us, about to decide which of us to take into their homes and their lives. That day we acquired a new designation - evacuees. My brother and I were chosen early on in the proceedings by, it seemed, two ladies who walked with us wheeling their bicycles (everyone had bicycles) and chatting in the most friendly way. At first it wasn’t clear which was which, but it turned out that the elder distinguished-looking lady was Mrs Boyce, our new foster mother, and the younger her friend, a nurse named Mary Smith. How kind they were, how transparently good, like characters in an E M Forster novel. Both were to die in the prime of life, Mary Smith tragically within months, but in those moments they were our security and gratefully we clung to them. Mrs Boyce told us that she had two sons of about our ages and that her husband, a livestock farmer, kept pigs and hens in his field. On reaching her home in Kings Parade ( a part of Fordham Road), we entered by the side garden to find Masters Donald and Tony with a friend or two chasing each other with buckets of water. “Young scamps,” said Mrs Boyce tut-tutting. That was all. No explosion. In London we lived in a third-floor flat which had no garden but an adjacent walled flat roof on which we played. Throwing buckets of water about would, I suppose, have been marginally more acceptable that hurling sulphuric acid, but neither was warmly encouraged. Now this was freedom. There was one small initial problem that had to be addressed without delay. My parents, strictly observant Jews, had brought us up to have our heads covered at all times, in the house as well as in the street (though, paradoxically, not in the school classroom). I had to explain this embarrassing fact, with the request that we be allowed to keep our caps on inside the house in accordance with religious custom, to people who might never have seen a Jew before and who could easily misconstrue the request as bad manners. I needn’t have worried; no fuss was made and we were never made to feel self-conscious. Donald and Tony took us under their wing. The house had a very long garden, and half way down was a big double shed the size of rooms in which they kept their rabbits. We were allowed to hold and stroke them. It was wonderfully exciting. I was an animal-lover deprived of the company of animals. No dog, no cat. I had once brought home a tortoise purchased in the local Sunday animal market, but it mysteriously disappeared after one week. In springtime the market used to sell baby chicks for one penny each, so I bought two and I arrived home with these squeaking things in a small cardboard box, expecting to be kicked out with them. Not so; the family rallied round loyally though with as much idea of how to rear newborn chicks in a top-floor City of London flat as how to grow sugar cane - and with about the same chance of success. One bird died the next day. The other, a lively little fellow, won all hearts by his practice of chasing me round the dining-room table, and even meeting us at the front door, but he was dead after a week and the end was agony. No more animals! The message was sharp and clear. Now here was I a year or so later stroking rabbits and probably already planning to have one of my own. And there was a gentle old dog roaming about with doleful eyes. And there were plum and greengage trees at the bottom of the garden, the fruit hanging there for the picking. And.....the trail of discovery was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Boyce. A small wiry man with large gumboots strode towards us, hand outstretched. “Hello, my boys.” His grip was firm, his greeting warm. He was unlike anyone I had ever met before. It was not just that farmers were thin on the ground where we came from; the Mr Boyces of life, I suspect, were not too common anywhere. My abiding memory of Mr Boyce remains the strong reassuring figure who welcomed us that day, eyes twinkling and two feet firmly placed on the ground. Like Mr. Quelch in The Magnet he was given to exclaiming “Bless my soul!” He smoked a pipe, read the Daily Telegraph, but only once in two years did I see him wearing a tie, and that was in preparation for a funeral. This man who could build a house stood before the mirror tying himself in knots trying to tie the knot, his irritation growing by the moment. I was to see him more seriously angry at times; I was to see him occasionally stressed, coping with his seven-day-a-week job in all weathers and the anxieties of the war; but I am talking about a man who caught two ragged boys trespassing on his field one day and characteristically sent them off with half-a-crown each and some eggs. He needed all his tact and good humour to cope with the two evacuees who took their first tea with the family that afternoon, struggling not entirely successfully to keep back the tears. Evacuation was a trauma out of proportion to the size of our young over-protected lives, and the overwhelming nature of the reality of what was happening caught up with us in those minutes. On our best behaviour, trying to be polite, there we sat, my brother and I, to all intents and purposes in the midst of aliens. Nothing was familiar. The butter was deep yellow and tasted salty. For the first time since leaving the Infant school I was being addressed as ‘Frank’ instead of by my surname (the normal practice in schools those days) or the family nick-name ‘Chicky’. The friendly aliens were doing their best to make us feel at home but it was patently and pathetically obvious that we were not at home. Where were we? Odd though it sounds now, I had the vague fear that we were lost in the middle of nowhere, and how was anyone going to know where to find us? Cut off from the rest of our school companions, how were we ever going to find them? It was not until I ventured in to the High Street and saw with profound relief a familiar face that the sense of isolation was lifted, but even then - the uneasy fear persisted - how were our parents going to find Soham? Donald and Tony took us to “the field”, our future 21 acre playground, ten minutes walk away (but family bicycles would always be at our disposal) and bounded by the river. In Petticoat Lane hens were creatures cooped up in wooden crates or carried squawking and fluttering upside down by the legs. Here they wandered freely around the hen houses. Bullocks grazed by the river. The highlight of the experience was watching the pigs being fed, the low point walking into stinging nettles. Nobody had told us about nettles; nobody had prepared us for the sights and scents of the pigsty. This was the country as it really was, not the sanitised edited version fed to town children. We were told that we could help collect the eggs in the evenings if we wished. Things might have been a lot, lot worse. We wrote to our parents without delay reporting all the wonders. Mr. Boyce had over a thousand chickens! More precisely, as we knew, he had eleven hundred, but a thousand sounded better. And Mrs. Boyce wrote too, promising that she would care for us as she did her own two boys. And when that night, our first ever away from parental care, we were woken by a cracking thunderstorm she came into our room to allay any fears asking if we would like Donald to stay with us. Nearly six years later, in the early hours of V E Day, another memorable thunderstorm woke everyone up, only this time we in London lay in our beds listening with wonder to the sound and fury, serene in the certainty that it was “only thunder”. Saturday morning, and the issue was Wellington boots. “A boy can’t live in the country without Wellingtons,” Mr Boyce said. The day was the Jewish Sabbath when entering shops was unthinkable - a sin. But we went with him un-protesting to the local shoe shop because 24 hours is a long time to be away from home influence and - well, a boy can’t live in the country without Wellingtons. The following day a different issue was occupying our minds. We were in the garden when Mrs. Boyce came to tell us that this country is now at war with Germany. “Does that mean,” I asked, “that war has broken out?” The wording seemed to matter. “Yes,” she replied, “we are at war.” I think I went on playing. The not insensitive boy whose childhood was haunted by the spectre of war relegated the Dread Presence at the moment of his coming to his place in the queue. I still find this disconcerting. As a boy in the 1930’s I was taken regularly to visit my grandmother