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Page Ten
THE JEWISH
NEWS
Friday, 044Zer T,
1943
Do you remember Magnolia Street and the fascinating Jewish characters inhabiting the
community that was made famous in Louis Golding's great book of a decade ago?
This street has been brought to life again in a description of its characters who are
actively engaged in helping win the war, in this splendid article which The Jewish News is privi-
leged to publish by special arrangement with Britain, published by British Information Services in
New York.
-
Magnolia Street Goes to War
By LOUIS GOLDING.
Magnolia Street
has gone to the war, for the second
time in one generation. But this
time something more has happened.
The war has come to Magnolia
Street: I mean that literally, of
course. I mean that a bomb fell
directly on the Pompeian Hair-
dressing Salon at the corner of
Magnolia Street and Aubrey Street
and reduced it to rubble .. . except-
ing for one wax lady who used to
display her smooth bosom and
permanent wave in the window.
She astoundingly survived
among the debris of brick and glass
splinters. How incredulous she
looked, how shocked! Poor dear
lady, more infamous outrage has
been performed by Britain's enem-
ies on women and old people and
small children even more sensi-
tive than you—and just as in-
nocent.
Magnolia Street has gone to the
war. The war has come to Mag-
nolia Street. But there is a real
sense in which Magnolia Street is
the war itself, that Magnolia Street
is what we are all fighting about,
all the hundreds of millions of us.
Working-Class Street
and in air force blue. They have
given a good account of themselves
already, as their folk did in the
earlier war. There are some who
will not come back again.
There was young
Herbert Derricks, for
instance, the nephew
of Wilfred, the Long-
ton Nightingale (in
case you remember
him). He was with
the Lancashires in
the Malayan fighting.
He was cut off in a
loop up the Muar
RiNer. (I heard about
him from a mate who
managed to get
away.) A Jap sniper
got our Herbert.
Ping! And there was
young Herbert, with
his hand up to his collar-bone.
Then, very slowly, with an odd
sort of grace, like a dancer almost,
he leaned over and glided to the
ground.
Beckie Cohen at Gun-Battery
He was going in for the stage
like his uncle. A ball-room dancer
he was going to be. He had a nice
little partner, Beckie Cohen, from
the other side of the street. But
she's manning a gun-battery now,
on the northeast coast, and Her-
bert will not come back again to
dance rumbas with her at the
Doomington Hippodrome.
And there was Hymie Edel-
man, whose father, Benny, lost a
leg in the last war.. (Hymie was a
radio operator in the Merchant
Navy. He used to do a good thing
for himself before the war, doctor-
ing all the street's radios.) He'd
been torpedoed three times before
they finally got him, out in the
Caribbean it was, with the sky
blue and innocent like a sheet of
cornflowers, and the sea an agony
of blazing oil.
I must not flatter myself that
more than a handful of my readers
will know what Magnolia Street
means, and where . it is. Let me
state it briefly. I wrote a book by
that name some ten years ago, and
certain books have followed it. In
those books I tried to record the
chronicles of a typical working-
class street in an English provincial
town across a whole generation. On
one side of the street lived Gentile
families, on the other side Jewish
families. It happened to be Eng-
land, which is my native land and
the land I love most. But it could
have been Belfast, in Ireland, or
Boston, in U. S. A., with Catholics
on one side of the street and
Protestants on the other. It could
have been Danzig, with Germans
on one side, Poles on the other ..
it could have been anywhere.
Magnolia Street was a symbol, of
a world where people preserve
their differences in the degree to
which it pleases them, but rub
shoulders with each other, like
each other, love and marry each
other, if that is the way they feel
about it. For people are primarily .
people, God's equal children. Mag-
nolia Street, in fact, is the demo-
cratic world, the world of the
United Nations, the world we are
fighting for. It is the world which
is anathema to the Nazi and the
Fascist, the world of equality and
democracy they have sought to ex-
tirpate.
I ought to mention young
Harry Briggs, too. He'd joined the
Navy as a kid. So when the war
came, he was in a cruiser that went
everywhere and did everything.
He was at Dunkirk and Narvik, he
was in at the finish of the Graf
Spee, at the evacuation of Greece
and Crete, and, finally, he lost an
eye during a Malta convoy. It's not
so much his eye young Harry
minds. It's the fact that an Italian
shell did it, the only shell in the
whole action that hit anything at
all. Tough luck, young Harry!
There was one very famous sailor
who lost an eye, too. You are in
good company!
Fight Against Nazi Scheme
Medal From King
But Magnolia Street would not
be extirpated. It did not like the
Nazi scheme of things at all. When
about a year before the war, a dim
tow-haired lout chalked a swastika
on the much-loved Mr. Emmanuel's
front door,. there was an awful
to-do about it, not only in Mrs.
Poyser's grocery-shop, but in the
Tawnie's Lamb and Lion, at the
corner of the Gentile pavement.
