The Green Park (2015) - full transcript
Bournemouth, a fashionable
and beautiful resort on
the south coast of England.
Because of its mild climate,
Bournemouth is popular
throughout the area.
On the east cliff overlooking the sea,
lies the Green Park Hotel,
the greatest name in Jewish hotels.
Absolute comfort, superb service,
international kosher
cuisine, and every bedroom
with private bathroom and shower.
Book now for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur,
Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Pesach, Shavuot--
- Those were the days my friends.
We thought they'd never end.
- Wonderful people, wonderful job,
and the creme de la creme
came to the Green Park.
Different class, absolutely
different.
- I was there 25 years
and it was the best years
of my life.
- I'm 77 now.
I will go back tomorrow morning.
The Green
Park Hotel in Bournemouth
opened its doors in 1943.
For 40 years, it plied its trade as
the leading kosher hotel
in the United Kingdom,
catering to the vibrant
Anglo-Jewish community,
with the finest hospitality of the time.
But the Green Park, as with
many Jewish social spaces,
also served a deeper purpose.
In 2015, the global population of Jews
reached pre-Holocaust levels.
This incredible feat has been achieved,
not by conquest or conversion, but by
passing on Jewish traditions,
practicing the Jewish faith,
and introducing Jewish sons and daughters.
Like a stick of seaside rock, you can
break into Jewish culture at any point
and find the same words written there.
Tradition, religion, family, food.
These were the values at
the heart of the Green Park.
The Jewish history of the United Kingdom
can be divided into three distinct eras.
The first era of Anglo-Judaism
did not end well.
The small Jewish community
which had built up
since 1066 was expelled
from England in 1290.
It was not until 1655,
over 350 years later,
that Oliver Cromwell issued an edict
allowing Jews back into
the United Kingdom.
This time things went better.
The Anglo-Jewish community
became a key part
of English life, from inventing
the techniques of boxing,
to financing the British
Empire, to running it.
The third era of
Anglo-Judaism did not begin
until the late 19th century.
Antisemitism reached a new height
with a series of violent
pogroms in Poland,
Russia and Lithuania.
The Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi
Jews of these communities
sought refuge elsewhere,
traveling west to France,
America, and England.
The UK Jewish community increased from
just under 50,000 to over 200,000.
They arrived in England as strangers,
with little money, and less English.
This new wave of Jewish immigration
settled largely in the East End of London,
with further communities in Manchester,
Leeds, and Glasgow.
They took up lesser trades
than they'd been used to,
becoming bakers, tailors, and traders.
But they had the energy of
an immigrant population,
overcoming antisemitism,
educating their children,
and improving their lot.
The second generation of this community
was coming of age in the mid 1930s,
when the world changed.
No enemy the Jews ever faced was greater
than that which arose in Germany.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party
rode a wave of antisemitism to power
and took the world
towards the unthinkable,
a Second World War.
Separated from their European cousins,
the Jews of Britain were determined
to help the Allied war effort,
working on the home front, and joining
the armed forces in their thousands.
War brought Britain
together like never before.
Throughout the Battle of
Britain and the Blitz,
people of different classes, genders,
and ethnic backgrounds
were thrown together
to keep Britain strong.
Women worked in factories.
The rich were on the same
rations as everyone else,
and many inner city Jewish children
were evacuated to the
countryside for safety.
War and the war effort
dominated English society.
But they weren't the whole story.
"Keep calm and carry on" was the mantra.
Children went to school
and commerce continued.
The young family man,
Mr. Marriott, was unable
to join the army because
of his terrible eyesight.
He had continued running
his boarding house
in Torquay, when he was presented with
an unlikely opportunity.
An Art Deco hotel
suddenly became available.
- My husband came to me and said do I mind
if he goes to Bournemouth.
I said, "To Bournemouth?
"What for?"
He said, "Well I've just seen an advert
of a 60-bedroom, 60-bathroom
hotel up for sale.
Looking to grow his business,
but unable to afford this grand location,
he turned to his clients and his friends.
- He had a word with them and said,
"Would you like to come to Bournemouth
"and finance me for the hotel?
'Cause I can't afford it myself."
And they became.
They financed him and they
said, "Don't worry about it.
"You'll pay us back when you can."
- And with a handshake,
he bought the hotel,
and it was the best thing he ever did.
Ruby Marriott
and his wife, Sarah Richman,
were both from families
that had arrived in England
three decades previously.
Fleeing from Warsaw and eastern Poland,
both families settled
in London's East End.
The Racjmans changed their name to Richman
and worked as tailors,
while the Mariovich
family became Marriott,
and sold furs to the
English upper classes.
Following their marriage,
Ruby and Sarah took over
the Marriott family's
kosher boarding house.
This was a springboard into
the ambitious Green Park.
The Green Park Hotel was
a bet on Britain's future.
But even in the midst of the war,
there were still customers,
although of an unexpected kind.
Around half a million Jews
served in the American
and Canadian forces and
in 1944 many of them
were in the United Kingdom, preparing for
the push into Europe.
- A letter came which was
put on the notice board.
All Jewish serviceman they invited
for Seder night at the Green Park.
It was a vast diversity of servicemen,
who were Englishmen, Canadians, Americans,
the naval men from the
ships in the harbor.
When we got this invitation
for the Seder night,
I went there and 40 or 50
men at two long tables,
and I was there with
Michael Peters and two
of the Richman girls,
little table for four.
A little bit obvious,
but we had
a very nice meal.
And of course it was a full Seder night
with all the trimmings.
- In 1944, there was a
banquet at the hotel.
- Oh yes.
- Just before Passover.
We had to cancel all the bookings,
but we also had all the
food in for that period
and we said, "What can we do?"
We said to the Rabbi, "Can you help us?"
He said, "Yes."
He said, "There's lots
and lots of American
"soldiers here who need
to be looked after.
"Will you take them?"
We said, "Yes."
I think we had something
about 180 American soldiers
came and spent Passover with us.
They needed the help and we needed to
use this food we had, it was there.
- Bournemouth was great to have fun in,
because we had the Canadians
there, the Americans here,
the Australians here, and
the English here, you see.
We had quite a lot of fun.
I'm not supposed to be saying that.
Oh, we had to be very careful there,
and very, very careful.
I came from a strict
family in that kind of way.
So no, you behaved.
You just went for the fun.
The chocolate rations and the stockings
or anything else they
were prepared to give you.
You just accepted it, it was great.
- We did hear from them,
those that got back home.
And some of them we never saw again.
This is your victory.
Victory of the cause of freedom.
- Commander of the
regiment had the whole unit
lined up on the square and he said,
"Gentlemen, the war is over.
"I want you to go out and celebrate.
"But remember, celebrate like gentlemen."
Dear Mother, I will be
returning on the 4:30 train from Dover.
Please don't bother to
meet me at the station.
I'm not sure I'm quite up
for a big fuss at the moment.
Aunt Sarah has offered to put me up
for a week in May in a
new hotel in Bournemouth.
It may be just what I need
for a bit of recuperation.
Love, Joseph.
As the war drew to a close,
a discovery was made which
would shame humanity,
and change the course of Jewish history.
Leslie Hardman, a British rabbi attached
to the 8th Army Corps,
was one of the first
British Jews to encounter the devastation
of the Holocaust whilst
liberating Bergen-Belsen.
For many back home, the reality
of the murdered millions
was almost impossible to grasp,
but it was only a single generation
that separated many British
Jews from the dead of Europe.
- The situation in Germany,
as far as any of us knew,
we knew absolutely nothing about it.
It wasn't 'til after the war that we heard
about the Holocaust and what had happened.
- I'm born in Poland, 1927.
And then, of course, the Russians came in.
The army comes in.
One side then Hitler on the other side.
So we're trying to save our lives,
we run to the Russian side.
And of course they took us to Siberia,
just to work for your death.
- We used to get people in that came back
to stay that had been in Belsen.
And that, those, you know.
They would talk about it
a little bit, you know.
They used to sometimes
show you their number.
It was very sad.
- They said that my grandmother
died in her own bed,
but we learned a lot later
that was not the truth,
not the truth.
They were in tremendous...
The entire family was wiped out there.
The tumult and horror of war
had displaced thousands of European Jews.
Following the Holocaust, the need
for a safe Jewish state was
more deeply felt than ever.
As thousands of Jewish
refugees made their way
to the British Mandate in Palestine,
this became a question that could not
go unanswered for much longer.
- '47, '48 was a very difficult time
because British soldiers were being killed
in Palestine, and what were those people
killing them trying to do?
They were trying to
establish a Jewish state.
So that's extremely uncomfortable
for a British Jew in the sense that
where does your loyalty lie?
Does it lie with we've got to have a state
to receive the Holocaust survivors?
Or Britain's being messed
about here and whatever.
So that, I think, was
very, very difficult.
The
tragic scene is like
a serious incident during the Blitz.
In July
1946, the tension between
the Zionists and the British
state reached its peak
with the bombing of the
British headquarters
at the King David Hotel.
