Litvak in Ongar: The Boy Who Knew Too Little.

CHAPTER ONE

Joseph Aaron Litvak arrived in England from Vienna in 1936. He’d just turned twenty-five. He came with the eminent violinist, Bronislaw Huberman and the recently formed Palestine Orchestra, who were on their way to America for a series of concerts to be conducted by Arturo Toscanini for the wireless. Joseph didn’t play in the orchestra, he schlepped their instruments. A classical ‘Roadie’ if you like.

His father in Vienna knew someone who knew someone in the orchestra who owed him a favour and this was a way of getting a Jew out of Vienna, away from the increasingly rising violent anti Semitism, without too many questions being asked.

As was pre-arranged, he left the tour when the Orchestra arrived in London for a concert, en route to New York. He was so sea sick on the channel crossing, there was no way he could have even contemplated the offer to cross the Atlantic with the orchestra. The first violin had offered him a salted anchovy on the channel ferry to quell the seasickness, an antidote passed down to him through the years, but Joseph of course knew better, even though the only water he’d ever crossed before was the Danube. He puked his guts out. Putz.

He had been given an address in the East End where he would be put up until his money ran out, or he got a job. Fair enough, except he couldn’t get to his lodgings that first day because Oswald Moseley had just returned from a meeting with Hitler in Munich, and was trying to hold a rally in the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood to tell the Yids their days were numbered. That day the streets were impassable due to police cordons barring entry to some streets in Hackney in order to restrict the running fights between the local Jews and communists against Moseley’s thuggish Brown shirts.

Can you believe the young Joseph escapes the Nazis in Austria, only to find they’ve followed him to London? Imagine.

His English was very basic, as was his haksent, as he would tell them some years later,

‘I vent from der fryink pan and inter der fire—can you believe?’

Given time and elocution he was determined to become an Englisherman.

He soon got a job as an under-presser for Harry Hyams, just off Chapel Market in London. Hyams Costumes were very ‘busy by ladies work.’ Hyams also took in a little gents work too, on the side. He was some tailor.

When war broke out, Joseph was obviously excused fighting, being Austrian and all. So was Harry Hyams, whose flat feet were considered put to better use kicking the arses of his machinists making greatcoats and battledress jackets, rather than marching. Joseph accompanied Harry Hyams and some of his older workers, too old to fight, to Nottingham, to cut, make and trim for the war effort.

Nottingham was the lace centre of England—though there wasn’t a lot of call for it from the armed services. This being so, there was available labour among the good women folk of Robin Hood country. That’s where Joseph met Betty Driver, the daughter of John and Adelaide Driver. John Driver had done his bit for his country as a teenage infantryman in WWI and now also worked for the war effort, though this time round he was doing his bit half a mile underground at the coalface of Ollerton Colliery.

Young Elizabeth May (Betty), his only child, was just seventeen, an ex-apprentice lace maker when she joined Harry Hyams as a seamstress. It was either that or working in the bullet factory. Sewing was much quieter.

Betty was very pretty and had the air and hair of Veronica Lake about her. Joseph loved the Cinema, and Betty soon caught the eye of the handsome, foreign under presser. She was a shy little thing and had never met anyone foreign before, or anyone that good-looking. He was a good ten years older than her and she had no notion that he could possibly be interested in her. Besides, he was like the boss’s son. Way, way above her. She knew some of the other girls fancied him, a lot. They were always giggling and making rude signs behind his back. They thought he was much more Latin looking than Central European, and very good-looking for a Jew. She often felt herself blush when listening to some of the older girls describe in every mucky detail what they’d like him to do to them, praying they hadn’t noticed her reddening cheeks. Lucky her father didn’t hear those conversations or he would have taken her out of the workroom and surrendered her to munitions.

Though Joseph had been out with some of the other girls and was very confident around them, he was shy with Betty. Eventually he plucked up the courage to ask if he could walk her home after work one evening.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asked.

‘I was thinking maybe you might like it.’

‘And why would you think that Mr Litvak?’

‘Because it’s a nice ting to do, no? It’s nice for a gentlemen to do, no?’

‘Very nice, but I don’t really know you, me duck.’

‘Please to calling me Joe or Joseph.’

‘I don’t think my dad would like it Mr Joseph.’

‘Well, that’s ok. I don’t want to walk your father home.’

Betty giggled enjoying the tease.

‘Why me?’

‘Because I’d like to see more of you outside from work.’