who lived a short distance from Whitechapel Road. We had to pass by the house of a colourful local character, Mary Hughes, the daughter of the author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Mary Hughes, then a striking old lady who walked about wearing a red cloak, made it her business to alert people to the horrors of a second world war by plastering her window with frightening pictures of skulls wearing steel helmets, and similar material. The warning should hardly have been necessary, for a common sight in London in those days was of men with one arm or one leg playing barrel organs in the streets. Still, Mary Hughes went about her task of educating people and I used to find the display in her window so disturbing that I averted my gaze whenever I passed by. This was at a time when the growing Nazi menace was increasingly dominating the news, inducing in us deep fears. The story has a peculiarly tragic and ironic ending. The huge block of flats immediately opposite Mary’s house was named after her and in April 1945 the very last German V-2 missile to strike London made a direct hit on Hughes Mansions with appalling loss of life. Perhaps this is not the part of the story at which one ought to end. Hughes Mansions was rebuilt on its old site after the war and my mother made her home there for many years. The memory of Mary, the peacemaker, lives on. What was happening in Soham in September 1939 was more immediately pressing than what was taking place on the battlefields of Poland. Mr Boyce began digging up his lawn to make a reinforced outdoor air-raid shelter. I even went through the motions of helping him but I - being a little overweight and more than a little lazy - found it hard going. Meanwhile the school had found a place to assemble, in the Church Hall, I believe, until arrangements were made for us to share accommodation for part of each day at the Shade School and eventually take over the Conservative Hall which was to become our “permanent” base. It was a time of adaptation and discovery. Our education in the all-important broader sense of that term began from day one. Soham at the outbreak of the war was a village with a population of 5,000, uncluttered by cars, uncluttered by throngs of people even in the humming High Street during the busiest shopping hours, and with its imposing church tower dominating the village skyline, its quiet lanes, its gas-lit cottages and houses, its windmill, its fields and the surrounding Fenland never more than a few minutes walking distance, it was about as far removed from built-up bustling central London as most of us could imagine. And what better time could there have been to become familiar with our new surroundings than when we did? Day followed day basked in mellow sunlight, blackberries ripened in the hedges, the countryside was tinged with the colours of early autumn. Taken for a school walk early on, when everything was still fresh, I enquired about the puzzling small mounds of freshly-dug soil in open fields which seemed to have no purpose. A fellow-pupil explained. The farmers go round and cover up the cow droppings (that was not the exact expression he used) with earth. It didn’t sound right but neither of us had heard of moles. Neither had we heard of conkers. Boys’ playground games in leafless London E.1. involved bats and balls, spinning tops, cigarette picture cards, yo-yos, marbles, matchsticks even, raced against each other in gutter streams - the Queen Mary versus the Normandie. But conkers? The nearest patch of public grass was inaccessible at the Tower of London half a mile away, the nearest park a bus journey of two miles. The game of sloshing your opponent’s conker became a passion, played with the zeal of converts to a new faith who wanted to make up for lost time. But it was to foster-brothers Donald and Tony that Cyril and I owed most for initiation into country life. Donald, some months my senior, was a particularly important source of illumination and enlightenment. A likable boy with a healthily normal outgoing nature, his sense of fun could pop up in unexpected places. One night after Cyril and I, sharing a double bed, had settled down to sleep the bed began to make mysterious little movements. “Stop it,” I said. Moments later the movements started up again. “Will you stop it!” I said. “You stop it,” he retorted, thinking that I was trying to be funny. So it went on until the culprit, unable to control his giggles emerged from under the bed. From Donald, and to a lesser extent the younger Tony, we learned how to care for rabbits and what fresh plant food it was safe to give them; how to ease the sting from nettles with a dock leaf (it didn’t seem to help much); the cycle routes to Ely, Newmarket and the surrounding villages; the names of aircraft flying in the sky; and the many bits of wisdom that the experienced impart to the inexperienced. In return we taught them how to play chess. Mr. Boyce told me more than once how grateful he was for this piece of instruction, so useful for the long, blacked-out evenings. I was too young in understanding and too socially inept to reply that all the gratitude should have been on our side, nevertheless it was true that in some very basic ways we educated each other. Donald told us later that when word first got around in the village that evacuees were coming from London’s East End they had braced themselves for an invasion of little ragamuffins with torn - or no - trousers. I suppose that we must have been something of a relief. And what were we London kids to make of our new world where nearly everyone spoke funny (That they did!) and where knocking at the front door was considered impolite and walking round to the back door the thing to do? Well, at least people spoke, not only to each other in shops and over the garden wall, but to passers by in the street, to strangers, to us. And, astonishingly, they left the doors of their houses unlocked at all times. Even at night. Even if the family went off for the day to Cambridge. But couldn’t someone walk in and help themselves? The question left them slightly bemused. Apparently nobody ever did. It was the same with bicycles. They could safely be left unattended beside a wall or hedge and called for the next day. Now you couldn’t do that in London. That you couldn’t. Since few people owned cars, and buses came (literally) once or twice a day, walking or cycling were the only ways to get anywhere. We impressed this fact strongly on our father at the first opportunity and early on in the autumn he bought us each a second-hand cycle (which he certainly would not have done in London) for £2.10s each. I kept mine for many years, a tribute to the sturdiness of its make rather than the attention of its owner. Bikes needed cleaning and oiling. Bikes got punctures. In this respect I would rather have had a horse: horses didn’t get punctures. Fortunately there was Mr Summerscales in his shop by the hump over the stream in the High Street and he would mend punctures for 6d - the price of a tortoise in a London street market; the price of 3 bars of strawberry cream chocolate, as yet still plentiful in Mr Barker’s little shop just down the road, though not for much longer. So the first weeks of evacuation passed. We were lucky, of course, but idyllic
life was not. Homesickness, concern about the war, uncertainty about the future,
the need to fit into the ways of two cultures, these combined to create a sense
of underlying unease seldom far below the surface. One afternoon, about a month after our arrival in Soham, Mr. Boyce had some
business to attend to in a neighbouring village and he invited Cyril and me to
cycle there with him. The weather was still glorious, cycling was still a
pleasant novelty, so what could have been nicer? But the day was part of the
Jewish festival of Succoth (Tabernacles) when many mundane activities, including
cycling, were forbidden; indeed for this reason we had a holiday from school. I
wrestled with temptation. Mr Boyce could not really understand what the fuss was
about. Seeing my indecision he said to me in the kindest possible way, “I’m sure
that God would never punish a boy for going on a cycle ride on a day like this.” The remark had a ring of such common sense that I have never forgotten it. Yet
it went directly against the religious teachings drummed into me from earliest
childhood. No pressure was put on us to go on that cycle ride, but we went.
