Richard III, Leicester,old friends, burials & books

I left my hometown of Leicester over 45 years ago.



I married and moved to Jerusalem with my husband and family.

 
But although I no longer live in Leicester, I can never totally leave the city as my parents are  buried there. 

While in Leicester on a visit we decided to drive round and see some of our old schools

and past homes

Not to mention the site of my first job as a journalist –

OK I admit it I exaggerate. It was a school holiday job and I was more a gofer than a writer – but the bug was already planted and never gave up.

About six years ago I reconnected again when an old school friend Rosalind Adam  contacted me to see if I would contribute to a book she was compiling of memories of   post-war Leicester through to 1960.

So having returned to Leicester many times in the past few years both literally and psychologically, it wasn’t surprising that I found myself glued to the news media when the story broke about ‘the body in the car park’ . Could it really be the body of that much hated/ much maligned King Richard III?

And when it was proved to be the body of the old King, the question then was – where should he be finally laid to rest?

Again I found myself rooting for Leicester to be the designated burial site.The High Court finally agreed that he should indeed be buried there, as  he had been killed in battle in nearby Bosworth and had been ‘temporarily’  buried beneath the city for several hundred years.

And now for the full circle …..who was commissioned  to write a children’s book on the  history of Richard III?
 None other than my old friend Rosalind whose book will be out in a few week’s time.
Good luck with the book Ros – I’m sure it’ll be a tremendous success.

TWO ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS: RICHARD III and NAZI POTTERY.

I’ve always been fascinated with archaeology. I love finding tangible connections to our past, whether far distant or more recent.
Two findings this month really excited me – one of them hit international headlines as it is from over 500 years ago, with regal connections. The other was quieter, probably known only by a few people and from far more recent history.
The  first one was the recent discovery, in my hometown of Leicester, in the U.K., of what is almost definitely the body of King Richard III . He was an arch  villain of the British monarchy, believed to have murdered his two nephews to protect his position on the throne of England, and whose burial place was always unknown.

At the moment the results of the DNA check against a direct descendent are not yet in, but there are multiple physical signs on the exhumed remains that indicate that this is indeed the hated king immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play of the same name.
Which  English literature student doesn’t remember the famous words “ Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” spoken by Sir Laurence Olivier in that real old movie of the 1950s,  and just before his demise, wandering around unprotected  on the battlefield ….” A horse, a horse. My kingdom for a horse”
But we’ll all still have to wait patiently for another number of weeks for the final DNA results.
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The 2nd discovery didn’t really involve archeology, it was found lying around in a field in Essex.
The field was in Thaxted, a small farming area where, in the 1940s, many Jewish children, refugees from Nazi Germany, were taken by “Bachad” the forerunners of today‘s religious youth  movement, Bnei Akivah, to live and receive basic agricultural training before going to live in Israel where they went on to be the founders of  several religious kibbutzim.
One of today’s Bnei Akivah youth was hiking in the area, and realizing he was close to the original farm site in Thaxted, decided to continue and walk through the fields which many of his predecessors had lived and worked, over 70 years ago .
Seeing something shining in the grass he bent down and picked up a piece of pottery.


What an amazing discovery. This must have been lying around in the field for  70 years.
What was it? Well a search online brought me to the site of the china manufacturers mentioned quite clearly on the shard……. and to this picture

The swastika, emblem of the Nazi party has clearly been deliberately blocked out. Are they ashamed of their past? Were they scared they would be prosecuted if they left it on the site? Was it just because it’s politically incorrect?
But this is definitely the same motif that is on the fragment that was found.
Why would a refugee from Germany have a piece of pottery with the hated swastika on it?
I have no idea.
I can only guess that maybe this was from an item the children  were given as they left  Germany on the kindertransport. Most  of these children would never to see their parents again. All they possessed were the things in their little suitcases.
Perhaps they were given a last drink to take with them on their journey to the unknown and this was the only glass / cup that was available. Did he/she keep it because it was one of the last things they received from their parents?
Did the owner maybe smash it and throw it away because of the hated symbol ?
I don’t know if we’ll ever know. There are some ‘kindertransport’ children still alive so maybe one of them will see the photo and recognize it.
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As one ancient mystery looks like being solved, another recent  mystery is uncovered.

REUNIONS AND HOSPITALITY

It was  so great  to finally meet up again with my old ‘real’ friend and current ‘e-friend’ Ros Adam.
We haven’t seen each other since we were teenagers, and I’m not going to tell  you how long ago that was (but it’s  not far off half a century !) but we’ve been in email contact for the last  3 years since we reconnected over a book project Ros was editing for our hometown, Leicester.