‘There isn’t any more of me.’

By the time he untwisted his tongue, which had turned into a pretzel, she was gone. The next day he brought her a black-market egg. He continued to bombard her with fruit and chocolate, which he swapped for remnants with the market boys, until she agreed to let him walk her home, on the condition he stopped giving her things and paying her compliments that embarrassed her in front of the other women in the workroom. He agreed. He walked her to the end of her street but she wouldn’t let him take her to her front door. They chatted about the work and trivia and then he asked outright if she was ashamed or embarrassed for him to meet her parents.

‘Listen, Betty. I have much respect of you. But if you should want, I will leave you alone.’

‘Why are you interested in me?’

‘Because you are something special from the other girls here, and I like you very much. I would like to go out with you on a proper date.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘No henkey penkey, honest.’

His persistency paid off and she finally agreed to meet him by the Trent one Sunday, after she’d had her dinner. This was her first proper date. They took a walk and after a while, she slipped her hand into his. Later on she surprised him by inviting him back to her mum and dad’s for high tea. This sudden invite put Joe completely off balance. Getting to meet her parents and her holding his hand on the same day was more than he had contemplated. On the way they stopped by a ‘business acquaintance’ to pick up a gift of black-market fruit and eggs for her parents. He wanted to make a good impression. On the bus he nervously asked

‘Do you think they might think I’m maybe a bit too old for you?’

‘Don’t worry about that, me duck, that will be the least of your problems.’

So he met her parents, only the once though. She had, unbeknown to Joseph, told her parents he was Polish. After accepting Joseph’s offering of three fresh eggs and some fruit, Betty’s father, wanted to know why Joseph hadn’t joined the free Polish Army or Air force.

‘Well then Mister Driver, for one, I’m not a Poylisher. I’m Austrian awaiting naturalisation.’

He never got to point number two.

‘Get this lying Austrian, Jew bastard, fifth columnist out my house!’

He threw Joseph out of his front room and onto the street and forbad Betty from ever seeing him again.

‘And don’t you come round here anymore with your black-market goods. We’re decent people!’

For the first time Joseph’s charm hadn’t worked its usual magic. Dumped firmly on his arse on the hard pavement and wondering what to do next, he only just managed to dodge the fruit he had bought a few minutes earlier. John Driver’s aim was not that good but he was about to readjust it with the eggs.

‘Vait. Listen Mr. Driving, I’ll have you know that I’m no bloody fifth communist! And in my country decent peoples don’t behave like what you just done. If you won’t accept my offerings I want you should at least give the eggs to Betty.’

The eggs exploded on his natty shoes.

Despite her father’s objections, Betty continued to work at Harry Hyams’ workrooms and carried on seeing Joseph, which was possible because John Driver was on night shifts at the colliery and her mother turned a blind eye. Joseph was also on night shift a few times a week, not pressing more battle-dress jackets, but fire-watching from the roof of the Raleigh Bicycle Factory. Betty would take him flasks of Cocoa to keep him warm. She also popped under his blanket up there, where they got warmer and she lost her virginity and gained a foetus.

This was not part of Joseph’s plan either. But he loved Betty with all his heart and now all of his body. When she told him she was pregnant he didn’t panic or rush around Nottingham looking for someone to ‘take care’ of the problem. He put his arms around her.

‘So how vill you father like being a grandfather? I think maybe this could be the wedding without no need for a shotgun.’

Joseph lodged with Harry and Adele Hyams. They were like his family. They had no children of their own and Adele loved to fuss around the handsome young under presser.

They knew about Betty and Joe, though at first they thought he was just working his way through the machine section. When he cast his eye on their youngest member of staff, Adele gently warned him to be careful. Young Betty, she said, was different and wasn’t as experienced as the other girls. Over the weeks when the two were seeing each other regularly, the Hyams witnessed the unlikely and blossoming romance. They also noticed a big change in Joseph. He suddenly wanted to know about every element of the factory, about manufacturing costs and the business side.

Adele and Harry never expected the pregnant, sweet little shikser to arrive on their doorstep in tears having been thrown out by her own father for consorting with the very enemy they were fighting!

They took her in of course. She slept in Joseph’s room and they made sure he slept in the front room downstairs until they were married. No ‘hankety pankety’ in their house.

‘Even though the horse has bolted and you forgot to shut the bloody door already, you’ll keep your pants on underneath my roof!’

Harry Hyams’ Law.