Looking back today, nearly 60 years later, I feel neither shame nor pride, only
a keener awareness of the inevitability of our confusion, and the way that Mr
Boyce’s remarks, on this occasion as so often, seemed to point to a refreshing
truth. God, so to speak, had other things on his mind. The year was 1939. Frank Rose now lives in North London. Married he has 3 grown-up children and 4 grandchildren. His Table Tennis and Afternoon Tea We knew that there was a fair chance of being evacuated for a week or two before the 1st September 1939 when we were actually sent away. We kept a small suitcase with a change of clothing in our classroom. Each day we took from home a bag of fresh sandwiches. We did not know when we left home and said our goodbyes if it would be the last time. On the day off we all marched to Liverpool Street Station. We were terribly excited, not knowing where we were off to. The train stopped once, I believe it was Bishops Stortford, where the wonderful Salvation Army ladies gave to each of us a tin or corned beef; one tin of condensed milk; a large bar of chocolate and a packet of biscuits - to be used only in an emergency. Needless to say, after really taking heed for about a month, I really enjoyed the chocolate and biscuits. The residue I gave to my foster parents for their general household use. For some reason, which was never explained, we lads of the Third Year Tech. of the Jews’ Free Central School, were not sent together with the rest of the school to Isleham and Soham, but to the village of Fordham with the Jews’ Free Infant School. After a few months so many of the boys had gone home to London that I was transferred to Soham with the rest of the school. Life became much brighter now. We were in an organised school with more or less normal lessons. The greatest boon was that our school was situated in the Conservative Club premises, with ample facilities for playing table tennis and billiards. I spent most of my spare time playing table tennis with Bob Gelkoff who was a local friend from East London. Later on, when I became more proficient on the small sized billiard table I moved onto the full sized one where I could enjoy many good games (when he allowed me to play) with Sidney Leperer, who was three years older than me. Better still was a game with our teacher, Mr J Benjamin (no relation). The first house I stayed in Soham was with Mr and Mrs Turner. There was no running water inside the house. I had to take a tub outside in Mill Lane and use the communal pump - terrible in winter. The last family I lived with were the Skipworths. They were a very decent couple who, although they had no children of their own, treated me with all the care of one of the family. When I came home after school, the daily maid Eva, prepared a trolley with a choice of white and brown sliced bread and butter, jam, marmalade and cakes. On occasions my parents visited (never at the same time as the fare was expensive). After a while parents, who usually lived near each other, organised a coach which made life simpler. The teachers’ wives organised themselves together with the local ladies and had several little pastimes going. One which I remember was a knitting class. The snag was the shortage of patterns. I was asked to hand copy several for them, which I did, and received a regular supply of home made biscuits - lovely! Our senior master, Mr Joseph Benjamin, who was very strict in London, turned out to be the most sincere and fatherly figure - still strict, but very helpful. Mrs Benjamin was a very friendly lady too. As a whole the local population was friendly towards us evacuees, but on
occasions the local press were not. I can recall the occasion when three or four
boys, the eldest being Sidney Leperer, were prosecuted for congregating outside
our school, while discussing general matters between themselves. The headline in
the local paper was ‘Hooligans in Soham’. When I was 15 years old, my father decided it was time for me to get a job. I
went home and became apprenticed to a jewellery manufacturer. In between I was
working a surgical instrument maker for four years during the war time and four
years after. Being away from home in a non-Jewish environment made me much more devoted to
religion when I returned and as time progressed. Ely Standard - 10th Candles and Conkers Leslie Lewis lived with his parents and older brother and sister in the East End. His father was a Master Butcher and owned his own Kosher Butcher shop, which was opposite their house and within ten minutes walk of the school. I was eleven when I was evacuated with the Jews’ Free School (Central School) to Soham. We arrived there around the 1st September 1939 and I was billeted with a Mr and Mrs Palmer. I cannot recall the name of the road, but I do remember that it was a fairly long one and at its far end was a ‘fleapit’ of a cinema and a few months later a newly built cinema opened opposite. The Palmers lived in a row of workers’ cottages and between each two cottages was an entry leading to the back door. Downstairs was a kitchen/living room lit by an oil-lamp. The front room had gas lighting and the front door led directly into it. As far as I can recall the only time that I went into the front room was Christmas Day 1939. Upstairs were two bedrooms. I shared one with Ron Palmer, their son, who was about fourteen. There were no lights in either room and we used candles to light us to bed. There was no running water within the house, just a standpipe outside the backdoor which was used by all the cottages. This toilet was at the bottom of the garden and was also used by the adjacent cottages. The stench in the hot summer was unbelievable. Our school was the Conservative Club, which was opposite the church in the High Street. Lessons were haphazard and the only thing we did learn well was how to play billiards as the Club had a full-sized table. Surprisingly, in charge of the whole party was our woodwork master, who wasn’t Jewish. (I can’t remember his name). The one Jewish master who I can recall who was with us was a Mr. A A (‘A Squared’) Harris and his family who were billeted at a schoolhouse in the same road as the Palmer’s cottage. Sometimes I would take their young daughter, Fiona, for a walk. After a period of time I left the Palmers and was billeted with an elderly widow at the other end of the village, off the Fordham Road. I remember I used to pass the Grammar School each day. Nearby was an avenue of Horse Chestnut trees and in season my pockets bulged with conkers. My one claim to fame was that the day after we arrived in Soham I borrowed Mr
Palmer’s bike and rode the six miles to Ely and was the first to make contact
