Page 20 - My Story

Barley”. He was eventually knighted by the Queen so became Sir Arnold Wesker and if you Google him he
comes from a very similar background to me.

As does, did, Harold Pinter. He went to our “brother” school across Hackney Downs. Denna and
I had started going to kosher dinners which were served in a building on Hackney Downs. We both came
from kosher homes but had no religious convictions to prevent our eating the food supplied at school, we
just didn’t like the smell or taste of it. I think eventually we brown bagged it but meanwhile we were
prepared to give the kosher dinners a chance. Our final verdict was that the food tasted OK, but the
kitchens were disgusting! Anyway, we would walk across the Downs at lunchtime and invariably meet a
trio of boys from the Grocers’ Company School, Peter Wineman, a cellist, who married my sister, Harvey
Dagul, a pianist, who married Jackie’s friend, Isobel Baer, and a third one whom I don’t remember, also a
musician. We would greet these three but not spend time with them and came across them again when
our two schools did a play together and that was when I met a whole lot of other Grocers’ boys. Was one
of them Harold Pinter? I really do not recall but when we did meet later, we were each familiar to the
other.

The play was a Sheridan one-acter. I played a maid and the musical trio of Wineman, Dagul and
the nameless violinist played the music, which, as I recall was Mozart’s Turkey Trot. Their English teacher,
Jo Bierley, whom they all called Jo, directed and the whole thing was great fun.

Another time, walking across the Downs, I saw a woman whom I was sure I knew. We passed
each other with a lengthy look and a couple of days later, there she was again and this time, it clicked.
“Julie”, I called, and she responded, “Ruth?” Here was Julie who had taken care of us as infants. I invited
her to come and see us at home. I was horrified when my mother, rather than greet her as a long-lost
friend, offered her a job as our cleaning lady! Julie accepted. She was married to an amputee from the
war and had a son and was maybe looking for part time work. But I was very upset with my mother who
saw this very nice, bright young woman as a permanent servant.

Around this time Auntie Hilda, my father’s younger sister decided I should be given ice-skating
lessons. She was a figure skater, had actually toured in two ice shows before the war and took all of the
nieces and nephews ice-skating at Queens where she joined in the ice dancing at the end of each session.
She booked me a course of lessons at Harringay and I went along there quite happily and even won a
medal at the end of the first year but had to give up because of the pressure of all my activities.

In the summer of 1949 Uncle Nat volunteered to take a crowd of us to Austria. We were to stay
in Graz in the home of a nice family with whom he had been billeted at the end of the war and also visit
Vienna. On the way home, we were to visit what was left of the Whine family in Paris. My father and his
siblings had cousins called Fanny and Dora. I’m not sure whether they were from a sibling of my
grandmother or my grandfather. Fanny married Maurie Carr, a very pleasant, jolly man and Dora married
one Benjamin who was Polish. Benjamin did something illegal and was deported and he and Dora went
to live in Paris where they raised three daughters, Margie, Renee (called Ronnie) and Jeanette. When the
Nazis occupied Paris, they came looking for Benjamin. Benjamin had been hidden by his womenfolk and
only Dora and Jeanette were at home. When the Nazis could not find Benjamin, they said they would
take Dora. Jeanette, then aged fifteen would not leave her mother so they were both taken and sadly,
never heard from again.

So we set off for Graz – we being Uncle Nat, Jackie, cousin Stanley, cousin Myrtle, Edith who was
the younger sister, but older than all of us, of Deanna who was Uncle Bunny’s fiancee and me, the baby,
aged fifteen. I suppose Edith was in her early twenties and embarrassingly kept throwing herself at Nat
but that added to the general interest of the trip. My understanding is that she married happily and
produced a brilliant son who is some kind of diplomat.

We arrived in Graz, a medieval town, situated in the south of the country and I believe considered
Austria’s second town. We were staying with a very charming family. A beautiful, gracious hostess, her
husband who was a good deal older, Jewish and had spent the war in hiding and their son, aged about 18,
whose name was Daddi.

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