- The principle of bombing
a hotel, in my opinion,
was absolutely outrageous.
I could find no redeeming
features for either side.
- I mean, that was a
very, very difficult time.
Two of my cousins were
beaten up, in English
public school, were beaten up at school.
It was a very tricky time.
The establishment
of the state of Israel
in 1948, and peace in
Europe, allowed the world
to look to the future.
Britain began to rebuild
following the two World Wars.
And British Jews were
there to rebuild with them.
For Ruby Marriott and the Richman sisters,
the dream of creating
a vibrant Jewish hotel,
with the best of everything, and kosher,
was now within their grasp.
- And I knew that it was
something that we could
really do and make a go of it.
And we did.
The beginning of the 1950s
saw a very different Britain
to the previous decade.
The National Health Service was in place.
A new queen was on the throne.
And the mood in Britain was hopeful.
- It was a sort of
moment in time which was
when people had come out from the war
were facing a new chapter
in the history of the world
as well as their own lives.
There was a sense of optimism.
All of that is kind of
frozen in aspic in my memory,
and I suspect the memory
of all my contemporaries.
- Post-war Britain was a very interesting
place to live in.
I remember as a kid going to a sweet shop
with a ration card.
And all of a sudden
this austerity started getting lifted off.
- The 1950s were an era of prosperity.
Rationing finally ended in this country.
You had money to spend.
The war years were receding.
And there were things to forget.
And going to one of
the great kosher hotels
in Bournemouth was one way of forgetting.
Dear Mother, I'm having
a lovely time at the Green
Park, feeling much better.
It seems everyone from
London is down here.
I even met a nice girl.
Don't tell Father.
Love, Joseph.
♪ Well ♪
♪ Sugar in the morning,
sugar in the evening ♪
- I was born just at the end of the war,
and grew up here in a time when
Bournemouth was flourishing
as a seaside resort
in the '50s and '60s.
The sort of resort where people came
on a Saturday, and stayed for two weeks
and went to the beach every day.
It was completely different and it was
a bucket and spade resort.
- It's got beautiful beaches, it had a lot
of lovely facilities, it was upper crust.
It was really a lovely place to live
and was considered the best
place on the south coast
of England, and it really was.
It was very classy.
- If you went to Westcliff,
you were in one grade,
and when you started going up, you had to
look where you were going, and eventually
you got to Bournemouth,
'cause that was the top.
- Oh, they weren't in the same class.
No, definitely.
They were good, like the
Ambassador and the others,
they were good, but they hadn't got
that something, I don't know what it was.
But the Green Park was so renowned for
everything about it.
The way it was run, the
food, especially the food,
because it was all kosher.
- We used to go to all of them.
My grandmother liked them
all, and we used to go
with her to the Ambassador
Hotel, the Langham,
the Normandie, the
Majestic, the Cumberland.
But the Green Park was the business.
Ruby Marriott
was far from alone
in running the hotel.
He was ably assisted by his wife Sarah,
her mother, her sister
Helen, her sister Ray,
her sister Judy, and her sister Hannah.
Helen was the second sister to marry,
leaving the hotel with her
husband, Arnold, in 1956.
But Ray, Judy and Hannah
remained for the next 30 years.
- They were the top
people to run the place.
Although Mr. Marriott was
the managing director,
he was the only man in the family.
But he was the leader.
So the three girls, we call
them the girls even now.
They were wonderful.
Everyone had something to do.
Miss Hannah Richman, she was in charge of
the kitchen and the catering.
Miss Ray Richman, she
was in charge of cooking
and billing, and things like that.
And Miss Judy Richman,
she was the youngest
of the three, she was in
charge of the finance.
- We always helped one another.
If there was anything needed,
wherever it was needed,
we just did that.
- Yeah, we were
family together.
Hannah's nothing like
me, I'm nothing like her,
but we complement each other.
- And there was never
a bad word between us,
not even a sharp word.
And we've always got on, and
that was right from birth.
There's a lot of love in the whole family.
For all
the efficiency of Ruby
and the Richman sisters,
much of the character
of the hotel was provided by
the family matriarch, Bubba Richman.
Bubba was a character of the Old World,
and had little time for
the Anglicized pretensions
of the younger generation.
- Bubba was a chain smoker.
She used to light one cigarette
with the previous one.
Drank a bottle of champagne every night
and several glasses of
brandy during the day.
English was not her strong suit.
A person of strong opinions
and not afraid to express them.
She liked to play cards.
In fact they said she was
a terrible cheat at cards.
- And had a passion for wrestling.
- I didn't know that.
Mick McManus was her favorite.
- Oh, Bubba Richman was a typical Yiddish
grandmother and mother.
She was adorable.
To me, she was true Jewish.
She was true Yiddish,
you know what I mean?
She had it all and she
was gonna keep it though.
She wasn't gonna let it go,
because that's who she was, yes.
- They were just a cohesive force
and they were known everywhere.
Wherever you went, if
you said Bournemouth,
everybody would say that they knew
the Marriotts and the Richmans.
They really were, they
were the driving force.
- When we arrived at the Green Park Hotel,
we were always greeted.
As we came into the front door,
there would be Ruby standing there
with his arms outstretched.
"Hello, Faye, how lovely to see you."
And in turn, I would
say how wonderful it is,
Ruby, to be here.
And we'd hug and kiss and
it was like coming home.
At the Green Park Hotel,
all of your kosher
needs will be fully met.
We have separate facilities
for milk and meat,
our fish are all fully
scaled and freshly caught
in the North Atlantic.
All of our meat comes
straight from chewing the cud,
and of course, no pork.
The aim of the Green Park
was to provide its guests
with the best of everything.
And at the heart of Jewish life,
from Moses to Nigella,
there has aways been food.
- Yes, that's what Jewish
people are well known for,
is the food.
- Primarily, it was about eating.
- The food was fantastic.
- You had breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner.
And then, at midnight, tea and sandwiches
were served in the late evening,
in case you were feeling a bit peckish
and you felt that you couldn't quite
make it through to breakfast.
The
exquisite cuisine was made
all the more remarkable by its need
to adhere to the strict kosher standards
of the Green Park.
- There's no meat for breakfast.
Only croissants, white rolls.
120 rolls for lunch, 120 rolls for dinner,
12 white loaves, six brown.
So you have to keep lunch sweet
and dinner sweet separate.
And then you do your afternoon tea cakes,
donuts, millefeuille, cream
slices, Danish pastry.
The rabbi came every day into the bakery
and saw everything is all right.
- The food was absolutely top class.
And everybody had every mouth full.
Someone came to me one day and said,
"I don't think I can come here again.
"I've put on seven pounds this week."
I said, "Never mind, you'll
be back," and she was.
- It was in line with the times.
Now maybe that's that
they were particularly
hungry at that time, or whether it's
a way of showing your prosperity.
But you went to a hotel
that gave 20 meals a day.
You did your daughter's
wedding in such a way
that there were umpteen
meals during the day
and nobody could say you'd been stingy.
But it was definitely that era, I think,
after the war.
Now
well-established, the Green Park
was the place to be seen.
Its rooms were full and
its doors were always open.
This unique hotel, overlooking the sea,
became a nexus of
Anglo-Jewish social life.
The loyal guests of the Green
Park were quick to adopt
the luxuries of upper class English life.
- I remember the very first time we stayed
at the Green Park.
We came along to go to
the car park in our car
and there had drawn up there a small van,
and out of the van came racks of dresses,
then a pile of shoes, you know, shoe boxes
was wheeled into the hotel.
One simple level is that a
lot of them were in diamonds.
So therefore, it was a way
of showing off your stock.
Yeah, I don't think it's a nasty thing.
It was just basically
saying, we've come out
of austerity and out of
an immigrant background
and whatever, and we want to have
the good things in life.
And the Green Park became seen
in the Anglo-Jewish community
as one of the good things in life.
Fancy dress competitions
were frequent at the Green Park.
The more outrageous, the better.
- There used to be a competition on who
dressed better than anybody else.
- One day on Christmas, I dressed up,
he dressed up as a baby.
They pushed him in the
pram and it was called
the wrong pill.
That won it.
And a horse came through and left
mess on the floor.
Oy vey.
- She gave permission for the horse.
- I didn't give the horse the permission.
Ruby gave permission for
the horse to come in.
- I said to Sarah, "I want
to dress up as your mother.
"I want to wear her sheitel.
"I want to wear her clothes.
"I want to wear her shoes.
"Her legs are very fat.
"I want to have my legs bandaged
"and stuffed with cotton wool."
And I had a bag with cards and cigarettes.
Everybody was in hysterics
and I won the first prize.
- Oh gosh, you should
have been there at night
when they all came for
Passover and things like that.
Oh gosh it was hectic, but it was fun.
- Jews felt very much at home in these
Jewish hotels in Bournemouth.
You know, you spent 50 weeks a year
trying to assimilate, and two weeks a year
going back to your roots.
- We did have dancing every night.
And we had two dancing gigolos.
The women's eyes lit up when they saw
they were there.
