Judy Simons

Part 1

Transcript - Part 1

Main themes covered - Jewish children, social lives, Jewish holidays, Jewish family history.

0:00 - 0:16 What we are trying to establish through doing witness

0:16 - 0:49 Early life and family history (in Sheffield)

0:49 - 1:25 Role of family in the Jewish community e.g. during 1930s

1:25 - 2:00 Family (and personal role) in the ‘Sheffield Jewish journal’

2:00 - 3: 40 Why the family (the mother of the interviewee, Judy) originally came to Sheffield (earlier family history)

3:40 - 4:08 Financial position of the family early on

4:08 - 4:58 Life of the interviewee’s mother in Sheffield

4:58 - 5:37 Jewish community beginning twentieth-century

5:37 - 6:53 Location Jewish community in Sheffield

6:53 - 7:15 Relationships between families within the community

7:15 - 7:45 First female president of Sheffield University student’s union

7:45 - 10:30 Arrival of Father’s family in Sheffield

10:30 - 11:04 Living conditions of Father on arrival

11:04 - 11:20 Meeting of Parents

11:20 - 12:27 Father’s role in helping refugees leave Germany in the 1930s (Sheffield Refugee Committee)

12:27 - 12:37 Establishment of a Jewish hostel in Sheffield in Netheredge

12:37 - 14:02 Reasons for joining the Witness project

14:02 - 17:00 Integration of the Jewish community in the wider community

17:00 - 18:27 Location of the Jewish community today in Sheffield

18:27 - 18:58 Role of the interviewee’s niece in the Jewish and Israeli society at Sheffield University

18:58 - 20:46 Hebrew classes and Bat mitzvah classes as a child

20:46 Jewish Shops

21:13 22: 53 Reasons for decline in Jewish community e.g. shops, population etc.

22:53 - 25:00 Sheffield Jewish Journal

25:00 – 27:30 Discussing articles written for the local Jewish magazine

27:30 – 28:30 Judy’s own religious beliefs, and how religious she considers herself to be

28:30 – 29:30 Growing up a Jewish child in an observant home

29:30 - 30:00 Parents’ social life

30:00 – 31:10 Social life as a Jewish child

31:10 - 32:00 Discrimination as a Jewish child, and growing up with this

32:00 – 34:00 Participating in Jewish festivals and the difficulties with doing this whilst at school

34:00 – 36:10 Observing other holidays, particularly Christmas and Hanukah

36:10 - 37:15 Moving away from/drifting from the Jewish community

37:15 – 38:00: Writing about Jewish family history

38:00 - 38:45 Judy and her family’s role in the Jewish community today

38:45 – 41:00 Judy’s book and the stories that formulate it

41:00 – 41:40 A story of a small breakaway group from the synagogue who practiced above a pork butcher shop

41:40 - 42:50 The story of a peddler, who became a tailor for army uniforms that all began in Sheffield

42:50 – 44:00 The story of a watchmaker who married outside of the Jewish community, who then refused to have anything to do more with the Jewish community

44:00 – 44:25 Judy’s aim to document stories that haven’t been written down thus far.

44:25 – 51:45 The story of her grandmother who travelled from Hamburg to Hull on a cattle ship, aged 12, where the Jews on board were considered less valuable than the cattle.

Part 2

Transcript - Part 2

Key themes – The Sheffield Jewish Journal, Holocaust survivors, anti-Semitism, marriage, feminism.

0:00 - 1:00 Judy’s role as editor for the Sheffield Jewish Journal

1:00 - 1:30 Looking at the Sheffield Jewish Journal

1:30 - 2:30 Readership and popularity of the Journal

2:30 - 3:30 Inclusion of reports of Jewish societies in the Journal and what this relates about the activity of the community in general

3:30 - 4:30 Details about these societies

4:30 - 5:20 Cost and funding of the Journal

5:20 - 5:35 Reception of the Journal

5:35 - 7:05 Deliverance and manufacture of the Journal (how distributed to the wider community)

7:05 - Advertisements in the Journal

8:10 - 11:20 Procedures in choosing which advertisements were appropriate for inclusion in the journal

11:20 - 11:40 The material covered by the journal other than advertisements

11:40 - 12:15 Current writings on the history of the history of the Jewish community in Sheffield

12:15 - 12:45 Writings in the Journal about the refugee programme in Sheffield in 1933 (1974 December issue)

12:45 - 13:20 Details about some of the photographs in the journal e.g. of a fancy dress ball for the Jewish tennis club (1932)

13:20 - 14:00 Article about the refugees coming to Sheffield in 1933 and Judy’s father’s involvement in this (the article also being written by him)

14:00 - 15:15 Starting of the Journal (mid 1940s) and the first issues (of a different name)

15:15 - 15:45 Regulations of journals at the time (law prohibiting the publication of new periodicals, abolished January 1946)

15:45 - 16:00 Introduction as following on from newsletters e.g. UPA

16:00 - 16:25 Specific article by a Doctor considering Hiroshima

16:25 - 17:30 Importance of Palestine to the Jewish community and the surrounding political climate

17:30 - 19:55 Impact of the Second World War and the Jewish community in Sheffield e.g. alteration of the city landscape, impact on weddings

19:55 - 20:50 The steel industry during the war and Judy’s father’s work there, alongside working at night on fire patrol

20:50 - 22:00 Rationing and cooking during the war and the impact on Jewish eating habits (e.g. lack of eggs)

22:00 - 23:10 Refugees during the war and afterwards and Judy’s father’s work in relation to this

23:10 - 24:55 After the war and the return of concentration camp survivors to Sheffield (e.g. adoption of children by Jewish families)

24:55 - 25:30 Feeling of threat throughout the Jewish community as a result of the Holocaust and relation to the state of Israel and the importance of this to the Jewish community

25:30 - 27:00 Kibbutz (communal living on a farm on communist principles)

27:00 - 28:15 Judy’s experiences of working on a Kibbutz as a teenager in the early 1960s

28:15 - 30:00 Widespread awareness of antisemitic elements of the war and the Holocaust and the impact of these (and how this isolated the Jewish community from the wider community)

30:00 – 32:18 Judy’s cousin’s marriage to a Holocaust survivor and his story of growing up in concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz

32:18 – 33:00 The ‘elephant in the room’ of knowing Holocaust survivors, and being aware of the Holocaust experiences from a young age

33:00 – 33:57 Visiting concentration camps

33:57 – 33:50 The effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish community in the diaspora

33:50 – 35:48 The story of a friend who escaped the Warsaw ghetto

35:48 – 36:16 The story of a friend from Budapest who spent her childhood living in a cupboard

36:16 – 37:00 Growing up surrounded by the stories and realities of the Holocaust

37:00 – 38:56 Personal experiences of anti-Semitism

38:56 - 42:00 Opinions and stories of people marrying outside of the Jewish community

42:00 - 42:56 Extreme Judaism on the decline in Sheffield, and the decline of religion as a whole

42:56 - 43:40 The impacts of migration on Judaism and mixing with non-Jewish communities

43:40 - 45:00 The dangers of religion in the modern day

45:00 – 47:50 Gender and Judaism, opinions on the separation of men and women in the synagogue

47:50 – 48:50 The feminist agenda for some extreme Orthodox Jewish women, and opinions on this

49:00 – 58:45 Showing photographs and again looking at the Jewish journals.

58:45 – 1:01:54 The story of a ballerina and her husband who escaped Germany after the Nuremberg Laws