REMARKABLE LIVES

Tessa Kern, 88. Book keeper. Caterer. Loves a dance.

Julius 92 (8/9) Standing up to bullies: “We lived near Victoria Park in Hackney. But in the flat below us was a Blackshirt, a fascist. They used to have meetings sometimes at the end of the road. They used to put signs up in the toilet – anti-Jewish. One day I went down there, cos I wasn’t frightened of anybody, but every time he saw me he’d run. My mother used to live on the other side of the park and I used to go round every Saturday for a bath because we didn’t have one. One Saturday, when my daughter was about two months old, the man from downstairs came up and demanded my wife turn the radio down, she also wasn’t frightened of anybody so she shouted ‘if my husband was here you wouldn’t dare walk up the stairs’. She locked the baby in the bedroom and ran through the park to find me, shouting my name. I could hear her and jumped out the bath, got dressed wet, and ran back to our house. Well, he saw me coming and got inside. His kitchen was at the bottom of the stairs and I kicked the lock straight through the door. He threw a can of baked beans and it cut me on the side of my head. Tessa always said it was a shame, we could have eaten them! Anyway, this bloke and his dad were actually bigger than me, but you’ve got to stand up to bullies and show them you’re not frightened.”

Julius 92 (7/9) The happy couple and the chicken: “I met Tessa in 1947. Her niece was married to a friend of mine. I went over and saw this red hair and I said to my friend: ‘That’s mine.’ Funny thing, I was too shy to ask her to go out with me. Had to ask my sister to ask if Tessa would go with me. I used to buy tickets for all the Palladium shows, so I invited her to one of those and won her over! I knew she was going to be mine, that lovely red hair. We saw Danny Kay a couple of times and Frank Sinatra. Her father lined up all night once to get tickets for us. Funny thing about her father. He always used to say, when the Jewish holidays come we’re going to be short of food. So he used to go out to stock up. One day, he bought a chicken and he stored it in the outside toilet! He built a wooden shelf for it, so when you went to the toilet, you had to sit with your legs up! Then, when he bought the fish he put that in the bath! Tessa and I married in 1948.”

Julius 92 (6/9) Post-war working life: “After I was demobbed I went back to the firm I used to work for. The new manager didn’t like me though, us ‘old boys’ who’d been at the firm from the beginning but had gone off to war. They had to re-employ us for at least 6 months. Well, when my time came up he let me go. It was a week before I got married, would you believe. After that, I worked for a boiler company swinging sledgehammers, but when I got to 40 I’d had enough. So, I did the Knowledge and spent the rest of my working life as a taxi driver. Didn’t retire till I was 80.”

Julius 92 (5/9) Active service: “Like an idiot, I signed up for active service. Guess where they sent me? HMS Barcroft in the Orkney Islands! There’s nothing up there – I was real cheesed off! Our job was to lay a boom across the sea to stop the submarines getting through. After being posted around the Scottish coast, we sailed out to Gibraltar then to Naples then back to Gibraltar, to Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Brindisi – all the time doing salvaging work, though my work was as a stoker because it was a coal ship. Well once we got to Malta I’d had enough, so I passed some exams and they sent me to the Engine Room – much cleaner. I loved that because I could do my own washing and hang everything on the hot pipes to dry! I saw more action in the Blitz than I did at sea though. Finally, the ship was heading to Israel. Well, Palestine as was. So, I came off then, could’ve been a bit tricky. I demobbed.”

Julius 92 (4/9) When war breaks out: “My best subject at school was engineering. I remember making a beautiful coffee table and I’d just finished it when war broke out. I never saw it again! Anyway, I left school at 14 and worked in a tassel factory. My first wage was 12 & 6d per week. But I got fed up of that, then went on to an electrical firm, but by 17 my friend and I decided to volunteer for the Royal Navy. I got called up just before my birthday and went to a training college in the Midlands. Funny thing was, I’d only been there 2 weeks when my brother Harry turns up. He was only 16! I asked him what he was doing and he said ‘Sshh, don’t tell them, I put my age up’. From there I was sent to Devonport with my mate Stanley, who ended up serving on the same flotilla as Prince Philip.”

Julius 92 (3/9) The good times and the bad: "I loved boxing - my brother Hyman was a professional boxer and I used to box for the Hackney Boys’ Club and the ATC: Bethnal Green Squadron 416. All of us brothers boxed and our mother went mad! I had sisters as well, but I lost my younger one when she’d just turned 21. Her birthday was in February and she died in the April. She’d got cancer and they couldn’t do anything. I’ll always remember her saying that all she wanted was her brothers around her at the end. We were all there when she went. Not many of us left now of the seven. Just me, my sister in California and a brother in South Africa."

Julius 92 (2/9) A 1920′s childhood: “We didn’t have much money but my childhood was a happy one. I remember we would play in the street, games like ‘tin can copper’. We used to make our own scooters and go-karts out of old orange boxes. The local garages would give us ball bearings and all sorts of scrap we could use. That’s me, front centre, third from the right.”

Julius 92 (1/9) The early years in London: “I was born in 1925 and my wife Tessa was born 1929; I was born in Stepney. My mother came from Bucharest in Romania, and my father was Austrian. My father was a furrier and my mother a housewife, there were seven of us kids! This is the earliest photograph there is of me, taken around 1927 - it’s a bit risqué!

Saving memories with #remarkablelives #untoldstories. Another story from #Humansoflaterlife coming soon.

David 80 (5/6) Nationality problems: ”The Iraqi embassy were forcing the Jews to lose their nationality, and by the mid ‘60s we were all excommunicated. When the Ba’athist party came into power in 1968 they wanted rid of the Jews, as they were the wealthiest. My parents were stuck in Iraq but as they were elderly, the government allowed them to leave and they moved to Tel Aviv. We were never a close family but I suppose that was understandable given the distance.”

David 80 (4/6) Celebrity wedding: “Us Iraqis all had European girlfriends but we were the only couple to marry, a few years later in 67. Apparently a famous movie couple got married in the same place a week before - and left all the flowers!”

David 80 (3/6) David meets his future wife: ”I lived on Finchley Road, near other fellow Iraqi Jews. My wife and I met through mutual friends in the early 60s, she moved down to London from Stoke on Trent and lived in a bedsit in Hampstead.”

David 80 (2/6) The unruly days: “I left Baghdad for England at the age of 20 to study, my father had very high ambitions for me but I was a bit stubborn so didn’t live up to his expectations. Instead I spent a lot of time in casinos!”

David 80 (1/6) The early days: “I was born in Baghdad in 1937, to a Jewish family – Sephardi. There were no birth certificates at the time, so my birthday was guessed at.”

Sylvia Berliner, 92. Factory worker.

Sylvia 92 (3/4) Sylvia meets her husband: “My husband Gustav (Gus) was a refugee from Germany, his parents died in a concentration camp. They dealt in cattle in a remote village. He came to England in 1938, just before war and was taken in by different Jewish families; he did have a cousin here. He spoke good English because he had been sent to Canada before England, to escape the war. I hardly ever heard an accent, he spoke English all the time. We met at work, in the factory. He’d never done anything like it before. One day, they asked me to help him on the machines as he’d made a mistake...”