If they knew they were
going to have a dance, yes.
It was like going to the
best hotel in London.
You wouldn't be better
dressed in Claridge's
or the Savoy.
In those days the women wore jewelry.
Some of it was lovely.
They wanted to be queen of Green Park.
Some were the duchess of Green Park, yes.
- It's always the people themselves that,
in my opinion, are the stars of a hotel.
They don't know it, but
the way they behaved
and carried on, that's
what made Green Park great.
- The real joy of that hotel was
the characters of the men
and women that were there.
Not us kids.
These were all characters.
They were self-made men.
They knew what they wanted.
They had stories to tell.
They were characters.
♪ You gotta have a little mazel ♪
Amongst these characters
were individuals who
would rebuild and reshape
Britain in the 1950s and beyond.
♪ You'll always have a buck ♪
- All the Jewish immigrants that came
into England became integrated in society.
They sacrificed a lot to
see that their children
were educated, and they did very well.
It wasn't very many
decades before there were
affluent Jewish people,
influential Jewish people.
- They were very
successful in the business
and they didn't have nothing
to lose, only to gain.
♪ Well you gotta have a little mazel ♪
I know the banks had confidence in them,
helped them a lot
- And we had a lot of the
bookmakers used to come.
They were well to do.
Joe Coral, with the never
a quarrel with Joe Coral,
we had him come in.
- I knew Tesco Man, Cohen.
Yes, I knew him.
He used to come and stay a lot.
- There was a fellow from Ladbrokes
used to be there as well.
- And Cyril Stein.
- Cyril Stein, yes.
- I understand he started
somewhere in London,
with just a suitcase of shirts.
And that's how he started his business.
- The Wolfson family.
Lord Wolfson, all of that family.
Every single member of that family came.
♪ Well you gotta have a little mazel ♪
- Everybody played cards at the Green Park
and at one stage, at the age of about 10,
we were looking around the dining room
for a fourth.
It was David Marriott, Victor Siegel,
and me, couldn't find a fourth.
So Isaac Wolfson, he said,
"I'll play with you boys."
We sat there in the card
room playing gin rummy.
Everybody took photographs, and it was
in the local Bournemouth paper, et cetera.
The tycoon Isaac was playing with these
young boys, playing cards.
- They didn't, how can I put it?
They didn't sort of throw that at you.
Well, I'm a millionaire or anything.
No, they were just ordinary people
when they came, you know.
- They were all people to us.
But then now we realize that they were
more important than we realized.
♪ And with a little mazel ♪
♪ You'll always have good luck ♪
The high streets of today
owe much to the guests of the Green Park.
From the buildings raised from the rubble
of the Blitz, to the
stores at ground level.
Tesco, Odeon, M&S,
Accurist Watches, Coral.
All owe their existence to
the Anglo-Jewish community.
The proportion of Jews
to the rest of the population
and what they contribute
to English society
today is amazing.
- They were well-educated, but they were
incredibly hungry and they had
a real entrepreneurial spirit.
And it came, I think, from that marriage
of Englishness and Jewishness that was
very comfortable in an environment
like the Green Park actually,
and at that point in time.
- The overwhelming majority of Jews
would try to fit in.
You know, as soon as they could afford it,
they'd get a proper suit,
so you look like every
other middle class man
at work or at play, wherever you were.
And you would shop at the shops that
the goyim shopped at and so on.
You didn't want to be noticed,
because the history of these families
through the post-war
period were all people
who had fled from persecution somewhere,
one of the generations.
The grandparent generation
would have fled from
eastern Europe or from
Russia or Ukraine, whatever.
Post-war, of course, those that had fled
from the Nazi persecutions.
You don't want to be noticed at all.
So you acquire as much
of the local dialect,
as much of the local dress,
habits, behavioral things.
And we worked very hard to do that.
Dear Mr.
Stevenson, I'm very much
looking forward to our
round of golf on Saturday.
I just wanted to send you the plans
for the new block of flats.
I really think it will
lift up the whole area,
and give old Adolf one in the eye,
by putting up something bigger and better
than what he knocked down.
Kind regards, Joseph Hoffman,
Hoffman Developments.
At the
Green Park Hotel, there is
a full range of physical activities.
Enjoy a round of golf at the local club.
Play tennis or ping pong.
And for all of you football fans,
Bournemouth & Boscombe AFC
is only a 10-minute walk.
It's no surprise that the big
betting shops grew from this community.
The Jews of the United Kingdom have always
had a passion for sport.
- Jews and football is an interesting one.
I barely know a Jewish male who isn't
an avid football fan.
You know, growing up all we talked about,
all we did, was going to games,
arguing about football,
Championship Manager,
the whole thing.
And that does go back probably about
two to two and a half generations now.
And yet, Jews aren't
very good at football.
It was cricket more
than football at first.
And that was part of that
aping of the upper class
English manners, if you like.
They still like cricket, too.
Not so much rugby.
Think that's a bit scary.
It's the part of British
culture that the Jews
have taken most to their
hearts, is football.
- There was a lot of gambling going.
The men, the women used to spend
hundreds of pounds on the tables.
It didn't look like, but the women
used to bet on the kalooki or
whatever you call it.
I'm not a gambler.
Mrs. Marriott
was in charge of that.
- And the men used to enjoy
themself with the things.
- Big room, Mrs. Marriott.
- She was in charge.
- She was the spinner.
- She was in charge of the great room
and the card room.
That was Mrs. Marriott, organizing tables.
Especially after Shabbos, the card room
was full up, you couldn't get in.
Everybody was rushing, we're rushing,
all to get a table in the card room.
- You step into the restaurant
and you can see there
this whiskey open all over the places.
All gamblers.
Every table, Jack Fisher,
that one, and the other one
and the
other one.
And they were all gamblers.
Underpinning
all of the luxuries
and pleasures of the Green Park,
was a deeply held
commitment to the rituals
and the religion that had been with
the Jewish people for thousands of years.
- I love Jewish culture.
But Jewish culture will not
guarantee Jewish survival.
The reason is, that
culture doesn't command.
You read a book, you put
it back on the shelf,
and it doesn't call you back to it.
Jewish survival depends
on one word, mitzvah.
Somewhere, something must command you.
Call to you, summon you.
And that needs mitzvah.
- Oh, they observed everything.
And they had a synagogue
there and all the services.
No question it was top, top grade.
And it was very much for people who were
religious and religious-conscious.
- Well the synagogue we know that they
took services very often, very musical.
And the whole family, all the girls,
Ray, Helen, and Hannah,
all had beautiful voices.
And they brought in such a
spirit with their singing.
It was really very moving.
- Everybody went, everybody went.
Even though the people
went upstairs afterwards,
the men anyway, and they
were on to the bookies,
placing bets on the
races in the afternoon.
- Their belief, their religion.
And their religion keeps them together
more than other people.
And that's why they look after each other.
- They were English, I
mean, let's be honest.
I mean, the majority had been
born here and lived here.
It wasn't a case of being English.
They were Jewish, they never forgot
their Jewishness, no
that doesn't sound right.
But you know, they never forgot that they
were Jewish, and all the
children were brought up
like it as well.
It was absolutely strict.
Their religion was and still is
the main thing for them.
Do you think it was
keeping Judaism alive in England?
- I think it was an
injection of absolute love
of fellow man.
Yes, I think it did.
And I think that today
we would have benefited
from that hotel.
I learned a lot from it.
Food and sport
are passing pleasures,
and money's only money.
But the greatest legacy of the Green Park
is still with us today
and will go on into the future.
- It was a hotel of making Jews.
You know, people married there.
It's an amazing, amazing
what they have done
to the Jewish people.
- It was a great place
for mixing and matching.
People went there to meet each other.
Parents sent their young people there
to meet their future spouses,
and that's the sort of place it was.
It was a great place
for hatches and matches.
My darling, I
am so in love with you.
I'm so happy in the knowledge
that the love is mutual.
I can't wait to see you.
Everything in the world
seems to be so good,
at least in our world.
But it frightens me.
We must be truly humble, and
pray for the continuation
of this state of bliss and ecstasy.
- I think some very good
matches were made there.
People were happy as a result of them.
This is probably
the first time in my life
that all my reserve has left me,
and I am able to put to
paper, with unashamed
adornment, my inner
feelings and inner self.
You are my own sweet
darling, and stay that way.
I love you.
♪ I love, I love, I
love my calendar girl ♪
♪ Yeah sweet calendar girl ♪
♪ I love, I love, I love ♪
The growing
wealth of the 1950s,
and the growing up of the baby boomers,
brought about one of Britain's
most remarkable decades.
The 1960s brought a wave of new ideas,
new fashion, and new music.
The young generation
brought this with them
wherever they went, even into
the well-ordered life of the Green Park.
- The '60s was a really fabulous time
to be in Bournemouth, because we were
the children whose parents,
my mother in particular,
had been really restricted by the wartime,
by old conventions, and
they were really keen
for us to have a good time.
We were Jewish, Jewish kids.