with the part of the school that was there. As I recall we had very little contact with the villagers and were looked upon
as visitors from outer space, as none had ever seen or met Jews before. Mistaken Destination On September 1st 1939 I was one of the pupils of the Davenant Foundation School, Whitechapel Road, London E.1., which was evacuated to Soham. I was billeted at a public house, The Travellers Rest along the Shade. It was run by Mr and Mrs Alfred Griggs who had a son Tony. They kept one or two pigs and a few chickens. Their small transport business consisting of two open lorries collected flowers and soft fruits from local producers and delivered them daily to the London wholesale markets. After a few weeks it was discovered that in the secrecy about our destination on September 1st, some confusion arose, and most of our school had gone on to Chatteris, and we left Soham to join the rest of the school there. A second school also arrived there at the same time - the Robert Montefiore School, also from the East End of London. My short stay in Soham, which was a much smaller town than it is today, was a very happy one for me, leaving aside the uncertainty of the war situation - discovering the fun of living in the countryside, and enjoying the kindness of the Griggs family. Bernard Statman now Escaping the Blitz Norman Leff was
thirteen when Germany invaded Poland on the 1st September 1939 and war was about
to be declared. He lived at 640 Mile End Road near the border of Poplar in the
East End of London. His mother had fled from Luba in the Ukraine with her mother
and sisters just before the First World War, while his father had emigrated from
Poland around the same time. A few days before Christmas 1940 my mother decided that my younger sister and I should be evacuated again because we were not getting any schooling. So off I went again - this time to Soham. My sister went to Cullompton in Devon. I cannot remember how my evacuation was arranged or who met me at Soham, if I was met. I think it must have been Mrs Harris, our billeting officer. I stayed one night in a house. There was another evacuee there called Nathan Felby. The next day Mrs Harris took me to 2 Moat Terrace. My new foster parent was Mrs Alice Kate Roote and she was a widow. Her husband had been the chief groom for King George V at Newmarket. Mrs Roote was 62 years-old and had just recovered from a stroke. She had a son, Arthur Reginald Roote who was 28 years of age, married and also living in Soham. He had a car and a Raleigh bicycle; he was a manager at Clark and Butcher’s Flour Mill. Clark and Butcher’s refused to let him be called up because he was so valuable to them. He took milling exams every year for four years and came top each year. Mrs Roote had a daughter who lived in Ipswich and another son, Will, who was in the Merchant Navy. When he came home at Christmas he also brought the goodies. Meat was on ration, a few ounces a week, Will placed an enormous chunk of meat on the table. It was about a foot high and two feet wide. The chunk of meat did not really interest me because I did not eat any meat or chicken, I was a natural vegetarian. My ration of meat was eaten by Mrs Roote I am happy to say. Clark and Butcher’s had lots of chickens, so instead of meat I was given eggs kindly obtained by Reg. Mrs Roote was a very decent and kind lady, I cannot speak too highly of her, nor of Reg who allowed me to use his bike quite often. Occasionally Albert Daggers and I cleaned his car, and once he took me to Ipswich in it. I was lucky to be the only one staying with Mrs Roote. I could get on with studying by the oil lamp. After about a year Mrs Roote saw the light. She suddenly said, ‘Why should I have so little light. I shall use the gas from now on. ‘ So a little light was ‘sown for the righteous’ (Psalm XCVII) One of the older boys at Soham was Sidney Leperer (known as Pepper). He was staying at Mr and Mrs Desbois. He intended to become a Rabbi and was studying Latin on his own because this was necessary for university entrance. Sidney had two very valuable exercise books filled with history notes for the period we were studying - 1485 - 1688 and 1688 -1815. I spent many nights copying out the notes by the oil lamp and then passing the original notes onto two other boys who were also studying for the Matriculation. We learned the notes off by heart. Before I arrived in Soham, there were three Sidneys at the Desbois. One was Sidney Corob and the other one not yet mentioned was Sidney Samuels. Sidney Samuels was often up to mischief. He was a good sportsman although on the small side. In class if anything went wrong, he was sure to get a mention. Usually the master would ask Sidney if he knew anything about it. His stock reply was ‘Me, sir, no, sir, wouldn’t do such a thing, sir.’ Sometimes he was actually telling the truth. It was reputed that if a boy was given the cane and had his name entered in the Headmaster’s black book three times, he would be expelled from school. Sidney Samuels did get his name in the black book - no doubt more than three times, but, being rather adventurous he would steal into the Headmaster’s office, tear out the page which bore his name and remove the cane which he deposited down the drain. This theoretically benefited other boys. Despite the rumour of expulsion, I never heard of anyone being expelled from school or for that matter getting into real trouble and going to prison. We were good boys. Most masters had their own canes which they used quite frequently. I shall estimate that I received the cane about 50 - 100 times in the space of two years. I would sometimes get the cane twice a day. I don’t think that the cane had much effect and the only person benefiting from the exercise was the master wielding the cane. It was far more painful getting kicked or falling over when playing football than one wallop of the cane. I did refuse to take the cane twice on the grounds that I did not deserve it and I wasn’t caned for refusing. The Soham ‘school’ which the Jews Free School (Central) occupied when I arrived in 1940 was at the Conservative Hall. My classroom was about 80% occupied by a billiard table. Around the walls were about ten desks. The master’s desk was the billiard table. At 12 o’clock, off came the covers on the billiard table and some of us would play for about an hour and then run home for dinner, which usually consisted of Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, an egg and sometimes greens. Afters were jam puddings and a cup of tea. I was not good at billiards, but I was good at eating dinner. As soon as the meal was finished I used to read the Daily Mail for a few minutes. During the morning we had a break and one of the boys would take halfpennies or pennies and go off to Fullers the bakers in the High Street to buy big round buns with raisins in them. In the evening after tea we would go to the Conservative Hall and enjoy ourselves playing table tennis, billiards, even studied a little. When the Club closed we used to walk up and down the High Street and end up at the fish and chip shop to buy chips, fried in oil. I can remember one occasion when one customer at the fish and chip shop was shaking the glass vinegar bottle without success and Albert Daggers suggested ‘Why not squeeze the bottle?’ During the war it was extremely difficult to get cooking oil, so that owning a fish and chip shop was indeed a privilege. He certainly knew how to make chips - in a sense they were our sweets. Chips over, we walked down the High Street. There were no lights in the streets because there was a blackout. If a light showed anywhere, someone would shout ‘Put that light out!’ The windows were screened by dark curtains to stop the light being visible. The shops were not very interesting to us because we had so little money. I do remember the greengrocer’s shop which was just over the bridge. We could actually buy onions and leeks which were virtually impossible to buy in London. So when I visited London in April 1941, because it was the Passover, my 3 to 4 lbs of onions were very welcome indeed - and so was I. There was the Co-op where Mrs Roote purchased her groceries, it was just opposite Moat Terrace but I did not enter it. A bit further along the road on our side was the Post Office. The Desbois shop in Churchgate Street was in our consciousness because Sidney Leperer lived there. Sidney’s family held the Desbois family in great esteem. They were very respectful of Sidney’s desire to practise the Jewish religion. Their tolerance was a marvellous example of how to behave towards people different from themselves - whether through religion or colour. We knew where the sweet shop was - even though we did not visit it so often. Of course the Church was a landmark but I was not a regular visitor. I think I went inside once. On Saturday morning we had a Sabbath service. Mr Harris was the choir master. He also knew how to play the piano and taught us music, but not on Saturday. A few of us on the advice of Mr Harris cycled to Ely to hear a concert in the cathedral. Mr Harris said that the acoustics were excellent, which they were and the concert was very good. I had borrowed his bicycle. He passed us in his car on the way back to Soham . He said afterwards ‘I did not know my bike could go as fast as that!’ Mr Harris was a very laid back fellow. He used to read Damon Runyon books to us and introduced us to a weekly dose of Punch. I still remember one of the cartoons that appeared at the height of the North African campaign. Two sailors were at the helm of a ship looking far out to sea and one was saying: ‘I do feel sorry for those chaps in the desert - miles and miles of sand’. When Mr Harris was 34 he was called up to join the army. He was in the Royal Engineers. After a few months he returned to Soham on leave - he was a Captain! He described the army much to his amusement as ‘organised chaos’. A little later in the war he transferred to the Jewish Brigade which was part of the British Army. (Its formation had the approval of Mr Churchill who insisted that they should fight against the Germans in the first instance.) Mr Harris had taught us English, English Literature, History and French.
Fortunately Mrs Harris took over teaching us, in the evenings, and she did a
magnificent job. As the lessons were at her place after school, things were
informal; she even taught us to play Bridge, which I have long forgotten. There
were only three of us taking the London Matriculation at the time I was
studying, who were receiving tuition from Mrs Harris. Eventually I was the only
one who passed, such is the nature of such exams as the other two should have
passed as well. Mrs Harris gave us five shillings each (25p) to go to see Gone
With the Wind which was showing in Leicester Square, London. A ticket cost four
shillings and sixpence (22p), so I had sixpence left. At first I refused to
accept, but she insisted. The film lasted four and a half hours. We had very little money, but we really didn’t need much. I do not remember seeing a bus whilst in Soham, let alone have a ride on one. Our mode of transport was the bike. One thing we missed was sweets. We only had them occasionally and then they became rationed towards the end of the war. We did not see bananas during the war. I can’t remember what our food rations were. Mrs Roote used to put my margarine and butter on a separate plate in the larder and I used to eke it out for the week. I looked forward to receiving parcels from home containing my mother’s home made biscuits and cakes - baked with margarine in place of butter. Mrs Roote noted my anticipation and she would pronounce triumphantly,’ He that expecteth receiveth not.’ But the parcels kept coming despite Mrs Roote’s gloomy prognostications. She used to say, ‘Be sure your sins will find you out.’ There was one Friday night when Albert Daggers came round from the Hook’s. He took out a pipe, filled it to the brim and puffed away for a minute or two. then he made a dive for the kitchen and sicked into the sink. We cleared up as much as we could see. The following Friday Mrs Roote said, ’Would you like your supper before or after your bath?’ I said, ‘After my bath.’ ‘Oh, no, she said, ‘you are having your bath before supper, you sicked last week’ She had found out somebody’s sin, but it wasn’t mine! I remained silent. Bill Orbach, who was one of the three boys working with me towards the Matriculation, produced the best English essays. This was quite remarkable because he was born in Germany and due to the persecution of the Jews in Germany the family emigrated to Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately in 1938 part of Czechoslovakia was surrendered to Germany under the Munich Pact signed by Hitler and Chamberlain. Bill, his sister, his mother and father left Czechoslovakia on the last plane before Chamberlain’s plane left. After that it was more or less impossible for Jews to leave the country which was completely taken over by the Germans the next year. Bill came to England in 1938, he went to a different school for about a year and then came to our school in Soham. When I came to know him in 1940, he spoke English perfectly without an accent and wrote the best essays. To supplement his income he worked part time for Ennions the Solicitors in Soham. One day three of us, Bill, another lad and I, decided to cycle to Cambridge. On
