We were what may be called, a semi-observant family, like many working class families even to this day. Semi-literally true by numbers of Jews who “marry out” today Our religion began and ended with my mother, or one could say with her father, my Zeide. My father worked on Shabbos out of sheer necessity His father in law, my prosperous Zeide made my father persona non grata in his eyes and as a consequence we struggled and were banished to the wilds of Notting Hill.

I knew little about my about my maternal grandfather Abraham Jacobs, who died in 1924, two years before I was born. About my maternal grandmother I knew even less, since she died when my mother was a child. One extraordinary thing stuck in my memory was that my mother had told me that her father had married three times and that one of his wives was a midwife who was drowned in the Lusitania.

When I returned from my visit to Poland in the summer of 1998 I felt to sort out my feelings. I felt that something had changed but I could’nt photograph it as I have the places I had seen, which hitherto had existed only in the words of my father or in the welter of images I received from books and TV documentaries . My vision of Poland ( die Heim -) was conveyed to me throughout my childhood with an ambivalent and paradoxical message - on the one hand the pastoral idyll: the little town with the river he loved to swim in - ( he always scoffed at the laboured strokes of other swimmers and boasted that when he swam the surface was undisturbed ) - a town so beautiful the Czar had a summer Palace there and endless bucolic tales of picking fruit in the orchards and tending the horse of his brother Moshe who drove a droska and was so strong he could lift it up with one hand by the axle : on the other hand I was regaled with images of deprivation , forced service into the Russian army, Polish hatred ,pogroms and arctic winters.

Written during 2004 by Hilda Cywan aged 75 daughter of a Polish immigrant tailor who died June 2007 . . The Jumble Sale I heard that there was to be a bazaar held at the Old Bayswater Jewish School in the Harrow Road which was due for demolition to make way for council flats . It was late 50’s or early 60’s . I am not sure if my daughter M was born yet.

La Vacance Let us start in the middle. We are sitting in the sun somewhere in Italy 1969 listening to the music of Jane Birkin making orgiastic sighs in a song banned in UK hoping our daughters were otherwise engaged. It was on our annual pilgrimage to Bella Italia. It started with the enjoyable preparation weeks before by my zealously studying route maps and the red Guide Michelin to establish best (and cheapest) Itinerary