And the Jewish hotels were flourishing.
So every weekend we would
be around the hotels,
and meeting other Jewish girls and boys.
We had a fabulous time.
And it was the beginning of discotheques
and fun and all the things that my parents
were happy for me to do.
- When we were started
moving into the '60s,
Britain was becoming very prosperous.
There was Kings Road,
there was many shops,
there was those kinds
of shops that were open
for the spending of new spenders
that were born just after the war.
And that was the baby boomers, wasn't it?
Of course, I was one of those.
♪ When you're on the
beach you steal the show ♪
- We were free in the summer to just
hang out on the beach.
It was a sort of a Californian lifestyle,
as far as it could be within England.
- They were romantic places.
You know, you got out of the city,
you were there with the sea and the sand.
The sun was an occasional added extra,
and they were exciting.
There was no doubt there was a feeling
of liberation and alternative reality.
Made for romance.
♪ Every day every day ♪
♪ Every day every day ♪
♪ Of the year ♪
♪ Every day of the year ♪
♪ Funny but it's true ♪
♪ What loneliness can do ♪
♪ Since I've been away ♪
♪ I have loved you more each day ♪
♪ Walking back to happiness ♪
♪ Woopah oh yeah yeah ♪
♪ Said goodbye to loneliness ♪
♪ Woopah oh yeah yeah ♪
♪ I never knew I'd miss you ♪
♪ Now I know what I must do ♪
♪ Walking back to happiness ♪
♪ I shared with you ♪
♪ Yay, yay, yay, yay ba dum be do ♪
♪ I'm making up for things we said ♪
♪ Woopah oh yeah yeah ♪
The Jews of Britain were
at the forefront of this new culture,
from the clothing of Carnaby Street,
to the new rock musicians.
The Beatles themselves were thrust into
the limelight by their
manager, Brian Epstein,
himself a regular at the Green Park.
- Judges, lawyers, doctors,
professors, all the lot.
Musicians, everybody
in every walk of life.
- My father, Cecil Gee, had
a very successful business.
He didn't know anything about books,
paperwork, offices, money.
Nothing interested him,
only art, creation.
His challenge was to make British men
fashionably dressed.
He used to say, "If Beau
Brummel can dress like that,
"why can't people do it again?"
This new energy was something
of a concern for the older generation,
who found their children wanting to rebel
against the sedate life
of their upbringing.
Summer holidays in '60s
Bournemouth had great appeal
for those with the good fortune
to be young at the time.
- The '60s, I've got a glint in my eye,
had their own appeal as well
when you were a certain age.
- We lived in a small town.
Bournemouth was a small town.
Bit in the sticks, there's
not much near of us here.
So these glamorous boys
and girls came down
from London to stay at those hotels.
And I definitely have very fond memories
of falling in love every Saturday night
with a different person.
The girls
were all supposed to be--
- Oh, they were nice girls.
- It was not okay if I stepped out
with somebody who wasn't Jewish.
I'm not saying it didn't happen.
Oh dear me, you're
bringing a smile to my memory.
- I was a very attractive girl
with huge braces on my teeth.
One night I was in a passionate embrace
with a young lad.
I must have been 14 1/2?
And the kiss went on forever.
And then he start
squealing because his lip
had got caught on my hook.
He was absolutely speared to me.
It was like a fish.
- I mean, it was more, it was call it
hanky panky rather than,
you know what I mean.
It was a very exciting era.
And you got away with everything.
Oh, this is gonna come
out terribly, isn't it?
Oh, this is going to come out terribly.
♪ Well, well, a little bit a roll ♪
♪ Little bit a rock, yeah ♪
♪ A little bit a roll ♪
♪ A little bit a rock ♪
♪ A little bit a roll ♪
♪ An itty bitty little
bit of rock and roll ♪
The 1960s
saw some new arrivals
at the hotel.
The Richman sisters
brought in Italian waiters
who would become a memorable
feature of the Green Park
over the next years.
- I was working in
Venice, and the Marriott
and the Richman used to come at the
Excelsior in Venice.
- We were greeted by
the restaurant manager.
He said, "It's now the '60s.
"People are traveling after the war."
He said, "And my boys
need to learn English.
"Can you take any of our
staff, the Italian boys
"in your hotel?"
So we said, "Yes, all right."
- The restaurant manager spoke to me
and said, "Would you like to go?"
I said, "Yes."
So he introduced me.
Those days I couldn't
understand a word of English.
Even now I'm not that good.
- Then we started getting Italian recipes,
Italian cooking, and introduced
all the new cooking styles.
- When Mimmo came, it was unbelievable.
Sensational.
He took over the whole hotel.
Mimmo, he could run the hotel himself.
He was sensational.
For the
guests of the Green Park
these new distractions were
only part of the story.
Young men and women were still encouraged
to marry within their own community,
and the Green Park saw many such matches.
- Well, we actually met in the Green Park.
Apparently, so Bernard tells me, when he
saw me walking across
the foyer of the hotel,
he said to himself, if that girl is frum,
I'm going to marry her.
After dinner on Friday night, there was
quite a group of young people sitting
in a corner of the lounge,
and I was too shy to go
and introduce myself.
But I said, let me just walk by,
and maybe, maybe one of them will say,
"Would you like to join us?"
And that's exactly what Bernard did.
And that's how we met.
- Well, when I met Jackie I was 17
and she was 13.
And how many years later?
- I was 16.
- We'll say three years later.
Three years later--
- I was 16.
At a party
- It was a bit of a transformation.
- A transformation, because 20 year old
I was then, not very discreet, and I said,
"I can't believe it.
"I can't even recognize
you, different person."
So she said, "Well, I'm
away at boarding school."
Her mother had forced her onto
a crash diet or something.
- I ended up staying in
Bubba Richman's room.
The Friday night that we met,
a whole group of young people, we'd all
gone out for a walk.
Bernard and I had ended up spending
the whole time together,
holding hands as we walked back.
And it was quite late by the time
I had gotten back to the hotel.
I didn't want to wake Bubba.
I remember getting undressed, actually,
outside the room and
just creeping in there
as quietly as I could.
I was so pleased that
she was snoring away.
But as I finally got into bed,
she sat bolt upright and she said,
"Where have you been, and mit whom?"
And you had to answer Bubba, so I said,
"Well, I've been out for a walk."
"Mit whom?"
"I met a young man."
"Who?"
"His name is Bernard Taub."
And she thought for a minute and she said,
"I think with this one you should
"put the thumb right in."
And so I did.
For British
Jews though, the 1960s
contained more than mini
skirts and pop songs.
In 1967, Israel, still
less than 20 years old,
was in grave danger.
This danger would unite
Jews around the world.
- Out of the horrors of the Holocaust,
came this precious gift, the ability
to protect yourself, a refuge, a backup.
The thing that you'd been
praying and hoping for
for centuries and centuries.
In '67, that suddenly looked like
it may just be taken away.
- 1967 was my first year at university.
So I remember those events indelibly,
and they changed the whole Jewish world.
We knew they changed us
in the little synagogue
in Thompson's Lane in Cambridge.
Every one of us who had been
born after the Holocaust
feared that, God forbid, we might be
about to witness a second Holocaust.
I mean, armies were massing
on all Israel's borders.
Nasser is talking about
driving Israel into the sea.
- People younger than a certain age
don't realize what it was like in '67.
I mean, when I was a kid in 1967,
the sense of pride in Israel,
the sense in the non Jewish community
of plucky little Israel, whatever.
The current situation is obviously
a completely different
one, but at that time
I think there was huge pride
in the Jewish community.
I suspect if you were
in the Green Park Hotel,
Cumberland Hotel, the former hotels
in the Six-Day War, you would have seen
enormous outpouring of support.
- What used to happen was
that the organizations
in London or anywhere,
we need a lot of money.
Can we have a dinner?
And we'd do a dinner for as many guests
as we could take.
And all the donations
were all sent to Israel.
A disastrous defeat
prompts President Nasser's resignation,
which is not accepted by his people.
UAR Commander, General
Munam Abdul Husseini,
meets with Israeli military leaders
to surrender unconditionally,
ending the fighting
in the Gaza Strip.
Nearly 600 Egyptian tanks--
- When victory came, it
was absolutely amazing.
I can remember when they
broke through to the wall,
and seeing the soldiers
praying at the wall
for the first time, and that lovely song,
"Jerusalem of Gold" which was so evocative
of those times.
- After the Six-Day War,
there was a wave of sympathy
for Israel and then a wave of admiration
for the sheer skill and
the speed of victory.
One thing very, very significant happened.
Until then, virtually no one
wore a yarmulke in public.
From then, people started doing so.
That was the moment that we learned
to walk tall as Jews in the public square.
The Six-Day
War rallied the Jews
of Britain to Israel's cause.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973
only furthered this connection.
- One of the flip sides to that was
that it sowed the long-term seeds
of a change of people's habits,
because Israel suddenly became a place
that people wanted to go to.
Before the Six-Day War,
it almost seemed far away,
and you might have gone once in your life
to see a relative, or to see the sites.
