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Learning toolkit

Background

Traditionally, Jewish communities would form when a visiting trader settled down and was joined by others. When a community had at least ten males over 13 years of age they would obtain the holy scroll used in services, find a place to meet (synagogue), and hire someone to slaughter chickens in accordance with Jewish law. 

Activities

Objective - To discover more about modern Jewish migration into Wales and the successes and challenges they experienced.

Compare with the other groups and their migration stories into Wales and try to make connections/see similarities in reasons behind migration into Wales and the UK.

Learning experiences

(derived from the statements of what matters)

Humanities
  • Understanding ideas and perspectives
  • Human impact on the world
  • Understanding the past
  • Understanding human rights
  • Similarity and social differentiation
  • Contribution to society
  • Identity
Health and Well-being
  • Empathy
  • Understanding relationships
  • Feelings and mental health
  • Social decisions
  • Social awareness

 

Jewish migration timeline

1730s

The first Jewish community in Wales was founded in Swansea, where Jews had been living since the 1730s. A German silversmith, David Michael, obtained land for a cemetery in 1768. He later built a synagogue at the back of his house.

Merthyr Synagogue
Merthyr Synagogue. Drawing by Olwen Hughes.

1810s

The Cardiff community was founded by the Marks family who came from Neath in the 1810s. Synagogues were founded in Merthyr Tydfil in 1848, Newport in 1859 and in Pontypool, Pontypridd, Neath and Tredegar in the 1860s/70s.

1850s

In Britain, there were no formal restrictions on Jews, but the need to take a Christian oath effectively excluded Jews from many positions unless they converted to Christianity. For example, Jews were not allowed to attend Oxford or Cambridge University until the 1850s.

1880s

From the 1880s onwards, the number of Welsh Jews increased greatly as migrants arrived from the former Russian Empire. Between 1881 and 1914 an estimated 4,500 Jews migrated from Eastern Europe and settled in Wales, primarily in the south. They were escaping persecution and conscription into the army but also wanted a better life. The British response was the Aliens Act of 1905 which introduced immigration controls for the first time.

 

1919

There were Jewish communities throughout south Wales and its valleys, but also in Bangor, Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Rhyl, Wrexham and Welshpool. Jewish numbers peaked in about 1919 when there were around 5,000 Jews in Wales, but this number had halved by the 1990s. 

Kindertransport

Fleeing across Europe to escape the Nazis, about 10,000 Jewish children arrived in Great Britain between December 1938 and May 1940 on 'Kindertransport' (Children's transport). Some came to Wales. 

Today

Now, around 2,000 Jews live in Wales, but the numbers who make up the active membership of the remaining communities are much smaller. Only two synagogues remain open, both are in Cardiff.

Restrictions

These communities were mainly immigrants from central Europe and western Poland, and their descendants. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Jews were subject to higher taxes and also faced restrictions on:

  • marriage
  • what work they could do
  • ownership of property
  • where they could live

Jews commonly changed their foreign names to fit in better. Jewish numbers were constantly depleted because of conversion to Christianity, intermarriage with non-Jews and emigration, often to places with a larger Jewish community like London, Manchester, the United States and Israel. Many Jews became less observant of Jewish rules, for example those forbidding working or driving a car on the Sabbath.

Jewish religious laws state that Jews must be buried in consecrated ground and cannot be interred in non-Jewish cemeteries. There are three Jewish cemeteries in Cardiff, two in Swansea and one each in Brynmawr, Llandudno, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport, and Pontypridd.

Jewish gravestone
Grave of Zelda Schwartz in Merthyr Tydfil Jewish Cemetery
(Photograph courtesy of Tony Blasebalk)
Jewish cemetery
Swansea Jewish Cemetery
©JHASW
Krotosky brother butcher shop
The Krotosky brothers, Arnold (standing) and Gabriel (sitting), in their butcher shop in City Road, Cardiff, 1984.
(Photograph courtesy of Philip Kaye)

Kosher

The word kosher means ‘fit’ or ‘clean’ in Hebrew. It describes food which has been properly slaughtered and prepared according to Jewish laws and customs. Kosher also involves other rules like not eating meat and milk products together.

