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> David Waldman
Young Asylum Seekers
Individual Reminiscences
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David Waldman
I was born in Liverpool to a secular Jewish family. My father was a medical doctor and in the Medical Corps as a ship’s doctor. He was transferred first to Richmond, Yorkshire and then to Wolverhampton. I hated Wolverhampton and when I turned 13 I won a scholarship to Carmel College in Oxfordshire. That was in 1955. After I finished college, I went on to study Chemistry at Oxford.
After university I became a patent agent and worked in London. It was in London where I met my wife. My wife was not Jewish and my parents were quite upset when they first learned about her. But eventually they accepted her and we were married in 1967 and moved to Nottingham where I went to work for Boots.
In 1981, I was transferred to Saffron Walden to work for Fisons and Boots. The company had German management but the entire staff was British. We all hated the thought of working for and with a German company but they turned out to be a very good company to work for and accepted a lot of advice from their English staff.
When I was transferred, we moved to Fulbourn, which is where we still own a home. We made contact with the Jewish community in Cambridgeshire through the family who sold us the house. We knew the family was Jewish because we noticed the Mezuzah on their door.
Another Jewish couple lived by and we met Etel (another participant in this reminiscence group) very early on. Very soon after moving to the Cambridge area I joined the Cambridge Jewish Residents Association (CJRA). However, it took my wife a bit longer to settle down but eventually she too integrated.
My Name
I was named Ralph David but everyone called me David, even at home. I was not named after anyone special. In Hebrew my name means “beloved”.
My grandfather lost three children and his wife, it is rather sad story. He was born in Poland and came to England as a child just before the turn of the twentieth century in order to escape the pogroms. We heard that his second wife was not so good to him.
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My maternal Uncle Norman was married in Birmingham, however Uncle Norman and his wife were soon divorced and he remarried.
My maternal cousin lived in the UK for a time, but eventually went to live in Canada.
I was very close to my step-mother who, unfortunately, was always rowing with my own mother – it was quite sad.
Family and memories of family mean a lot to me.
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MY OBJECT
I brought in a book titled Stories from the Bible, the Old Testament. This book was given to me by my parents when I was about five or six years old. When I was younger, I would read these stories over and over again and being a Jew, I liked it when the Israelites were winning or victorious in a battle. I wasn’t allowed to read the popular comics of the time like Beano, I was only allowed to read things like The Eagle.
Even though my parents were culturally Jewish, spoke Yiddish and their circle of friends was Jewish, they were not religiously observant and more like secular Jews. We moved around a bit, from Liverpool to Birmingham and remaining within that tight circle of friends had a lot to do with a mutual sense of humour and a type of safety net.
I had lost this book but recently found it on sale. I purchased it immediately as it raised a lot of old memories of my childhood and the truth is, the older one gets, the more one wants to retrace one’s roots.
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FOOD
I brought in home-made Gefilte fish balls. This is a traditional Ashkenazi dish probably originating from Poland, Germany or Eastern Europe. The Jews have a tradition of picking up recipes from their neighbours over the centuries.
The fish balls are made from cod, haddock, herring, onion, carrot and celery – all chopped together in the food processor and bound with an egg. When like a paste, it is rolled into balls, dipped into matzo meal or bread crumbs and then fried. It is particularly good with chopped liver.
I remember, as a young boy, going to the fish market in Wolverhampton with my mother, usually on a Friday morning in preparation for the Sabbath meal on Friday evening.
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