Second gallery

  The distinguished Oscar-winning film director and illustrator Arnold Schwartzman OBE has sent us the following fascinating reminiscences. I may take the claim to be the sole survivor of the Battle of Cable Street! Aged 9 months, I was fast asleep upstairs in my grandfather Michael Finkleson’s boot repair shop at 292a Cable Street as the battle raged along the… Read More

On September 7 1940 I was four years old living with my parents in Sidney Street, in London's East End, on the first day of the London Blitz. I recall that it was a hot evening and my mother had set three salads on the kitchen table when I noticed out of the window that on the neighbouring flat roof there was a man stripped to the waist washing his… Read More

Join Vivi Lachs historian and Yiddish speaker on Thursday 26 March from 7pm-8.30pm at Finchley Church End Library, Finchley, Barnet showcasing the book 'East End Jews: Secret tales from the London Yiddish Press’ it offers an unparalleled view into the life, labour, and the joys of London's Jewish East End, from its heyday in the 1890s until the 1950s. Drawing… Read More

Professor Jason Shela MBE recently contacted us about a research project he is currently conducting to collect the oral histories of people who grew up in London’s East End (which include his father, grandparents and great grandparents). Read More

  Do you or your family have connections with the cinema in the East End? If so, Isabelle Seddon would love to hear from you. Read More

JEECS has been asked if anyone knows the name of the Gramophone Man, pictured here, his back story, when he retired, and the sort of music he played. Read More

A while back, we had a reader asking if anyone had any information about a company his mother had worked for in the East End and which she remembered as being called Lottries. The inquiry sparked some fascinating replies, which identified the company as H Lotery and Co, and we've just had a response from the grandson of the company's… Read More

Did you know or do you have material from the Polish-born Yiddish poet Avrom-Nokhem Stencl (also known as A. N. Stencl) who was once famous in east London for selling his celebrated Yiddish magazine Loshn un lebn (Language & Life), for running his Friends of Yiddish Saturday afternoon literary society and for his many acclaimed publications of Yiddish poetry? Stencl… Read More