Don't forget, until 1967
Jerusalem was divided.
Once Jerusalem was reunited, and you could
go to the holy sites, it
became a much, much more
attractive place for people to go to,
and Israel became an
alternative for holidays,
for Jewish holidays
and for summer holidays
to going to Bournemouth.
Cheap flights and the lure
of predictable sunshine didn't
just affect the Green Park.
The whole culture of
British seaside resorts
was shaken by the popularity
of foreign holidays.
- I don't think Bournemouth
would be regarded
as cool anymore, I'm afraid.
It would be a rainy seaside
town for most months
of the year.
- About the same time, in the 1970s,
I recall you could go for
about 50 pounds a week,
flight and hotel and board included,
perhaps to New York or to Italy
or somewhere like that.
So that was the other nail
in the coffin, really.
Did
it, in your experience,
did it become emptier at the Green Park--
- Unquestionably.
- There was a question of evolution.
As people went more and
more holidays abroad,
a lot of the Jewish, the Green Park's
regular customers started
to go abroad more.
And when they were abroad, they didn't
go to the Green Park.
- Green Park became a
place where older people
could go and spend
considerable length of time
and be in a kind of supervised environment
where they didn't have to
do anything for themselves.
Their meals were always available,
and they would have company
from the other guests.
So yes, it became a little bit
Fawlty Towers-like, in that sense.
- Or a bit like an old age
home, sheltered housing.
For the new
generation of Jewish youth,
separated from the original communities
of the East End by 70
years, and confronted
by the staggering
choices of globalization,
community became less about circumstances,
and more about belief.
- The Jewish community
also became more polarized.
So in the beginning we were
all a fairly homogenous bunch.
Fairly religious, wanted kosher food.
There were always people
who were more or less.
But the next generation, the
generation of my children,
have become much more polarized.
- One of the complaints that I've got
with the way Anglo-Jewry is structured,
is that if you're from
an orthodox concept,
an orthodox side of
the divide if you like,
that you either are in or you're not.
I remember when my kids were very young,
we were walking to synagogue one day.
One of them said to me,
"Do you believe in God?"
My answer to them was that it's not for me
to tell you what to believe in.
That's for you to make up your own mind
when you feel that you're ready.
But we do live a Jewish way of life.
By the mid 1980s, the Richman
and Marriott families
were getting on in years.
The hotel was no longer as
profitable as it once was,
and Ruby decided it was time to move on.
- Somebody came and
offered to buy the place
to redevelop and he decided to do it.
But he came over to us and
said, "I wanna tell you,
"I've sold the hotel for redevelopment,
"but I didn't want you to find out without
"me telling you.
"I didn't want you to see your hotel
"being knocked down without you knowing."
And so that was how it finally finished.
- There was a sense of inevitability
that the hotel would close.
During the less popular parts of the year
it was very sparsely populated--
Very quiet.
And the prices
were cut to such a degree
that they barely made any money.
All my family were getting older.
I think that they all felt that
short of bringing members of the younger
generation into running the business,
and there were no obvious
candidates to do that.
They had no choice but to close.
- Green Park was a piece of history.
And no, when they close
was very, very sad.
- It didn't seem possible
really, that after
all these years, Green
Park was gonna close.
We couldn't believe it.
But it was the best thing Ruby had done.
Over the 43
years that the Green Park
was open, the Anglo-Jewish community moved
from being an immigrant group, to their
integral role in modern Britain.
The Green Park was one
of many establishments
which helped foster the Anglo-Jewish
identity of today.
- Anglo-Jewish identity has never been
particularly introspective.
Jews have always been
strangely subdued in Britain.
I think that's a lot about
the British class system.
I think Jews saw the British class system
and they thought
right, well, we'll take
a bit of the upper class
sort of manner and approach to life
because that seems to be the
way things are done here.
And we'll slip quietly in beneath them
into this sort of middle
class, and we'll get on,
and we'll make some money,
and we'll buy a house.
Because that's what people do in Britain.
And that's what they've
done, and it's been
unassuming, moderate, liberal,
but remarkably successful.
What does it mean to be a British Jew?
It's a strangely compatible union.
- I felt English, I was English,
and I fought for England,
which was my country.
For six years, eight days, and four hours.
- I think they've
acculturated or assimilated
in a different way to
Jews from other places.
There was a definite twin
track of dress British
and think Yiddish.
- Yep, good, well-said.
I think if you ask people today, are you
an Englishman first or a Jew?
In 2015, most people would
say, "I'm English first."
And I think if you'd
have asked the question
50 years ago, and you've
got a truthful answer,
people would probably have
said they were Jewish first.
Do you feel
English or Jewish or Polish?
What's your identity?
- Good question.
I feel free.
I think that's enough.
Okay.
Right, so let's begin at the beginning.
The Green Park was torn down
in the mid '80s, and in its place
there now stands a block of flats.
But across the road, in an
Art Deco apartment block
not dissimilar to the Green Park,
live the Richman sisters,
who never married.
On their walls are photos
of family and friends,
and constant reminders
of their life's work,
running a hotel that exemplified
all that was best about being British,
and all that was best about being Jewish.
The many couples that the Green Park
helped introduce, and
their resulting children,
have strengthened the Jewish community,
and carried it along its journey.
- I think what we need going forward
is to continually
strengthen that inner sense
of Jewish identity.
That sense of confidence,
and a complete lack of fear.
There's huge danger with
antisemitism returning,
and a lot of hostility
to the state of Israel.
The Jews will want to
hide their identity again,
and it's a big mistake.
We should have the self-confidence
to walk tall as Jews,
to continue to be proud,
to seek to continue to be knowledgeable,
to deepen our Jewish practice,
while at the same time not retreating
into a ghetto of our own making.
Because, really and
truly, we become stronger
when we share our
blessings with the world.
And yes, we need new places
like Bournemouth hotels,
like the Green Park.
Whatever the 21st century throws up
by way of those places, we need places
where young Jews can come and meet
and fall in love and somehow or other
build a Jewish future of
which we can be proud.
and beautiful resort on
the south coast of England.
Because of its mild climate,
Bournemouth is popular
throughout the area.
On the east cliff overlooking the sea,
lies the Green Park Hotel,
the greatest name in Jewish hotels.
Absolute comfort, superb service,
international kosher
cuisine, and every bedroom
with private bathroom and shower.
Book now for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur,
Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Pesach, Shavuot--
- Those were the days my friends.
We thought they'd never end.
- Wonderful people, wonderful job,
and the creme de la creme
came to the Green Park.
Different class, absolutely
different.
- I was there 25 years
and it was the best years
of my life.
- I'm 77 now.
I will go back tomorrow morning.
The Green
Park Hotel in Bournemouth
opened its doors in 1943.
For 40 years, it plied its trade as
the leading kosher hotel
in the United Kingdom,
catering to the vibrant
Anglo-Jewish community,
with the finest hospitality of the time.
But the Green Park, as with
many Jewish social spaces,
also served a deeper purpose.
In 2015, the global population of Jews
reached pre-Holocaust levels.
This incredible feat has been achieved,
not by conquest or conversion, but by
passing on Jewish traditions,
practicing the Jewish faith,
and introducing Jewish sons and daughters.
Like a stick of seaside rock, you can
break into Jewish culture at any point
and find the same words written there.
Tradition, religion, family, food.
These were the values at
the heart of the Green Park.
The Jewish history of the United Kingdom
can be divided into three distinct eras.
The first era of Anglo-Judaism
did not end well.
The small Jewish community
which had built up
since 1066 was expelled
from England in 1290.
It was not until 1655,
over 350 years later,
that Oliver Cromwell issued an edict
allowing Jews back into
the United Kingdom.
This time things went better.
The Anglo-Jewish community
became a key part
of English life, from inventing
the techniques of boxing,
to financing the British
Empire, to running it.
The third era of
Anglo-Judaism did not begin
until the late 19th century.
Antisemitism reached a new height
with a series of violent
pogroms in Poland,
Russia and Lithuania.
The Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi
Jews of these communities
sought refuge elsewhere,
traveling west to France,
America, and England.
The UK Jewish community increased from
just under 50,000 to over 200,000.
They arrived in England as strangers,
with little money, and less English.
This new wave of Jewish immigration
settled largely in the East End of London,
with further communities in Manchester,
Leeds, and Glasgow.
They took up lesser trades
than they'd been used to,
becoming bakers, tailors, and traders.
But they had the energy of
an immigrant population,
overcoming antisemitism,
educating their children,
and improving their lot.
The second generation of this community
was coming of age in the mid 1930s,
when the world changed.
No enemy the Jews ever faced was greater
than that which arose in Germany.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party
rode a wave of antisemitism to power
and took the world
towards the unthinkable,
a Second World War.
Separated from their European cousins,
the Jews of Britain were determined
to help the Allied war effort,
working on the home front, and joining
the armed forces in their thousands.
War brought Britain
together like never before.