Joseph and Betty married in a civil ceremony at a local registry office in Nottingham. It was attended by some of the girls from the factory and Harry gave Betty away. She wore one of Adele’s costumes that they’d altered, and added some lace to the collar and cuffs. Up till the very last minute Betty hoped her mother might attend the wedding, but she never made it. She wasn’t allowed to.

For their honeymoon they spent four days at a pub near Matlock in the Peak district, but they only saw the ancient beams on the ceiling and stunning views from the window of their room.

Lawrence Anthony Litvak was born in the Hyams’ rented house, under the stairs during an air raid, as they couldn’t get to the hospital in the blackout. Adele assisted Betty with the birth of ‘such a blessing.’

Then they named him Lawrence. Lawrence? After whom? Olivier? Arabia? Joseph’s father’s name was Samuel. And after her father’s behaviour, Betty was not about to call the baby John.

‘Lawrence? It’s a strong name. Why not? As long as the baby and his mother are healthy—Please God’ came the sound wisdom from the family Hyams.

CHAPTER TWO

Harry Hyams had come from the Russian Polish border with his family at the turn of the century. Shlomo and Esther Hemmanovich had left their village to escape the pogrom. They arrived in the Port of London with little Harry and his older sister Hannah and all they could carry, including their sewing machine. They landed up in Whitechapel in the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, where for the first few weeks the family slept in a dormitory. Shlomo found work with a Polish tailor, which enabled them to leave the hostel after a few weeks and move into a room of their own. Shlomo set up for doing alterations from the one room they all lived in. Esther worked in the local laundry and bathhouse where she took Hannah to help her. The little Harry played with soap and clothes pegs, taking his afternoon nap in a laundry basket. Harry didn’t have proper toys to play with, but as he got a little older and started school, Shlomo made him a little thimble and showed him how to use a needle and thread. In time he learned to clean and oil the sewing machine and keep it in ‘tips tops‘ working order.

Harry was sent to the Jewish free school in Bell Lane, where he learned English and Hebrew. His family spoke Russian and Yiddish at home. Harry hadn’t had any choice about becoming a tailor; though for a fleeting moment had dreams of becoming an actor. Oy Vey!

He used to sneak into the Pavilion theatre in Commercial Road, where they often put on Yiddish plays. The audience joined in with the play—they always knew better than the playwright. Famously, on one such an occasion an actor in character collapsed on stage, dramatically clutching at his heart. The actress playing his wife arrived on stage to find her husband on the ground,

(In Yiddish) ‘ What shall I do?’ she cries.

‘Give him some chicken zoop!’ came a chorus from the balcony.

The actress bends over the body of her husband to listen for a heartbeat. She looks up at the balcony and shakes her head.

‘It won’t do any good, he’s dead.’

‘Well it can’t do any harm!’ came back from the audience.

‘Give him a bissel taste, who knows?’ came another.

Another old Yiddle in the audience piped up,

‘She’s right, if the soup was my mother’s he might wake up and take some more, Imagine that.’

Harry loved going to the theatre and thought about trying to join the theatre company, but Shlomo was becoming arthritic to the point where he could no longer work the treadle on the sewing machine without great pain to his knees and ankles. His fingers were no longer strong enough to guide the suiting material straight enough through the needle. So, Harry had no choice but to stay home and take care of the family. That was the way it was then. From alterations he learnt to make trousers, then jackets. Hannah used to do the books until she died from tuberculosis in her early twenties.

‘The rest is history. I’m a legend in my own house. Ask Adele why don’t you?’

Betty loved listening to Harry’s stories while she was nursing Lawrence, and Joseph froze on the roof of the bicycle factory, waiting to report bomb damage. They owed a lot to Harry and Adele Hyams.

The war over, they all returned to the East End of London and the bombsites. Harry and Adele’s house was one of the only houses still standing in their street and they were able to move back in. They offered to take the Litvaks in with them till they found their own place.

Hyams Costumes and Mantles was soon up and running where it had left off, apart from the lack of actual material, which was rationed. The only bulk cloth available was military surplus, which was dyed black or dark brown and the Air force blue dyed navy. Blankets were also used to make Utility clothing, mainly coats. Harry made as many garments as there was cloth, and did very well, considering. With Harry Hyams’ blessing, plus a couple of his surplus sewing machines, Joseph set up a small workroom of his own, above an ironmonger’s in Hackney, making skirts and blouses. Betty was his sample machinist, over-locker and top machinist, his only machinist at the beginning. Hyams’ advice was

‘Never under-estimate the over-locker’

Baby Lawrence attended a nursery nearby in the mornings, and in the afternoons he played with the cotton reels and slept under the cutting table until Betty took him home.