the way we saw an accident involving a lady and a bus. Bill rode madly after the
bus, took its number and then rode back and recommended the lady visit Ennions
for advice. We had a master, Mr Benjamin, who was very keen on Maths. He had a very good collection of classical records which we often listened to with great pleasure. His son was a very clever boy and went to Soham Grammar School. A few of our younger boys went to our school for a while and then went to Soham Grammar School. One of them won a prize for an essay on , ‘How to Win the War’. I think it was fifteen shillings (75p). I also entered that competition and won five shillings in saving stamps. Mr Shrimpton, another of our masters, took us down to a town in Cambridgeshire where I duly went up on stage to receive my prize. I cashed them in the next day for a very good reason. One night, a few days before receiving my five shillings, I was walking along the High Street with Sidney Leperer and Albert Daggers, who stayed with the Hooks also in Moat Terrace. Sidney went home and Albert and I continued until we came to just opposite the church where we stopped to talk to a few village boys. We might have been a little boisterous - but not doing anything remotely wrong. Suddenly out of the dark came four feet attached to P.C. Wren and P.C. Bradford. We were arrested for loitering. It was downright disgusting and disgraceful that the police should pick on us just for standing at the corner. We were fined five shillings and that is where the proceeds of my essay went. At one stage in the court proceedings I disputed the evidence of the police and Mr Shrimpton said that we nearly had the police on the floor. I did not tell my parents about this episode for many years after. Reg was arrested the same week by P.C. Wren for riding his bike in the dark without a rear lamp. One boy Nathan Blau, who was ten-years-old, was a refugee from Germany. He left Berlin in 1939, nine years old and came to England. He stayed with the Leperers and Sidney, his sister and Nathan were all evacuated together to Soham. His mother and father were murdered by the Germans because they were Jews. Nathan Blau’s friend was Sam Shuster. Miss Stallard, who was the daughter of a bishop, was in charge of the club at the Conservative Hall. In the evenings there were dancing classes, I didn’t bother with that stuff, but my friend Joel Sheridan did. Joel was a plump lad with a very peaches and cream complexion. He often proudly carried a book under his arm - it was written by his older brother. Joel’s mother died in 1938 and when we had religious services he would say memorial prayers for her. One evening a week the club was partly devoted to boxing. The instructor was the
Champion of East Anglia. He danced around me laughing very good naturedly all
the time at my unsuccessful efforts to land a blow. Unfortunately my eyes were
not that good and when I didn’t have my spectacles on and he moved quickly he
made me think I was fighting more than one person at a time. I threw in the
towel because he wouldn’t stand still. Alongside us was a boy from our school Malcolm Fox who became involved with a
village boy. Suddenly there was a thump and the village lad was on the floor.
The boy got up but was promptly knocked down again. Generally though
relationships were very good between the Jewish Free Sschool boys and the Soham
lads. I did not hear of any complaints from any of our boys about bad treatment
from their foster families and all the time I lived in Soham I did not see or
hear of a single fight between evacuees and children in Soham. In April 1941 I went to London for Passover. During a short stay, all hell broke loose. On a Wednesday night and a Saturday night the Germans dropped a few hundred tons of bombs on the West End - mostly aimed at me in Brewer Street. John Lewis, the big department store in Oxford Street, was left a burnt out shell, only the walls were left standing. I saw all this the day after the raid. I do not think that the West End of London could have been classed as a military target. One night in Soham I was off to bed and so was Mrs Roote. There was a bit of a bang. Mrs Roote said quite mildly, ‘That shook the house a bit’. A few days later one of her cronies visited the house and Mrs Roote said in an aghast voice: ‘It literally lifted the house up and dropped it down again’. A few days later, no doubt, it would have been described as an earthquake! A landmine had dropped into a field. The ground was mostly clay so that the landmine made a hole about four feet in depth. What a disappointment! If the landmine had dropped in London a whole street would have disappeared. Somehow people used to be proud of the heaviness of the bomb and the amount of devastation ‘our bomb’ caused. Was it because people looked for sympathy to lighten their burdens, just as they used used to joke about the serious happenings during the raids? People sympathised with the death and injury of others, but the buildings did not come into that category. These were some of the Soham evacuees: Sidney Leperer, who later became a Rabbi; Sidney Samuels; Sidney Corob, who became a very successful business man, awarded the CBE; Ronnie Reitsis, who became an accountant; Murray Simons, architect; Alan Silverman; Henry Goldring, successful baker and owner of several shops; Nathan Blau, a leading neurologist; Joel Sheridan, chartered accountant, now living is Israel; Ronnie Goldstein; Sam Shuster, professor of Dermatology at Newcastle University; Nathan Felby; Albert Daggers, electrician; Morris Perlmutter; David Goldinger, Bobby Gelkoff and his sister; Arnold Drake; Frank Rose, known as ‘Chicky’, and his brother Cyril, an outstanding athlete and gymnast who went to live in Israel; Ginger Cohen; Bill Orbach, took the name of Bill Morton and had a successful career in films and television working with Orson Welles and being co-producer of Man Alive with Desmond Wilcox. There were other evacuees from London but for some reasons we rarely met them. There were two or three brothers who were from Kentish Town. One of the boys expressed surprise and sorrow when he said, ’Nobody down here has heard of Kentish Town’. We used to take them into our ‘club’ in the evening. There was also a very tall boy, not from our school, called Jim, and his older sister. We used to wander up and down the street together. There is an affinity between Londoners, in a sea of different accents a London accent is pleasing to the ear. After the war Norman Leff became a chartered accountant. He married a teacher Jews’ Free School The Jews’ Free Central School was in
Bishopsgate. One entrance was in Bell Lane and another was in Middlesex Street,
well, known as Petticoat Lane. The Jews’ Free School consisted of: an Infants,