Throughout the Battle of
Britain and the Blitz,
people of different classes, genders,
and ethnic backgrounds
were thrown together
to keep Britain strong.
Women worked in factories.
The rich were on the same
rations as everyone else,
and many inner city Jewish children
were evacuated to the
countryside for safety.
War and the war effort
dominated English society.
But they weren't the whole story.
"Keep calm and carry on" was the mantra.
Children went to school
and commerce continued.
The young family man,
Mr. Marriott, was unable
to join the army because
of his terrible eyesight.
He had continued running
his boarding house
in Torquay, when he was presented with
an unlikely opportunity.
An Art Deco hotel
suddenly became available.
- My husband came to me and said do I mind
if he goes to Bournemouth.
I said, "To Bournemouth?
"What for?"
He said, "Well I've just seen an advert
of a 60-bedroom, 60-bathroom
hotel up for sale.
Looking to grow his business,
but unable to afford this grand location,
he turned to his clients and his friends.
- He had a word with them and said,
"Would you like to come to Bournemouth
"and finance me for the hotel?
'Cause I can't afford it myself."
And they became.
They financed him and they
said, "Don't worry about it.
"You'll pay us back when you can."
- And with a handshake,
he bought the hotel,
and it was the best thing he ever did.
Ruby Marriott
and his wife, Sarah Richman,
were both from families
that had arrived in England
three decades previously.
Fleeing from Warsaw and eastern Poland,
both families settled
in London's East End.
The Racjmans changed their name to Richman
and worked as tailors,
while the Mariovich
family became Marriott,
and sold furs to the
English upper classes.
Following their marriage,
Ruby and Sarah took over
the Marriott family's
kosher boarding house.
This was a springboard into
the ambitious Green Park.
The Green Park Hotel was
a bet on Britain's future.
But even in the midst of the war,
there were still customers,
although of an unexpected kind.
Around half a million Jews
served in the American
and Canadian forces and
in 1944 many of them
were in the United Kingdom, preparing for
the push into Europe.
- A letter came which was
put on the notice board.
All Jewish serviceman they invited
for Seder night at the Green Park.
It was a vast diversity of servicemen,
who were Englishmen, Canadians, Americans,
the naval men from the
ships in the harbor.
When we got this invitation
for the Seder night,
I went there and 40 or 50
men at two long tables,
and I was there with
Michael Peters and two
of the Richman girls,
little table for four.
A little bit obvious,
but we had
a very nice meal.
And of course it was a full Seder night
with all the trimmings.
- In 1944, there was a
banquet at the hotel.
- Oh yes.
- Just before Passover.
We had to cancel all the bookings,
but we also had all the
food in for that period
and we said, "What can we do?"
We said to the Rabbi, "Can you help us?"
He said, "Yes."
He said, "There's lots
and lots of American
"soldiers here who need
to be looked after.
"Will you take them?"
We said, "Yes."
I think we had something
about 180 American soldiers
came and spent Passover with us.
They needed the help and we needed to
use this food we had, it was there.
- Bournemouth was great to have fun in,
because we had the Canadians
there, the Americans here,
the Australians here, and
the English here, you see.
We had quite a lot of fun.
I'm not supposed to be saying that.
Oh, we had to be very careful there,
and very, very careful.
I came from a strict
family in that kind of way.
So no, you behaved.
You just went for the fun.
The chocolate rations and the stockings
or anything else they
were prepared to give you.
You just accepted it, it was great.
- We did hear from them,
those that got back home.
And some of them we never saw again.
This is your victory.
Victory of the cause of freedom.
- Commander of the
regiment had the whole unit
lined up on the square and he said,
"Gentlemen, the war is over.
"I want you to go out and celebrate.
"But remember, celebrate like gentlemen."
Dear Mother, I will be
returning on the 4:30 train from Dover.
Please don't bother to
meet me at the station.
I'm not sure I'm quite up
for a big fuss at the moment.
Aunt Sarah has offered to put me up
for a week in May in a
new hotel in Bournemouth.
It may be just what I need
for a bit of recuperation.
Love, Joseph.
As the war drew to a close,
a discovery was made which
would shame humanity,
and change the course of Jewish history.
Leslie Hardman, a British rabbi attached
to the 8th Army Corps,
was one of the first
British Jews to encounter the devastation
of the Holocaust whilst
liberating Bergen-Belsen.
For many back home, the reality
of the murdered millions
was almost impossible to grasp,
but it was only a single generation
that separated many British
Jews from the dead of Europe.
- The situation in Germany,
as far as any of us knew,
we knew absolutely nothing about it.
It wasn't 'til after the war that we heard
about the Holocaust and what had happened.
- I'm born in Poland, 1927.
And then, of course, the Russians came in.
The army comes in.
One side then Hitler on the other side.
So we're trying to save our lives,
we run to the Russian side.
And of course they took us to Siberia,
just to work for your death.
- We used to get people in that came back
to stay that had been in Belsen.
And that, those, you know.
They would talk about it
a little bit, you know.
They used to sometimes
show you their number.
It was very sad.
- They said that my grandmother
died in her own bed,
but we learned a lot later
that was not the truth,
not the truth.
They were in tremendous...
The entire family was wiped out there.
The tumult and horror of war
had displaced thousands of European Jews.
Following the Holocaust, the need
for a safe Jewish state was
more deeply felt than ever.
As thousands of Jewish
refugees made their way
to the British Mandate in Palestine,
this became a question that could not
go unanswered for much longer.
- '47, '48 was a very difficult time
because British soldiers were being killed
in Palestine, and what were those people
killing them trying to do?
They were trying to
establish a Jewish state.
So that's extremely uncomfortable
for a British Jew in the sense that
where does your loyalty lie?
Does it lie with we've got to have a state
to receive the Holocaust survivors?
Or Britain's being messed
about here and whatever.
So that, I think, was
very, very difficult.
The
tragic scene is like
a serious incident during the Blitz.
In July
1946, the tension between
the Zionists and the British
state reached its peak
with the bombing of the
British headquarters
at the King David Hotel.
- The principle of bombing
a hotel, in my opinion,
was absolutely outrageous.
I could find no redeeming
features for either side.
- I mean, that was a
very, very difficult time.
Two of my cousins were
beaten up, in English
public school, were beaten up at school.
It was a very tricky time.
The establishment
of the state of Israel
in 1948, and peace in
Europe, allowed the world
to look to the future.
Britain began to rebuild
following the two World Wars.
And British Jews were
there to rebuild with them.
For Ruby Marriott and the Richman sisters,
the dream of creating
a vibrant Jewish hotel,
with the best of everything, and kosher,
was now within their grasp.
- And I knew that it was
something that we could
really do and make a go of it.
And we did.
The beginning of the 1950s
saw a very different Britain
to the previous decade.
The National Health Service was in place.
A new queen was on the throne.
And the mood in Britain was hopeful.
- It was a sort of
moment in time which was
when people had come out from the war
were facing a new chapter
in the history of the world
as well as their own lives.
There was a sense of optimism.
All of that is kind of
frozen in aspic in my memory,
and I suspect the memory
of all my contemporaries.
- Post-war Britain was a very interesting
place to live in.
I remember as a kid going to a sweet shop
with a ration card.
And all of a sudden
this austerity started getting lifted off.
- The 1950s were an era of prosperity.
Rationing finally ended in this country.
You had money to spend.
The war years were receding.
And there were things to forget.
And going to one of
the great kosher hotels
in Bournemouth was one way of forgetting.
Dear Mother, I'm having
a lovely time at the Green
Park, feeling much better.
It seems everyone from
London is down here.
I even met a nice girl.
Don't tell Father.
Love, Joseph.
♪ Well ♪
♪ Sugar in the morning,
sugar in the evening ♪
- I was born just at the end of the war,
and grew up here in a time when
Bournemouth was flourishing
as a seaside resort
in the '50s and '60s.
The sort of resort where people came
on a Saturday, and stayed for two weeks
and went to the beach every day.
It was completely different and it was
a bucket and spade resort.
- It's got beautiful beaches, it had a lot
of lovely facilities, it was upper crust.
It was really a lovely place to live
and was considered the best
place on the south coast
of England, and it really was.
It was very classy.
- If you went to Westcliff,
you were in one grade,
and when you started going up, you had to
look where you were going, and eventually
you got to Bournemouth,
'cause that was the top.
- Oh, they weren't in the same class.
No, definitely.
They were good, like the
Ambassador and the others,
they were good, but they hadn't got
that something, I don't know what it was.
But the Green Park was so renowned for
everything about it.
The way it was run, the
food, especially the food,
because it was all kosher.
- We used to go to all of them.
My grandmother liked them
all, and we used to go
with her to the Ambassador
Hotel, the Langham,
the Normandie, the
Majestic, the Cumberland.
But the Green Park was the business.
Ruby Marriott
was far from alone
in running the hotel.
He was ably assisted by his wife Sarah,
her mother, her sister
Helen, her sister Ray,
her sister Judy, and her sister Hannah.
Helen was the second sister to marry,
leaving the hotel with her
husband, Arnold, in 1956.
