Musings of a Jewish Genealogist: The Manchester Blitz during WWII reminds me of what is going on in the Ukraine to demoralize the citizens. The Nazis constantly bombed the town, especially the Jewish sections. Our home was bombed out particularly as it was across the street from the Jewish Hospital. My mother just got to the air raid shelter in time, but had to go looking for her older sister who it turned out was looking for her. All they had left was a table cover and her mother’s
Musings of a Jewish Genealogist:
The Manchester Blitz during WWII reminds me of what is going on in the Ukraine to demoralize the citizens. The Nazis constantly bombed the town, especially the Jewish sections. Our home was bombed out particularly as it was across the street from the Jewish Hospital. My mother just got to the air raid shelter in time, but had to go looking for her older sister who it turned out was looking for her. All they had left was a table cover and her mother’s candlesticks and the clothes on their backs. Nothing else! They fled to more rural areas for safety. My mother was a supervisor in a factory which made engines for the British planes and she was pregnant at the time.
— Ann Rabinowitz
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THE FORTUNES OF WAR
by Ann Rabinowitz
During World War II in Manchester, England, women worked very hard in the war industries, the military and other professions to support the war effort. My mother, for instance, worked in the Ford factory in Manchester as a supervisor for quality control of aircraft engine parts. The factory where she worked had approximately 17,000 workers and produced Rolls Royce Merlin engines for the Lancaster and Mosquito fighters. The hours were long and work hard. However, my mother and her friends were young and full of energy and during the weekdays, they and other singles would go out dancing at night to the premier dance venue in town. This was the Ritz Ballroom, built in 1927, and located on Whitworth Street West. They took their dancing shoes in special shoe bags, their flashlights at the ready and a thermos of hot chocolate or tea to warm them during the usual cold and invariably rainy weather.
Once there, the strains of the new and exciting Latin music would serenade them from the hot bands in the revolving stage. The capacity was about 1,500 dancers and they would go on the springy dance floor which assured the best dancing results. They would meet not only British lads, but the American and Canadian soldiers who were assigned to the bases surrounding Manchester, such as in Hale. At one point though, it appeared that the soldiers seemed to have disappeared from the area without a word. The girls were worried that something big had happened and the perhaps the boys had been sent overseas or killed in some battle not yet announced. In fact, the boys were busily engaged in the secret plans for the preparation for Operation Overload and the crossing to France, and they had all gone south.
To relieve the stress, the girls decided to take a break and go to Blackpool, one of the popular nearby seaside resorts. It was handy for Jewish visitors as it had accommodations where you could rent rooms, including kosher food. Luckily, my mother and her friends were able to stay with Ettel Oxenberg Axelrad, my great auntie. Her house was located at 21 Cross Street, which was on the North Shore of Blackpool, near to Stanley Park, and she rented out Jewish accommodations at a reasonable rate. In addition to the renting of accommodations, Ettel was an accomplished seamstress. After her husband died at a young age, she had taken a job of preparing the burial shrouds, tachrachim, for the Jewish community. Also, she was a member of the Chevra Kadisha and also sat with those who had passed away, until their burial. One did what one could in those days to make a living and also contribute to the community good.
When the girls were at Ettel’s house, they decided to go to a famous fortune-teller. This was a popular pastime, especially with life so on the edge and things such that you did not know what was coming next. It was common knowledge that many Jews were superstitious, as were their neighbors, and that they had brought these habits from “der heim”. Eventually, these age-old customs became part of their more modern-day lives. The fortune-tellers were usually everyday people just making a living (or sometimes scamming) from the vacationers. However, one might be lucky and run into the real thing, as my mother and friends soon found out.
All of the girls were dating soldiers, some American as in my mother’s case, and some Canadian as in her friend Frieda’s case. The fortune-teller, who sat in a dark room hung with heavy velvet curtains, was of a dark visage and dressed in colorful attire like a gypsy. She took Frieda first, and told her that she saw that she had a soldier boyfriend and that he was in trouble. Aghast, Frieda then told the fortune-teller that she was worried as she hadn’t heard from him in some time. The fortune-teller then told her that he was injured, probably in the south of England, and she should call his commander right away for information on his condition. What an uproar ensued after that!
Frieda went straight back to Manchester and immediately contacted the commander. She found, much to her dismay, that her boyfriend had been injured in the crossing to France and was in hospital. She got permission to see him and went south to help nurse him to recovery. After the war, the happy couple married and left for Montreal where they settled and raised a family.
As for my mother, the fortune-teller told her that her boyfriend was in the south of England too, but she would see him soon with good news in store. She then told her that her fate was that she would not live in England forever, but would move to a place filled with sunshine, palm trees and plenty of food. This really got my mother excited as it gave her some hope that bomb-ridden England with its never-ending rations and the rainy cold climate would be behind her one day. When she got home, my mother found my father on her doorstep. It turned out that he had been on secret maneuvers at a base in Ipswich and had not been able to contact her. As a result, they decided to get engaged and married soon afterwards, first in a civil ceremony in London and then later at Pesach time in Manchester with a special dispensation from Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz as that was the only time my father could get leave for the ceremony. Their honeymoon was spent in an idyllic primitive thatched country cottage in Hadleigh, near the base in Ipswich. The cottage was owned by a little old lady by the name of Mrs. Salmon who catered to the increasing number of soldiers from the base who were getting married, particularly the Jewish ones. After the war, my parents and I moved to the seashore in Miami Beach, Florida, exactly as the fortune-teller had predicted.
Sometimes, fortune-tellers can give quite accurate fortunes as can be seen on another occasion when I was planning on moving from Washington, DC, to Miami Beach, FL. Some friends decided to take me to a well-known fortune-teller from Baltimore, who had told the Duchess of Windsor’s fortune linking her to the Duke. What a lark, I thought to myself, although I am not a believer in such things. We went and I decided not to tell the fortune-teller anything to help him in his prognostications. I went into a small comfortable room and found myself in front of a chubby, red-faced fellow quite a bit like Santa Claus, as all he needed was a red suit and a beard. Immediately, he told me that I would never be happy unless I lived by the water and that he could see a small cottage with a flower-bedecked white picket fence in my future. Also, to beware of a blond, blue-eyed man who told tales. Well, I was flabbergasted, as it so happened that I was moving the next day back to Miami Beach, Florida. There, my first living space was a small cottage, covered in yellow yellow blossoms, just as he described. And, yes, I did meet the tale-teller too. So, it appears that these fortune-tellers certainly had the Miami Beach part of life down pat!
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This article was previously published in “Shemot”, the journal of the JGS of Great Britain,
Volume 24, 2015, pp. 48-49. It was also published on this Blog in April 2022.
Born in Manchester, England, genealogist Ann Rabinowitz is a resident of South Florida and has been involved in genealogical pursuits since the age of ten. A prolific writer, her articles have been published on the JewishGen Blog, in numerous Jewish genealogy journals, on Facebook, and in various newspapers.
