My late mother was born in Hull. She was one of the six English-born children of Nochum and Matla Lifchitz. Her parents were from Igumen (now Cherven) to the South-East of Minsk in Belarus; four more children were born and died there at young ages. Nochum was a carpenter and Matla raised chickens; at one time they had a furniture and egg shop. Nochum and Matla were first cousins and they had siblings in Hull named Finestein, Feldman and Edelson. Nochum used to visit the Emigrants Waiting Room in Hull Railway Station looking for landsmen from Igumen and persuaded some to stay rather than continuing to the USA. My mother spoke only Yiddish before starting the Hull Hebrew School at age 5. Her parental home was full of warmth and noise with constant visitors from the nearby cousins and landsmen.
After leaving school my mother was a shorthand typist but this changed when her sister, staying with cousins in Paris, learned the art of ladies hairdressing. She taught my mother and another sister, and other cousins learnt too. Hence the family soon became established in that business. At one time my mother owned three hairdressing shops. Her brother, Jack Lennard, became a manufacturer of permanent waving machines and the chemical products used in hairdressing.
Moving to Leeds in the late 1980s she quickly established a wide range of friends at various clubs and in the neighbourhood. She loved to dance and to walk. She was unassuming, calm and had a gentle sense of humor. And despite the tragic loss of my sister, Marilyn Taylor, at a young age she always managed to keep her spirits high.
She lived in High Moor Close, Skyte House and eventually Donisthorpe Hall.
Howard Cuckle, Tel Aviv, November 2019