But Ray, Judy and Hannah
remained for the next 30 years.
- They were the top
people to run the place.
Although Mr. Marriott was
the managing director,
he was the only man in the family.
But he was the leader.
So the three girls, we call
them the girls even now.
They were wonderful.
Everyone had something to do.
Miss Hannah Richman, she was in charge of
the kitchen and the catering.
Miss Ray Richman, she
was in charge of cooking
and billing, and things like that.
And Miss Judy Richman,
she was the youngest
of the three, she was in
charge of the finance.
- We always helped one another.
If there was anything needed,
wherever it was needed,
we just did that.
- Yeah, we were
family together.
Hannah's nothing like
me, I'm nothing like her,
but we complement each other.
- And there was never
a bad word between us,
not even a sharp word.
And we've always got on, and
that was right from birth.
There's a lot of love in the whole family.
For all
the efficiency of Ruby
and the Richman sisters,
much of the character
of the hotel was provided by
the family matriarch, Bubba Richman.
Bubba was a character of the Old World,
and had little time for
the Anglicized pretensions
of the younger generation.
- Bubba was a chain smoker.
She used to light one cigarette
with the previous one.
Drank a bottle of champagne every night
and several glasses of
brandy during the day.
English was not her strong suit.
A person of strong opinions
and not afraid to express them.
She liked to play cards.
In fact they said she was
a terrible cheat at cards.
- And had a passion for wrestling.
- I didn't know that.
Mick McManus was her favorite.
- Oh, Bubba Richman was a typical Yiddish
grandmother and mother.
She was adorable.
To me, she was true Jewish.
She was true Yiddish,
you know what I mean?
She had it all and she
was gonna keep it though.
She wasn't gonna let it go,
because that's who she was, yes.
- They were just a cohesive force
and they were known everywhere.
Wherever you went, if
you said Bournemouth,
everybody would say that they knew
the Marriotts and the Richmans.
They really were, they
were the driving force.
- When we arrived at the Green Park Hotel,
we were always greeted.
As we came into the front door,
there would be Ruby standing there
with his arms outstretched.
"Hello, Faye, how lovely to see you."
And in turn, I would
say how wonderful it is,
Ruby, to be here.
And we'd hug and kiss and
it was like coming home.
At the Green Park Hotel,
all of your kosher
needs will be fully met.
We have separate facilities
for milk and meat,
our fish are all fully
scaled and freshly caught
in the North Atlantic.
All of our meat comes
straight from chewing the cud,
and of course, no pork.
The aim of the Green Park
was to provide its guests
with the best of everything.
And at the heart of Jewish life,
from Moses to Nigella,
there has aways been food.
- Yes, that's what Jewish
people are well known for,
is the food.
- Primarily, it was about eating.
- The food was fantastic.
- You had breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner.
And then, at midnight, tea and sandwiches
were served in the late evening,
in case you were feeling a bit peckish
and you felt that you couldn't quite
make it through to breakfast.
The
exquisite cuisine was made
all the more remarkable by its need
to adhere to the strict kosher standards
of the Green Park.
- There's no meat for breakfast.
Only croissants, white rolls.
120 rolls for lunch, 120 rolls for dinner,
12 white loaves, six brown.
So you have to keep lunch sweet
and dinner sweet separate.
And then you do your afternoon tea cakes,
donuts, millefeuille, cream
slices, Danish pastry.
The rabbi came every day into the bakery
and saw everything is all right.
- The food was absolutely top class.
And everybody had every mouth full.
Someone came to me one day and said,
"I don't think I can come here again.
"I've put on seven pounds this week."
I said, "Never mind, you'll
be back," and she was.
- It was in line with the times.
Now maybe that's that
they were particularly
hungry at that time, or whether it's
a way of showing your prosperity.
But you went to a hotel
that gave 20 meals a day.
You did your daughter's
wedding in such a way
that there were umpteen
meals during the day
and nobody could say you'd been stingy.
But it was definitely that era, I think,
after the war.
Now
well-established, the Green Park
was the place to be seen.
Its rooms were full and
its doors were always open.
This unique hotel, overlooking the sea,
became a nexus of
Anglo-Jewish social life.
The loyal guests of the Green
Park were quick to adopt
the luxuries of upper class English life.
- I remember the very first time we stayed
at the Green Park.
We came along to go to
the car park in our car
and there had drawn up there a small van,
and out of the van came racks of dresses,
then a pile of shoes, you know, shoe boxes
was wheeled into the hotel.
One simple level is that a
lot of them were in diamonds.
So therefore, it was a way
of showing off your stock.
Yeah, I don't think it's a nasty thing.
It was just basically
saying, we've come out
of austerity and out of
an immigrant background
and whatever, and we want to have
the good things in life.
And the Green Park became seen
in the Anglo-Jewish community
as one of the good things in life.
Fancy dress competitions
were frequent at the Green Park.
The more outrageous, the better.
- There used to be a competition on who
dressed better than anybody else.
- One day on Christmas, I dressed up,
he dressed up as a baby.
They pushed him in the
pram and it was called
the wrong pill.
That won it.
And a horse came through and left
mess on the floor.
Oy vey.
- She gave permission for the horse.
- I didn't give the horse the permission.
Ruby gave permission for
the horse to come in.
- I said to Sarah, "I want
to dress up as your mother.
"I want to wear her sheitel.
"I want to wear her clothes.
"I want to wear her shoes.
"Her legs are very fat.
"I want to have my legs bandaged
"and stuffed with cotton wool."
And I had a bag with cards and cigarettes.
Everybody was in hysterics
and I won the first prize.
- Oh gosh, you should
have been there at night
when they all came for
Passover and things like that.
Oh gosh it was hectic, but it was fun.
- Jews felt very much at home in these
Jewish hotels in Bournemouth.
You know, you spent 50 weeks a year
trying to assimilate, and two weeks a year
going back to your roots.
- We did have dancing every night.
And we had two dancing gigolos.
The women's eyes lit up when they saw
they were there.
If they knew they were
going to have a dance, yes.
It was like going to the
best hotel in London.
You wouldn't be better
dressed in Claridge's
or the Savoy.
In those days the women wore jewelry.
Some of it was lovely.
They wanted to be queen of Green Park.
Some were the duchess of Green Park, yes.
- It's always the people themselves that,
in my opinion, are the stars of a hotel.
They don't know it, but
the way they behaved
and carried on, that's
what made Green Park great.
- The real joy of that hotel was
the characters of the men
and women that were there.
Not us kids.
These were all characters.
They were self-made men.
They knew what they wanted.
They had stories to tell.
They were characters.
♪ You gotta have a little mazel ♪
Amongst these characters
were individuals who
would rebuild and reshape
Britain in the 1950s and beyond.
♪ You'll always have a buck ♪
- All the Jewish immigrants that came
into England became integrated in society.
They sacrificed a lot to
see that their children
were educated, and they did very well.
It wasn't very many
decades before there were
affluent Jewish people,
influential Jewish people.
- They were very
successful in the business
and they didn't have nothing
to lose, only to gain.
♪ Well you gotta have a little mazel ♪
I know the banks had confidence in them,
helped them a lot
- And we had a lot of the
bookmakers used to come.
They were well to do.
Joe Coral, with the never
a quarrel with Joe Coral,
we had him come in.
- I knew Tesco Man, Cohen.
Yes, I knew him.
He used to come and stay a lot.
- There was a fellow from Ladbrokes
used to be there as well.
- And Cyril Stein.
- Cyril Stein, yes.
- I understand he started
somewhere in London,
with just a suitcase of shirts.
And that's how he started his business.
- The Wolfson family.
Lord Wolfson, all of that family.
Every single member of that family came.
♪ Well you gotta have a little mazel ♪
- Everybody played cards at the Green Park
and at one stage, at the age of about 10,
we were looking around the dining room
for a fourth.
It was David Marriott, Victor Siegel,
and me, couldn't find a fourth.
So Isaac Wolfson, he said,
"I'll play with you boys."
We sat there in the card
room playing gin rummy.
Everybody took photographs, and it was
in the local Bournemouth paper, et cetera.
The tycoon Isaac was playing with these
young boys, playing cards.
- They didn't, how can I put it?
They didn't sort of throw that at you.
Well, I'm a millionaire or anything.
No, they were just ordinary people
when they came, you know.
- They were all people to us.
But then now we realize that they were
more important than we realized.
♪ And with a little mazel ♪
♪ You'll always have good luck ♪
The high streets of today
owe much to the guests of the Green Park.
From the buildings raised from the rubble
of the Blitz, to the
stores at ground level.
Tesco, Odeon, M&S,
Accurist Watches, Coral.
All owe their existence to
the Anglo-Jewish community.
The proportion of Jews
to the rest of the population
and what they contribute
to English society
today is amazing.
- They were well-educated, but they were
incredibly hungry and they had
a real entrepreneurial spirit.
And it came, I think, from that marriage
of Englishness and Jewishness that was
very comfortable in an environment
like the Green Park actually,
and at that point in time.
