Leeds Jewry, 1930-1939: the challenge of anti-Semitism

by Amanda Bergen

leeds jewryIn this study Mrs Bergen uses hitherto untapped sources, including oral evidence, to analyse the response of Leeds Jewry in the 1930s first to the lingering anti-Semitism to which it had always been vulnerable, and then to the subsequent and much greater threat of political anti-Semitism posed by the growth of international Fascism. Through a discussion of the widely differing attitudes and approaches of institutions, political groupings and influential individuals within the community, she shows how the menace of Fascism, with the consequent sudden and potentially disruptive influx of a large number of German refugees, was successfully met. Indeed, it was ultimately this external challenge which proved the means of uniting Leeds Jewry and giving it a cohesion which it had hitherto lacked.

As an examination of the response of one of Britain's largest Jewish communities to anit-Semitism, Mrs Bergen's work has a much wider appeal than the purely local and will be of use to all whose historical interests encompass the crisis years of the 1930s.

40pp; 11 figs

ISBN 0 900741 57 0





The Great Exodus: the evacuation of Leeds schoolchildren 1939-1945

by Roy C. Boud

This study is the first detailed account to be published of the evacuation of Leeds schoolchildren between 1939 and 1945. Drawing on perviously unpublished material, including oral evidence, Dr Boud focuses on one large city to exodus of schoolchildrenuncover the realities behind what has been described as the biggest social upheaval in the history of this country. The experiences of those involved in it - administrators, educationalists, parents, teachers and, of course, the evacuees themselves - are described and analysed. More particularly, the light that is shed on the relationships between the evacuees and their hosts in the rural reception areas of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire vividly reveals the success and failure, the comedy and pathos which characterised the entire undertaking.

This book will be of especial interest to those who participated in the experience of evacuation both in Leeds and elsewhere, as well as to teachers and children who, today, study the topic as part of their school curriculum, but it also has much to offer those who are more generally concerned with the history of this traumatic period.

114pp; 14 figs

ISBN 0 900741 58 9

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