Junior School, Senior School - girls and boys (separate) and the Central School,
boys only. In 1939 there were 900 pupils. The Jews’ Free School was founded in 1817 and in the 1890’s was reputed to be
the ‘biggest’ school in England with 3500 pupils. About 99% of the pupils were
Jewish, most of them from the East End of London. Poor children were given
breakfast every day and meal tickets. It was renowned for its charitable gifts
of corduroy suits for the boys and free shoes. The evacuation of the Jews’ Free School brought many of the pupils to Ely,
Littleport, Soham and the other nearby villages. In a book published in 1998 by Tymsder, Dr Gerry Black, tells the history of the school: J.F.S. The History of ’Free School, London since 1732 We’ll Always Think of Them Julius Shrensky was eleven years old when he was evacuated from the East End of London with his fellow pupils from the Jews’ Free School. I, together with my schoolmates, travelled by train on Friday September 1, 1939 from London via Liverpool Street Station to Newmarket where ladies of the WVS were waiting to greet us. They provided us with a brown carrier bag into which they placed ‘iron’ rations consisting of a tin of corned beef, a bar of milk chocolate and other instant foods. Clutching our belongings, our gas mask box and the newly acquired carrier bag, we trooped onto coaches and were transported to Soham. I arrived in Soham together with 150 or so other pupils of my school, The Jews’ Free Central School, generally known as the JFS Central School. Another 100 pupils or thereabouts went to the neighbouring villages of Isleham and Fordham and to Fen Bank. Those at Fen Bank were soon transferred to Soham. The coach stopped outside the Conservative Club in the centre of the village. We were ushered into the main hall of the Club where we were offered drinks of tea and orange squash and asked to sit on the chairs that had been set out in tidy rows prior to our arrival. Various officials and prospective foster parents moved about the hall. After whispered discussions, they would point at their chosen protégés who would give their names to the billeting officer and then proceed to their new abodes. My friend Lennie and I were the last left seated in the hall. We would like to think that this was because we had been selected earlier by an official to be billeted with foster parents who could not be present in the hall. We were ushered into a car and driven to 84 Downfields at the southernmost end of the village. There we were welcomed by a most friendly Mr and Mrs Edwards, offered something to eat and drink, shown about the house, and the bed and bedroom we two were to share in one of the upstairs rooms. It was a lovely summer’s day. We wandered into the garden at the rear of the house where we became aware that we were being watched. We saw two heads appear from behind the outhouse and sharply disappear when we looked towards them. We shouted ‘Hello!’ and eventually two boys came fully into view. They cautiously approached us. ‘Are you evacuees?’ asked one. ‘Yes,’ we replied. ‘You are Jews?’ he asked querulously. ‘We are,’ we said, ‘but why do you ask?’ ‘Well, you don’t look strange at all, in fact you look quite normal.’ ‘This place is strange for us too,’ we explained. ‘Where we live in the East End of London, the houses do not have gardens and trees are scarce.’ ‘What no gardens or trees!’ they exclaimed, ‘that certainly is strange.’ Eleven-year-olds soon learn to make friends and we Londoners were quick to follow our new found friends into raiding the plum orchards situated opposite the house. Such pleasures are not to be found in London! We all listened to the radio at eleven o’clock on Sunday, September 3rd, 1939, when war was declared against Germany. There were no air raids on London during the ‘phoney war’ period and after a short while, Lennie’s mother came on a visit and took him back to London with her. Many other pupils also returned to London during this period, but as my mother had died in 1938, my father and the school felt it best that I should remain in Soham and with the Edwards family. Young people may make friends easily, but they can also easily disagree over apparently minor matters that appear major at the time. Generally, friends can then go their separate ways for a while, seek solace at home and perhaps renew their friendship at a later date. For evacuees living amongst strangers (however friendly) all the problems seemed greater, and if the argument was with the son or daughter of the house, where could they seek solace? Foster parents, too, had difficulty in siding with the newcomer, and when they did, or did not, relationships between the youngsters were often further aggravated. Such was often the reason for evacuees returning home or changing billets. I stayed with the Edwards family for about six months, through that cold winter. For the first time in my life, I had Wellington boots which were essential for the three mile trudge each day, sometimes through very deep snow, to the Shade school situated at the northern end of the village. The Edwards owned a greyhound who would come bounding down the road as soon as he saw me returning, often bowling me over in the excitement. The JFS Central School shared the Shade school until December 1939 by using three classrooms each afternoon and also the woodwork centre. Mr Boughey, the Vicar, kindly allowed us to use the Church Hall on Saturday and Sunday mornings. In 1940, the Conservative Club premises became our school, recreation centre and synagogue. Schooling was difficult during the war years. Despite all efforts, we did not have the facilities, nor all the teachers, which we had previously enjoyed. Chemistry, English Literature and Foreign Languages were abandoned. Matriculation subjects included such restricted subjects, such as Electricity, Magnetism and Hydrostatics. Children of our generation had become ‘wartime educational casualties’, a factor that hindered many in their later working life. Artwork prospered and many old shoes were the subjects of the industrious imagination of students of still life. One budding artist made a sketch of his foster grandfather. Not long after the old gentleman died, his children had the portrait framed. Some boys attended the Soham Grammar School and in one case the foster parents of one of the German refugee boys, who had joined our school, kindly offered to pay the fees to enable him to go there. The Conservative Club premises were the centre of many of our extra educational
activities. There we learned to play chess, billiards, snooker and table tennis.
We were also taught modern and folk dancing together with the girls of Soham.
