Sedate and sunny Eastbourne has been popular as a holiday destination since the 1860s. This charming seaside resort is less well known for its many Jewish connections. Here I offer the A – Z of Jewish Eastbourne….
~ Anne Goldstein
- A lbert Sandler Albert, born Abraham Sandler, directed Eastbourne’s Grand Hotel’s orchestra from 1925. From humble East London Russian Jewish roots, he became a film and music personality with a £2000 Stradivarius violin.
- B Leon Balk Every seaside needs a photographer and in 1903 Leon Balk, a Jewish emigre from Lithuania, set up a photo studio in Eastbourne’s Langney Road. Visiting cards and cabinet pictures were his stock in trade.
- C Chaseley Trust German refugee Dr Luttwig ‘Poppa’ Guttmann, neuro-surgeon and the Jewish founder of the Paralympics, established this Eastbourne home for servicemen with disabilities in 1948.
- D Dorit Oliver-Wolff As a child, Eastbourne resident Dorit Oliver-Wolff hid from the Nazis in a cold dark cellar for nine months after she fled to Hungary from Serbia in 1941. She received a BEM for services to Holocaust Education in 2019.
- E astbourne Hebrew Congregation, an independent synagogue and Eastbourne Liberal Jewish community, which was founded in 2001, serve the Jewish community.
- F ounders of the Eastbourne Hebrew Congregation were George Marks, Paul Panto, Henry Dawson and Alfred Morris. In late 1919 they found synagogue premises above a shoe repairer’s.
- G olda Meir, the world’s third female prime minister, gave a speech in 1969 in Eastbourne at a Socialist International conference, alongside Harold Wilson and Willy Brandt.
- H Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss from Budapest) staged a daring escape from the cells under Eastbourne Police Station in April 1925, while he was performing at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre.
- I Jan Imich The town values this brave Polish born Holocaust survivor, He was given a red triangle when he was registered in his first concentration camp. This symbol for a political prisoner, rather than the Jewish yellow star, saved his life.
- J effries and Jaffa Orchestra leader Leslie Jeffries, cousin of violinist Max Jaffa, became an icon of Eastbourne, leading the
- Palm Court orchestra’s BBC radio programmes from the Grand Hotel. By February 1953, he had completed 450 broadcasts, a record at the time.
- K indertransport The town reached out to child refugees during WW Two, including Marion Ilse Walter, who came from Germany with her sister. She became a renowned mathematician, with a theorem named after her.
- L angney The Jewish section of the Langney burial ground has the poignant gravestone of WW Two RAF pilot Philip Pantoock, who died in action aged just 21.
- M Former Eastbourne Hebrew Congregation President was the late Menashe Cohen Harounouff, originally from Meshed in Iran, near the Russian border. He came to Eastbourne in 1973.
- N John Nugee, headmaster of Eastbourne College, sent a letter to all parents in 1939 asking for their approval for him to allow Jewish refugees from Germany to attend the school. There was no disagreement.
- O Otto Moses Jaffe (13 August 1846 – 29 April 1929), German-born British businessman was twice elected Lord Mayor of Belfast. He spent his last years in London and Eastbourne
- P Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter reworked his 1978 play ‘Betrayal’ while staying in Eastbourne’s Grand Hotel.
- Q Quick fact – the Meads district of Eastbourne has an average age of 71.1.
- R Rabbi Roberta Harris-Eckstein is the part-time rabbi for Eastbourne Liberal Congregation and an expert in the Archaeology of the Bible Lands.
- S Peter M F Sichel, creator of Blue Nun wine brand, was born in Mainz, Germany but came to Eastbourne in 1935 for his prep school education at St Cyprian’s.
- Titanic A bandstand plaque remembers Titanic cellist John Wesley Woodward. He was in Herr Von Leer’s orchestra at The Grand Hotel – led by Sephardi musician Simon Nomo Nescio Van Lier, from The Hague.
- Unbelievably, actor John Malkovitch part owns Eastbourne’s The Big Sleep Hotel. In ‘The Big Sleep’ Humphrey Bogart calls himself a ‘shamus’ – a private detective – which comes from the Yiddish ‘shammes’.
- V Prolific actor Vernon Dobtcheff, born 1934, spent all his school days in Eastbourne. British actor Rupert Everett described him as the ‘patron saint’ of actors, “legendary for his magical ability to catch every first night in the country”.
- W Reverend Louis Wolfe served congregations in Ireland, Bridgend, Bolton and Reading before leading the Eastbourne community in 1922. He stayed for 25 years. In 1934, his Hotel Ivri was the only kosher boarding house in Eastbourne.
- X traordinarily, Eastbourne gets as much sun as Milan, Italy. The best sunshine month to visit is June!
- Y Ypres Lieutenant Oliver (Otto) Emanuel, Jewish ex-pupil of Ascham St Vincent’s and Eastbourne College, died in WW One in action near Ypres in 1916.
- Z Reverend Chaim Zack, born in Liverpool, was minister at Eastbourne Hebrew congregation for an incredible 51 years, retiring in 1997. He had been minister to Isle of Man Jewish internees during World War Two.
Hi
A few years ago I interviewed Menashe Cohen-Aharonoff for a book about amazing Jewish nonagenarians. The book is now coming to fruition but I need to ‘close’ Menashe’s chapter – sadly I know he died a few years ago. Can anyone help? I arranged for another nonagenarian called Bernice to travel down to meet him – they were both in the Haganah. That generated an article in the local paper.
I am trying to contact Reverend Chaim Zack – does anyone have his contact number or email address? From Dave Jacobs 077 5432 4400
Great, the only entry I think worth mentioning,is a Kosher Hotel the ‘
‘Compton Court Hotel’ which closed in around 1950, opened and run by
Issy & Cissie Panto,. There were many well known people from London,
who stayed there.
Reverend Zack served as Minister to the Jewish Internees (Enemy Aliens) on the Isle of Man (not Isle of Wight) throughout the War years and would sail there from Liverpool to take the Shabbat and Holyday services.
As a proud member of Eastbourne’s Hebrew congregation since 2004, I’m immensely proud of the marvellous traditions of such a small but continuous community. I always attend Shabbos services at Susan’s Road whenever i am lucky enough to spend time in town with my young family.
The A to Z is a wonderful catalogue – BUT there’s one absolutely howling omission. It’s quite a big one!
It concerns Arctic roll dessert!
Birds Eye was Eastbourne’s largest employer in its heyday and the massive plant in Lottbridge Drove was capable of producing more than 17 million Arctic rolls, 19 million dairy cream sponges, nine million chocolate eclairs, two million dairy cream doughnuts and a million Arctic logs every year not to mention pastry products, catering sweets, tub deserts and whipped cream.
The Arctic roll was the company’s best seller – a dessert made of vanilla ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of sponge cake to form a roll, with a layer of raspberry flavoured sauce between the sponge and the ice cream.
The dessert was invented in the 1950s by Czech jewish lawyer, Ernest Velden, who had migrated to England in 1939 and set up the factory in Eastbourne producing Arctic roll in 1958.
The dessert soon became a successful product. During the 1980s, more than 40 kilometres (25 mi) of Birds Eye Arctic Roll were sold each month.
You know, Eastbourne x
This was fun and interesting.
I lived in Eastbourne for many years and still have links there.
Sadly the Jewish community is shrinking but still provides support for each other.
I remember Reverend Zack and his rendition of ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ at one of our Chanukah parties brought many a tear to the eye.
I found this article very interesting, who knew that so many i interesting Jewish people lived in Eastbourne and linking them to the alphabet was amazing. I was bought up in the Addiscombe community which is long defunct but was in Croydon