Kehilat Middlesbrough Newsletter No 18 September 2003 page 2 (of 4)
Letters
My connection to the Jewish community of Middlesbrough comes through the book I wrote, in which the Jewish Community in Middlesbrough and Guisborough play a role during and before the war. I came and interviewed some of the former Jewish people who lived in the two towns.
The name I gave the book is “None of Them Were Heroes”. It is about the simple people, many of whom were German refugees and how they worked their lives around the war, with the news coming from home and the relatives that were still there. The book will be coming out in late September/early October 2003 and I will be giving a talk about it in London on the 1st of November.
In order to promote it, a couple of events are being organized for me in the UK. On Saturday November 1st 2003 I shall be giving a talk at Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg's home at 4pm for the Seuda Shlishit. I shall also be in Birmingham that same week, but as yet the date hasn't been confirmed.
I am looking for one or two more engagements for that week, which don't have to be for big audiences; it could be for a group of friends. If anyone would like to arrange something like this, please contact me.
In the meantime you can find it at www.amazon.com under the name Chaim Rockman Chaim Rockman [email protected]
Kol hakavod for this great website. It has helped my mom, Naomi Davis, kleib naches, to see mention of her late dad Rabbi Louis Miller Zichrono Livracha, (my late grandfather), mentioned on a number of occasions, and we even got to read one of his very Zionistic speeches, which did me proud. Jonathan Davis [email protected]
I am trying to find information regarding my late father's brother, Ernest Aaron Gompertz. The family, consistimg of father Samuel, mother Rebecca and children Ernest Aaron, Gabriel (my father) Rosa and Alexander, lived in Middlesbrough and then moved to South Shields in 1900. Ernest was born in Middlesbrough on June 20th 1888. In 1898, he was witness to a fatal accident in Middlesbrough. The court case was recorded in the local paper and he was complimented on the erudite way in which he described the events he witnessed. I am in the process of writing a short biographical account of this wonderful man, for the Gompertz families of the future and although I have a great deal of information of his adult life, I know little about his early years.
Can anybody help me? Joy Winton (formerly Gompertz) [email protected]