Their first home was a two-roomed rented flat in Mare Street, near the business. There was a sink and a cooker in the living room and a shared bathroom on the half landing. It was all they could afford, and during the winter they slept under the blankets that would be made into tomorrow’s skirts, but they were happy and Joseph worked every hour God sent. Including high holidays.

He got a break when the workroom above him was about to go belly up when it’s proprietor, Moshe Taubmann was arrested for forging ration books.

‘Who would have thought that such a huge man with chronic halitosis and a wizard at getting the most out of a yard of cloth had such a delicate skill at his chubby fingertips?’

One day a well-known West End manufacturer delivered a load of cloth and patterns to Taubmann, unaware that he was no longer there in person. Joseph seized the opportunity and signed for the delivery. He told Taubmann’s workers that he would pay them on completion of the order, and if that worked out they would all keep their jobs. He visited Moshe Taubmann in custody and informed him of what had taken place.

‘Listen Litvak, if I had been in your shoes I would have done the same thing. But do me a favour and see if you can keep the staff on. I won’t be coming back. When I get out I’m going back into the printing business. Oh, and don’t let that goniff of a landlord do you over with a new lease.’

And that was that. He delivered Taubmann’s order. The contractor was so pleased with the quality and finish he offered him more work. He didn’t care who made it; only how well it was made. In future his dockets would be made out to Joseph Litvak Ltd.

Downstairs in his own place, Joseph continued to make skirts and blouses, and upstairs he carried on the more profitable business of making ladies coats and costumes. If business was good in the West End Joseph was busy. If not, he could lose his staff to the competition. To make doubly sure he had plenty of work in that time of rationing, he ‘knocked off’ (copied) some of his contractor’s designs destined for the West End and sold them in cheaper fabrics for half the price to local shops, who because of the rationing, would take whatever they could get. Good old Harry Hyams also gave him any spare work that came his way. He even offered that Joseph and he should join forces. Joseph was grateful but was determined to make it on his own.

‘Before you turn me down, Joseph. Do you know how much I made last year?’

‘Half what you declared.’

‘So you know my accountant?’

They embraced and Harry wished him all the very best.

Joseph was a snappy dresser. He took great pride in his appearance. He even went to his workroom in a suit and tie, his sandwich and The Drapers Record carried in an old leather music case he’d traded for a skirt. He claimed that half the battle in business was,

‘Looking the business. The other half is trying to get credit from the bank. You know what I’m saying?’

He would berate the scruffy Travellers that came to his workrooms peddling cut-price shoulder pads and trimmings,

‘Look how you look; come back again when you’re presentable. Have some respect.’

One day he went over to Harry Hyams’ workrooms to pick up some already cut work, a job that would cover the schlepper in fluff. Nevertheless Joseph wore his suit.

‘I didn’t ask you for dinner, Joseph. I asked you to pick up some cut work and linings.’

‘Because you come to business like a schlock, I don’t have to. Harry, for a managing director it’s not a good look. You know what I’m saying?’

Harry, in collarless shirt and a holey old cardigan looked heavenward and shrugged,

‘Let me tell you some free advice for nothing. One, never try to teach a pig to sing, you’ll be wasting your time, and annoying the pig. And two, Mr Fancy Shmantzy dresser, remember, a new tie invariably attracts the soup of the day—so put that in your pipe and stick it!’

Harry was big on homespun philosophy. Framed on the wall by the Hoffman press hung a printed notice.

‘Don’t run out of steam. Life may not be all you want, but it’s all what you got.’

CHAPTER THREE

Business was good, young Lawrence was growing fast and Betty was a good wife, mother and machinist. They worked hard and had a laugh with each other. One night as Betty was lying in bed watching him get undressed after an exhausting seventeen-hour day he caught her reflection in the mirror.

‘Will you still love me when I’m old and bald, Bettela?’

‘Listen duck, it’s hard enough now when you’re young and hairy, you work so hard. Come to bed before I fall asleep!’

Joseph thought almost as much of Betty as he did of himself. But now he was a family man. The head-of-the-family man. One day while they were having a break in the workroom, and he was watching Betty struggling to keep Lawrence amused, he suddenly announced,

‘It’s time to take stock and make a move on.’