Our get-together was short and sweet as Ros was on her first visit to Israel( you can read all about  it on her blog )and only had a week to site-see. Next time I hope we’ll be able to spend longer together.

Living in Israel, we’ve had many reunions with  long lost friends . It’s a rare Jewish soul that doesn’t find its way here at some point.
Many teenagers, take a year off  between school and college and visit Israel for a year. Some volunteer on a kibbutz  or come to learn the language and some girls come to study in a religious seminar and boys to spend a year in yeshiva.

During their stay, there are always those ‘out’ Shabbatot’, when the kids are expected to make their own arrangements for Shabbat and go and stay with someone.
This is how we’ve come to meet many of our friends’ children. Our address and phone number have obviously been entered into their electronic address book for just such an occurrence and  we’re happy to host them and their friends who may not have a full address book to choose from.

It’s all part of the enjoyment and privilege of living in Israel.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

It was so uncanny.

We were sitting in a restaurant in Manchester just hours after our mother’s stone-setting and a few hours before returning to our homes around the world. We had decided to eat out as it had been an exhausting day, physically and emotionally and none of us could think of cooking for twelve.

That week had been the first time we four sisters had been together since our mother’s death, 6 months earlier, when we sat shiva together in Manchester before three of us returned to our respective homes in Jerusalem and Teaneck.

Was it appropriate, we wondered, to eat out at a restaurant only hours after the unveiling of our mother’s memorial stone. But we remembered that one of Mum’s greatest pleasures had been to see us all together enjoying ourselves in each other’s company, catching up on family news and having a good laugh , as inevitably happened when we four got together.

We sifted through the long menu not knowing what to order. I hadn’t eaten out for many months and found the choices overwhelming . My mind was still on the day’s events.

We hadn’t only had the unveiling of the memorial stone but had also taken the opportunity to visit all the old familiar places of our childhood.

We hadn’t been back to our hometown, Leicester, for about 30 years, except for our mother’s funeral that frozen, snowy day during last Chanukah. So we decided to drive round and visit our old childhood homes, and schools and visit the old neighborhoods. The changes were incredible. Most of the population was now non-white, non-British and mainly Muslim or Seikh..

The shul where I had married, remained the same beautiful building, both inside and out but it was now surrounded by an almost totally Muslim population. Few Jews lived within easy walking distance as we had done in our childhood.

Our parents had settled in Leicester during the war. Refugees from Germany were glad to find a haven in which to settle and finding a job which allowed my father not to work on Shabbat was a priority. We had enjoyed an untroubled, happy childhood. Despite the lack of any Jewish schools in the town and with very few religious families, our parents’ wonderful example of religious strength, coupled with friendship and a warm tolerance to all our fellow Jews had been enough to ensure that we four had grown up to build our own homes on the same strong Jewish foundations . Only now as parents and grandparents did we realize just how difficult it must have been for them bringing up a family under such circumstances.

Knowing that we would not find a suitable partner in our hometown, and that our future didn’t  lie there, we had all left Leicester when we graduated school and moved to Jewish centers in England and Israel.

Before our parents had had a chance to join us , our father died suddenly and was buried in our hometown. Mum, who had later moved to London to be nearer her children, had retained her burial plot  next to his in the Leicester cemetery, frequently reminding us that when the day came, we should remember where she wanted to be buried.

And it was to there that we brought her on her final journey six months previously, and where we returned today to unveil her stone which seemed to look comfortable next to our father’s.

With three of us living abroad and only one still in England we had had no opportunity  until now to go through Mum’s possessions together, seeing family photographs and documents, many dating back to pre war Germany . So we had spent the last week together reading, trying to understand , attempting to identify people in old family photos and reminiscing about our childhood and what our parents had been though before we were born.

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And then suddenly we heard it.

As we were sitting in the restaurant ,drained after a long emotional day, the background music suddenly changed. Instead of the typical piped ‘invisible’ music , it suddenly changed to the strong tempo of Motzart’s  ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ ( A little Night Music) .

We four sisters looked at each other in amazement. We hadn’t heard this in many years. It was our mother’s favorite piece of music which she used to hum happily all the time at home when we were growing up . Maybe it was connected with the time she and Daddy had met, I don’t remember, but it’s association with our parents was 100%.

To us, on that emotion laden day it’s message was loud and clear, It was as though together our parents were looking down on us from their place in the World of Truth and sending a message that we would clearly understand was from them. We felt their presence as though they were sitting with us and we sensed their contentment at being together again.

With tears in our eyes, and a sense of warmth in our hearts we ordered our meals.