Chess tournaments were held with the Grammar School and football matches were
played with the Shade School teams. Bee keeping was introduced and we
commiserated with one of our masters who came to school with a swollen puffy
face having been stung on the forehead the previous day. We also helped the local farmers by singling beet and marvelled at the hoers as they chopped away the surplus beet growth with amazing accuracy and consistency. We followed on our hands and padded knees to ensure that only one single shoot remained in each place. Very often there were no surplus shoots to remove at all. Potato lifting was another novel occupation for us. One farmer for whom we worked had furrowed the field at right angles to his farmhouse. His horse was reluctant to pull the cart, into which we placed the lifted potatoes, when it was moving away from home and could hardly be restrained from galloping when returning in the direction of the farmhouse. While we enjoyed the farmer’s struggle with the horse many of us were not too pleased when he chose only one of our number to sit on the cart to receive the basket loads of potatoes which we could hardly raise from the ground. ‘We should all take turns,’ we demanded. ‘Not so,’ said the farmer. ‘In that case we will strike,’ we said, we’ll not lift any more potatoes!’ ‘Please yourself,’ said the determined farmer as he packed us off back to school. So ended our first lesson in farmer- employee relationships. By this time I had moved to live with the Pembertons. Mr Pemberton was a cobbler. His shop was in the High Street. He and Mrs Pemberton lived behind and above the shop. They were very welcoming and I have only the fondest memories of my two year stay with them. They had a married daughter who lived with her husband elsewhere in the village and a grandson who often came to stay with his grandparents and quarrel with me. Mr Pemberton resembled the grey haired cobbler featured in the old Phillips shoe soles advertisements. He wore his spectacles at the end of his nose. He would miraculously and accurately project nails that he held between his lips onto the soles of the shoes he was repairing, or making. Occcasionally I would assist him by polishing some of the shoes on his buffing machine. I was one of the younger pupils of the JFS Central School billeted in Soham and as such not so involved in the social interchanges between the evacuees and local residents. However, I do remember that, apart from the natural differences that were sure to arise between groups that are trying to integrate and yet remain distinct, our reception in Soham was generally warm and welcoming. Humour was an essential part of our co-existence between ‘townees’ and villagers and this also found expression in a ‘Villagers’ Song’ composed by some of the older JFS Central School boys. Who was it robbed the
apple trees? Evacuees! Who was it trampled down
the beet? Evacuees! But who have crept into our hearts? Evacuees! After the war Julius Shrensky changed his name to Yoel Sheridan. He worked as a chartered accountant. Now retired he lives in Netanya, Israel. The Soham Evacuee Club In November 1940 Mrs Stanley Stubbs,
the Soham Women’s Voluntary Service Representative, and wife of the new
Headmaster of Soham Grammar School, called a meeting at her house to form a club
for evacuated mothers under the auspices of the Women’s Voluntary Service. The club arranged to meet at the pavilion on the Recreation Ground, which they were allowed to use for two afternoons a week at a peppercorn rent. The club was opened on Tuesday 3rd December 1940 by Mrs Tharp of Chippenham Hall. Cups of tea were sold to members at each meeting and the money raised covered the running expenses of the club. The club organised their own library and a range of activities, including talks, community singing and parties for the children. By March 1940 Mrs Symonds and Mrs Squirsky had left Soham and Mrs Skipworth became treasurer and Mrs Thomas the secretary. Among those joining the committee were Miss Tamar Shuster, Mrs Grace and Mrs Weinberg, all London evacuees. The club knitted garments, made moccasins and snipers suits all contributing to the war effort as well as providing a social meeting place for mothers and their children. The Vicar of Soham, the Rev Boughey, was a firm supporter of the club as was Mrs Tharp. In September 1943 with many of the evacuated mothers having left Soham and several of the committee members needing to give up their posts the decision was taken to close the Club. All items loaned to the club were returned and the money left in the accounts was distributed to the members. The Essay Competition that Norman
entered was organised by the Ely Standard and run in conjunction with Ely and
District War Weapons Week in 1941. There were 347 entries, across three classes,
102 in Class A (under 11), 197 in Class B (11-14) and 48 in Class C (14 - 16).
Several of the prizes were won by evacuees. Class B was won by Harry Singer of ‘Hursley’, Hall Street, Soham, while Israel
Gelkoff, c/o Mrs W Hobbs, The Cottage, Red Lion Square, Soham, a pupil of the
Jews’ Free School, was Highly Commended. In Norman’s Class C, first and second
prizes went to Ely girls, Celia Millicent R. Lambert of Prickwillow Road and
Pamela Utting of St John’s Road, both pupils at Ely High School. The nine prize winners were invited to the Regal Cinema, Littleport to see the
show on March 14th and receive their prizes on stage. the ‘Winner of Winners’
would be chosen at a similar ceremony at the Rex Cinema, Ely on the following
night. Norman wrote: “A great disaster - the disaster of modern war - has come to Europe. Not a
calamity of nature, but a coldly calculated, scientifically organised
destruction of homes happiness and human life. Never has mankind known such a
bestial scurge. One country after another has been dragged into war, has been
beaten, subjected, pillaged, and crushed under the tyrannical heel. Only Britain, the bulwark of civilisation and freedom, has withstood the
ferocious onslaughts of ‘Hitler and his barbaric hordes,’ and only when Britain has finally annihilated this curse, will people live once more
in peace and security. ‘Britain expects every man to do his duty’. The duty of every man in this island
is to help to win the war. Victory can be achieved by our intrepid fighting
forces if they are given the instruments with which to carve it. And the way we
can arm our valiant forces, is to contribute our utmost toward the vast
expenditure of £12,500,000 a day necessary for the ‘fight’ of ‘right over
wrong.’ Evacuees’ Hostel For a variety of reasons not all the evacuees were billeted in private homes with families. There was an evacuees’ hostel at Churchgate House, Soham , opposite the Post Office, in the High Street. Dedication For all those who were evacuated and to all those who took them into their homes and their hearts. Published for Anne Frank Day, 12th June 1998 in the hope that it will make some small contribution towards a more tolerant world. M H Rouse. June 1998. Publishing History From the East End to Soham - First published in June 1998. Editor’s Note In February 1997 I began researching into the story of the evacuees to this area during the Second World War. My interest was aroused through work being undertaken by pupils both in our primary schools and at the Village College on the domestic issues of that war. That research led to the publication of the memories of Norman Leff and Yoel Sheridan in a privately circulated booklet - Furriners. This new publication reprints some of that material but concentrates on evacuees to Soham. I would welcome any further information from readers that will lead to a more comprehensive publication in 1999 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of that momentous event. M H Rouse. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Editor of the Ely Standard, John Ison, Esq., and the staff at Ely Library for allowing me to research through the wartime editions of the Ely Standard. The detailed reporting of the day is an invaluable record of events and meetings. My thanks to Chris Jakes, his always helpful staff at the Cambridgeshire Collection, Central Library, Cambridge, and Michael Petty, MBE, the former librarian for his index of evacuee articles. My gratitude to Anita Brown for delving into her Soham archives and the W.R.V.S. for allowing me access to a minute book of the Soham Evacuee Club kept by Mrs Barbara Thomas. To Sue Jordan, Linda Jones and Suzanne Wilkins in the Resource Centre for their support in so many different ways. My special thanks though go, of course, to the former evacuees who came from the East End of London to Soham nearly sixty years ago and whose memories form the basis of this publication. 'From The East End to Soham' - Reproduced here with kind permission of M H Rouse |
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