‘How come? We’ve never taken stock before, and I didn’t think the accounts were due till the end of March.’

‘Not stocktaking. Taking stock.’

At that precise moment baby Lawrence gurgled just in time for her to retrieve a piece of tailor’s chalk that he was about to swallow.

On Valentine’s Day, Joseph proudly announced that he had picked up another three ‘almost’ new machines on credit, and had rented a house in Finsbury Park. Though Betty was thrilled she was slightly miffed that he’d gone ahead and rented a house without her having seen it, and worse, without telling her. This was something she would have to get used to. When she approached him about it, he took her in his arms,

‘I hear what you say. A marriage should be equal, and that’s fine by me, as long as you understand I make the decisions.’

It was a terraced house and was only a bus ride away from the workroom. No shared bathroom, though the bath was in the kitchen, and there was an inside toilet. Lawrence also had his own room and did not have to share with Betty and Joe or sleep in the front room. It also had a basement flat with a separate entrance. Joseph Litvak was now also a landlord and collected rent weekly. No rent book of course. Things were looking up.

Shortly after the move to the new place, whilst rearranging Joseph’s shirts, Betty found tucked at the back of one of his drawers, a nice long white scarf with black stripes and long white fringes and it was in a ‘sweet’ purple velvet bag with a gold star embroidered on it. She wrapped it round her neck looked in the mirror, and satisfied with the look, went out. However it wasn’t the Notts County football supporter’s scarf she thought it was, it was Joseph’s Tallit—prayer shawl. She didn’t know. There she was, a beautiful shikser sashaying down Stamford Hill High Street past all those frummers in their black hats, long beards and frock coats staring at her in disbelief. She told Joe where she’d been that afternoon, and asked him what could they have been staring at? Was her hair funny? What? He shrugged.

‘I can’t think. Who wouldn’t like to look at a beautiful woman?’

‘Is it a no go area for non-Jewish people?’

‘What? This is England.’

‘Well what then?’

Joseph went out of the kitchen and into the hall. Betty heard him laugh out loud.

‘What’s so funny?’

He came back into the kitchen with the Tallit and bag.

‘I hope you didn’t mind me wearing your scarf and that pretty little bag,’ she asked.

He gasped and shook his head choking back the giggles. Imagine. He told her what they were and why the men were frowning at her. She was lucky not to have been stoned to death.

‘And that reminds me, where’s my Notts County scarf?’

He dined out on that story for years.

Though Joseph was not a deeply religious man, what had happened at the hands of the Nazis had a profound affect on him. He knew how lucky he was to have gotten away when so many of his family and friends had not. He felt guilty at having escaped. He was pretty secretive about his past. Whenever Betty read or saw something about the Holocaust he looked away or changed the subject. He kept her out of his past.

Betty had made contact with her mother after the wedding by writing to her. There was no response. She sent them a telegram on Lawrence’s birth and heard nothing. She sent some photos of her and baby Lawrence on his next couple of birthdays but still heard nothing back. Out of the blue she got a parcel with a toy car on Lawrence’s fourth birthday from her mother. She was thrilled but her hopes were soon dashed when a letter came from her father pronouncing her dead and informing her that neither her name nor her bastard son’s would ever be mentioned in his house again.

‘Are you sure you father’s not Jewish?’ asked Joseph in utter disbelief. He offered to take her to see them, and if necessary physically force her father to acknowledge his grandson. Betty wouldn’t have it. Her father had to accept all or none of them. Like her father, Betty was strong willed and even though Joseph wasn’t very religious she felt it was the right thing for her to convert. She was very much in love and would do anything to please him, so Betty Litvak, née Driver began religious instructions from the Rabbi of their nearest Reform synagogue. It was her choice, but after the letter, to hell with her father.

One day Lawrence would ask about his grandfather and find out what a sad, ignorant, bigot, schmuk, John Driver must have been. Lawrence wouldn’t have missed much. But Grandfather Driver had.

Things were going well for them—what rationing? Where? There was always meat or fish on the table. What Betty couldn’t get with their ration book, his dad somehow managed to.

‘You scratch my back and I’ll take a strip off yours.’

When it came to the holidays, people who were doing really well in the rag trade, the big manufacturers, went to Bournemouth for their fortnight in August. Joseph took Betty and the five-year-old Lawrence to Bognor Regis.