How they roared, those leonine
Tawnies! What a bleating lamb the
little blackshirt was, by the time
those Tawnies had finished with
him!
And then the war came. And
young Magnolia Street went off to
war, apart from the few who were
already there, in navy and in khaki
And what a Magnolia Street to-
do there was, the day you went up
to Buckingham Palace to get that
medal from King George! There
were repercussions of it all the
way across the Atlantic to Brook,
lyn Avenue, Brooklyn, where the
Seipel family lives these days. And
of the young Seipels, one has be-
come an artillery officer in Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, and an-
other was in the fighting on Attu
Island.
And the young Hawkins from
number six managed to get away
from an Italian prison-camp near
Florence, and a Poyser grandson
had a seat in the front-row of the
orchestra stalls at Tunis. Quite a
Magnolia Street war, in a way of
r
speaking. And in more than one
way of speaking.
And if you believe that the
older folk have let the younger
folk beat them to it, you're mista-
ken. The beer-cellars
of the Lamb and
Lion became the lo-
cal Warden's Post,
and a tough time
they had of it during
the Doomington blit-
zes! And Mrs. Wine-
stone, who always
was of a literary turn
of mind, was ac-
knowledged queen
of salvage operations.
She made up terse
little poems:
Bring up your scrap
And beat the lap
Your kettles and saucepans are ten
times more fun
When made up into bullets to beat
the old Hun.
The consequence was she got
her little front-garden stacked
roof-high and had a special letter
of praise from the Lord Mayor or
the Lord Lieutenant or somebody.
The other little gardens grow
lettuce and tomatoes and onions.
(In the old days they used to grow
broken bricks and sardine cans.)
You'd be surprised what a rural
air Magnolia Street has these days.
Graybeards at Work
Of course it's hard to keep the
front parlors as spick and span as
they used to be. Everybody, even
the oldest graybeards • from the
synagogue -have some sort of war
job. The old men know what has
happened to the graybeards of
Cracow and Warsaw, and they
know, oh yes they know, it is ex-
actly as much their war as it is
the war of the lads who go march-
ing off to the 'batteries and the gun-
turrets, and the lasses bent over
their lathes in the munition-shops.
And from their old lips before
the opened Ark of the Covenant,
a prayer goes up to the Lord. And
from the lips of the Gentile folk
gathered of a Sunday morning in
the church round the corner up
the Blenheim Road, a prayer goes
up to the Lord. An incendiary
burnt out the roof of the syna-
gogue, and the blast from a shell
brought down the church-tower.
But, somehow, it seems to the
folk in Magnolia Street—more and
more as the months go by—that
the Lord has not been deaf to those
entreaties.
10 Reasons for Increased Giving to
United Jewish Appeal During 1943
Critical war needs in
1943 will require greater
funds for the programs
supported through the
United Jewish Appeal.
J. D. C. must provide
funds to meet increased
demands for assistance
for refugees in Soviet
Russia, Spain and Swit-
zerland.
U. P. A. must speed
up industry, agriculture,
colonization in Palestine
to aid Allied war efort
and provide homes for
many thousands of refu-
gees.
Growing United Na-
tions offensive will open
up many new areas for
increased rescue activi-
ties and greatly enlarge
demands upon United
Jewish Appeal agencies.
Per capita giving must
be raised substantially to
make up loss of contri-
butions from members of
Jewish communities who
have joined the armed
forces.
Cost of relief and other
family services provided
by N. A. S. for refugees
in U. S. • on a minimum
basis has risen in keep-
ing with general price
_ rise.
Program sanctioned by
Allied governments for
large-scale emigration of
many thousands of refu-
gee children to Palestine
and Western Hemisphere
will severely tax resources
of U. J. A. agencies.
Refugees in Palestine,
Latin America and the
United States must be
speedily integrated to
keep doors open for post-
war immigration.
U. J. A. agencies must
provide essential services
not undertaken by inter-
Allied organizations in
liberated areas such as
North Africa.
Tax considerations fa-
vor individual and corp-
orate giving. The net
cost to contributors of
..glftS to-the U. J. A. is
loWer - thiS • year than
. ever. :•-••
_.,•- y.
•
As the single, fund-raising agency for the Joint Distribution CoMmit-
tee, United Palestine Appeal and National Refugee -Service; the tnited
Jewish. Appeal for Refugees, Overseas Needs and Palestine must raise the
sum of $25,000,000 in the current year for war relief, rehabilit4tion and
emigration assistance overseas, for the upbuilding and defense of the Jew-
ish homeland in Palestine, and for adjustment aid to newcomers in the
United States.
The Jewish reconstruction and relief causes included in the United
Jewish Appeal are supported in Detroit by the Allied Jewish Campaign,
through the War Chest. The 1944 War Chest campaign will be conducted
from Nov. 1 to 16 for a quota of $8,250,000.