East End Jewish Radicals 1875–1914

Owned by Marian Ferguson, who escaped Germany on the Kindertransport in 1939

Author

William J Fishman

Publisher

Duckworth & Co, London, 1975

Printing Details

First edition. Hardback in dustwrapper. 22 × 14cm, 336pp.

A previous owner's pencilled signature to the ffep reads "Marion Ferguson". She was born in Plauen in Germany in 1924 to a Jewish family. They suffered at the hands of the Nazis including her home being vandalised on Kristallnacht, and on July 26, 1939, she escaped to Britain on one of the last Kinderstransport. Her family perished. After the war she trained as a nurse and nursing historian, concentrating on the history of Jewish nursing in Germany. Also included is the memorial programme after her death in 1988.

This book documents the vibrant rise of socialist and anarchist movements among Eastern European Jewish immigrants who fled tsarist pogroms and poverty to settle in London’s overcrowded Whitechapel and Stepney neighbourhoods. Fishman explores how these working-class immigrants, faced with severe xenophobia, dismal tenement living, and oppressive sweatshop exploitation in the garment and tailoring trades, organized to demand labour rights, shorter working hours, and better conditions. Through detailed profiles of key agitators and intellectuals—most notably Aaron Lieberman and the Gentile anarchist Rudolf Rocker—he illustrates how radical Yiddish newspapers, political clubs, and trade unions transformed a marginalized population into a powerful political force, culminating in landmark industrial actions such as the great strikes of 1889 and 1912 before the movement was fractured by the onset of World War I.

Condition

A well-read copy but remaining in sound readable condition. The book has some tanning to the page edges and the dustwrapper is rather tatty but complete.