Jeff Rozelaar gave us an affecting and entertaining presentation on his Jewish childhood in the post-war East End, based on his book Bagels and Bacon. The title comes from the street smells of a bakery shop on one side of the road and Joe’s ‘caff’ on the other, constantly frying eggs and the forbidden bacon. His peppered the talk with examples of the music around him – Hava Nagela, Knees Up Mother Brown, My Yiddishe Mama .
Jeff learnt Yiddish and also Hebrew for his bar mitzvah and spent his spare time playing on bomb-sites and roaming free all day. Often hungry and subject to rationing he described how school milk was supplemented by Virol, a malt extract syrup dispensed to each child in turn, sucked from the same spoon! Famous locals included playwrights Harold Pinter and Sir Arnold Wesker, and Lionel Bart, with Jack the Ripper and the Cray twins numbered among the infamous ones.
He talked about the local public baths, used by families living cheek by jowl with shared facilities, and how one day a bomb fell nearby and blew the side off the building, exposing the naked bathers. Together with some Jewish jokes, experiences of anti-semitism and his love of English humour and cockney irony, this was both an interesting and entertaining talk. Many thanks Jeff.
Jackie Huntingford