The last Jewish butcher’s shop in Wales closed in 1992 when Arnold Krotosky and his wife Freya retired to Bournemouth. Arnold’s grandfather came from Poland.

Antisemitism

Rumours and lies have been spread about Jews for centuries. At the same time, Jews were discriminated against because they were both looked down on as poor and dirty spreaders of disease, and also as rich people who control the press and the world’s economies. Christian children were told that Jews killed Jesus (who of course was himself a Jew) and that Jews had the devil’s horns on their head.

Kindertransport

Fleeing across Europe to escape the Nazis, about 10,000 Jewish children arrived in Great Britain between December 1938 and May 1940 on 'Kindertransport' (Children's transport). Some came to Wales. They all have their own story. Here is the story of a child who came to Swansea.

Kärry (Kerry) Wertheim was born in Germany in 1929. She was four when Hitler came to power. At school, the teacher and the other children wouldn’t speak to Jewish children, so she never learnt to write German. Her family were thrown out of their house because it was ‘too good for Jews’.

They went to stay in the synagogue, but this was set on fire in 1937. They managed to evade Nazi youths waiting for them. She was separated from her mother and sent to a Jewish orphanage with four younger brothers and sisters, whom she looked after. When she was out buying food for them, she was caught by the Gestapo (Nazi secret police). They beat her with truncheons, and permanently damaged her kidneys.

In 1939, she was put on board a train, and not told where she was going or why. In London she was collected by a stranger who spoke no German. He took her to Swansea; they spent over six hours on the train unable to talk to each other.

Her foster mother changed her name to Ellen (a name she had never heard before) and cut off her beloved plaits. She learnt English and went to school. Her foster father died when she was fifteen and she took over his business, which made accessories and added finishings to ladies’ clothing. She married when she was seventeen and had two children.

 

Her father escaped from a concentration camp and fled to Australia. She never saw him again. She was told that her mother, her brothers (Rolf, Heinz, Sally and Ludwig) and her sisters (Ruth and Zilla) were sent to Riga where they were shot.

Ellen later gave talks to schoolchildren about the Holocaust.

View more clips from the Wales Broadcast Archive and The National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive. 

https://clip.library.wales/

Kerry family photo
Kerry’s mother holding Ludwig; Papa holding Ruth; below her Sally; Rolf, Heinz and Ellen, 1937.
(Photograph courtesy of Ellen Davis)
Kerry passport
The passport giving Kerry permission to land in Southampton. A condition of entry is that the holder does no paid or unpaid work.
(Photograph courtesy of Ellen Davis)

© Gwrych Castle
© Gwrych Castle

Gwrych Castle

Between 1939 and 1941, Gwrych Castle in Abergele hosted around 200 Jewish refugee children who had fled from Nazi-occupied Europe. 

More information

Jewish contribution to society

Jews have contributed to Welsh society in many ways, enriching its commercial, cultural and civic life. They set up many businesses that provided employment. The contribution of Jewish people to the arts in Cardiff can be seen by their funding of arts venues.

The main concert hall in the iconic Wales Millenium Centre is named after Donald Gordon, a South African/British Jew who was the son of immigrants from Lithuania.

Harry and Abe Sherman funded the Sherman Theatre. They were sons of East European immigrants from Lithuania and Poland.

The Concert Hall in the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama is named after Dora Stoutzker who was the daughter of immigrants from Russia. She was a piano and singing teacher in Tredegar. Her son became a businessman.

Chapter Arts Centre has both Seligman Theatre and Stiwdio Seligman named after David and Phillipa Seligman. David grew up in a kibbutz (communal farm) in Israel.

Did you know...?

The first female winner of the Booker Prize was Cardiff-born author Bernice Rubens, whose father came from Latvia and whose mother’s father was from Poland. Her brother Harold was a concert pianist who became a friend of Nelson Mandela. He played the piano loudly at his meetings so the conversation could not be picked up by South African Secret Service microphones.

From 2019 the Booker Prize was sponsored by Michael Moritz, the Cardiff-born son of a German Jew who fled from Munich in 1937.

Funded by Welsh Government

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