- The overwhelming majority of Jews
would try to fit in.
You know, as soon as they could afford it,
they'd get a proper suit,
so you look like every
other middle class man
at work or at play, wherever you were.
And you would shop at the shops that
the goyim shopped at and so on.
You didn't want to be noticed,
because the history of these families
through the post-war
period were all people
who had fled from persecution somewhere,
one of the generations.
The grandparent generation
would have fled from
eastern Europe or from
Russia or Ukraine, whatever.
Post-war, of course, those that had fled
from the Nazi persecutions.
You don't want to be noticed at all.
So you acquire as much
of the local dialect,
as much of the local dress,
habits, behavioral things.
And we worked very hard to do that.
Dear Mr.
Stevenson, I'm very much
looking forward to our
round of golf on Saturday.
I just wanted to send you the plans
for the new block of flats.
I really think it will
lift up the whole area,
and give old Adolf one in the eye,
by putting up something bigger and better
than what he knocked down.
Kind regards, Joseph Hoffman,
Hoffman Developments.
At the
Green Park Hotel, there is
a full range of physical activities.
Enjoy a round of golf at the local club.
Play tennis or ping pong.
And for all of you football fans,
Bournemouth & Boscombe AFC
is only a 10-minute walk.
It's no surprise that the big
betting shops grew from this community.
The Jews of the United Kingdom have always
had a passion for sport.
- Jews and football is an interesting one.
I barely know a Jewish male who isn't
an avid football fan.
You know, growing up all we talked about,
all we did, was going to games,
arguing about football,
Championship Manager,
the whole thing.
And that does go back probably about
two to two and a half generations now.
And yet, Jews aren't
very good at football.
It was cricket more
than football at first.
And that was part of that
aping of the upper class
English manners, if you like.
They still like cricket, too.
Not so much rugby.
Think that's a bit scary.
It's the part of British
culture that the Jews
have taken most to their
hearts, is football.
- There was a lot of gambling going.
The men, the women used to spend
hundreds of pounds on the tables.
It didn't look like, but the women
used to bet on the kalooki or
whatever you call it.
I'm not a gambler.
Mrs. Marriott
was in charge of that.
- And the men used to enjoy
themself with the things.
- Big room, Mrs. Marriott.
- She was in charge.
- She was the spinner.
- She was in charge of the great room
and the card room.
That was Mrs. Marriott, organizing tables.
Especially after Shabbos, the card room
was full up, you couldn't get in.
Everybody was rushing, we're rushing,
all to get a table in the card room.
- You step into the restaurant
and you can see there
this whiskey open all over the places.
All gamblers.
Every table, Jack Fisher,
that one, and the other one
and the
other one.
And they were all gamblers.
Underpinning
all of the luxuries
and pleasures of the Green Park,
was a deeply held
commitment to the rituals
and the religion that had been with
the Jewish people for thousands of years.
- I love Jewish culture.
But Jewish culture will not
guarantee Jewish survival.
The reason is, that
culture doesn't command.
You read a book, you put
it back on the shelf,
and it doesn't call you back to it.
Jewish survival depends
on one word, mitzvah.
Somewhere, something must command you.
Call to you, summon you.
And that needs mitzvah.
- Oh, they observed everything.
And they had a synagogue
there and all the services.
No question it was top, top grade.
And it was very much for people who were
religious and religious-conscious.
- Well the synagogue we know that they
took services very often, very musical.
And the whole family, all the girls,
Ray, Helen, and Hannah,
all had beautiful voices.
And they brought in such a
spirit with their singing.
It was really very moving.
- Everybody went, everybody went.
Even though the people
went upstairs afterwards,
the men anyway, and they
were on to the bookies,
placing bets on the
races in the afternoon.
- Their belief, their religion.
And their religion keeps them together
more than other people.
And that's why they look after each other.
- They were English, I
mean, let's be honest.
I mean, the majority had been
born here and lived here.
It wasn't a case of being English.
They were Jewish, they never forgot
their Jewishness, no
that doesn't sound right.
But you know, they never forgot that they
were Jewish, and all the
children were brought up
like it as well.
It was absolutely strict.
Their religion was and still is
the main thing for them.
Do you think it was
keeping Judaism alive in England?
- I think it was an
injection of absolute love
of fellow man.
Yes, I think it did.
And I think that today
we would have benefited
from that hotel.
I learned a lot from it.
Food and sport
are passing pleasures,
and money's only money.
But the greatest legacy of the Green Park
is still with us today
and will go on into the future.
- It was a hotel of making Jews.
You know, people married there.
It's an amazing, amazing
what they have done
to the Jewish people.
- It was a great place
for mixing and matching.
People went there to meet each other.
Parents sent their young people there
to meet their future spouses,
and that's the sort of place it was.
It was a great place
for hatches and matches.
My darling, I
am so in love with you.
I'm so happy in the knowledge
that the love is mutual.
I can't wait to see you.
Everything in the world
seems to be so good,
at least in our world.
But it frightens me.
We must be truly humble, and
pray for the continuation
of this state of bliss and ecstasy.
- I think some very good
matches were made there.
People were happy as a result of them.
This is probably
the first time in my life
that all my reserve has left me,
and I am able to put to
paper, with unashamed
adornment, my inner
feelings and inner self.
You are my own sweet
darling, and stay that way.
I love you.
♪ I love, I love, I
love my calendar girl ♪
♪ Yeah sweet calendar girl ♪
♪ I love, I love, I love ♪
The growing
wealth of the 1950s,
and the growing up of the baby boomers,
brought about one of Britain's
most remarkable decades.
The 1960s brought a wave of new ideas,
new fashion, and new music.
The young generation
brought this with them
wherever they went, even into
the well-ordered life of the Green Park.
- The '60s was a really fabulous time
to be in Bournemouth, because we were
the children whose parents,
my mother in particular,
had been really restricted by the wartime,
by old conventions, and
they were really keen
for us to have a good time.
We were Jewish, Jewish kids.
And the Jewish hotels were flourishing.
So every weekend we would
be around the hotels,
and meeting other Jewish girls and boys.
We had a fabulous time.
And it was the beginning of discotheques
and fun and all the things that my parents
were happy for me to do.
- When we were started
moving into the '60s,
Britain was becoming very prosperous.
There was Kings Road,
there was many shops,
there was those kinds
of shops that were open
for the spending of new spenders
that were born just after the war.
And that was the baby boomers, wasn't it?
Of course, I was one of those.
♪ When you're on the
beach you steal the show ♪
- We were free in the summer to just
hang out on the beach.
It was a sort of a Californian lifestyle,
as far as it could be within England.
- They were romantic places.
You know, you got out of the city,
you were there with the sea and the sand.
The sun was an occasional added extra,
and they were exciting.
There was no doubt there was a feeling
of liberation and alternative reality.
Made for romance.
♪ Every day every day ♪
♪ Every day every day ♪
♪ Of the year ♪
♪ Every day of the year ♪
♪ Funny but it's true ♪
♪ What loneliness can do ♪
♪ Since I've been away ♪
♪ I have loved you more each day ♪
♪ Walking back to happiness ♪
♪ Woopah oh yeah yeah ♪
♪ Said goodbye to loneliness ♪
♪ Woopah oh yeah yeah ♪
♪ I never knew I'd miss you ♪
♪ Now I know what I must do ♪
♪ Walking back to happiness ♪
♪ I shared with you ♪
♪ Yay, yay, yay, yay ba dum be do ♪
♪ I'm making up for things we said ♪
♪ Woopah oh yeah yeah ♪
The Jews of Britain were
at the forefront of this new culture,
from the clothing of Carnaby Street,
to the new rock musicians.
The Beatles themselves were thrust into
the limelight by their
manager, Brian Epstein,
himself a regular at the Green Park.
- Judges, lawyers, doctors,
professors, all the lot.
Musicians, everybody
in every walk of life.
- My father, Cecil Gee, had
a very successful business.
He didn't know anything about books,
paperwork, offices, money.
Nothing interested him,
only art, creation.
His challenge was to make British men
fashionably dressed.
He used to say, "If Beau
Brummel can dress like that,
"why can't people do it again?"
This new energy was something
of a concern for the older generation,
who found their children wanting to rebel
against the sedate life
of their upbringing.
Summer holidays in '60s
Bournemouth had great appeal
for those with the good fortune
to be young at the time.
- The '60s, I've got a glint in my eye,
had their own appeal as well
when you were a certain age.
- We lived in a small town.
Bournemouth was a small town.
Bit in the sticks, there's
not much near of us here.
So these glamorous boys
and girls came down
from London to stay at those hotels.
And I definitely have very fond memories
of falling in love every Saturday night
with a different person.
The girls
were all supposed to be--
- Oh, they were nice girls.
- It was not okay if I stepped out
with somebody who wasn't Jewish.
I'm not saying it didn't happen.
Oh dear me, you're
bringing a smile to my memory.
- I was a very attractive girl
with huge braces on my teeth.
One night I was in a passionate embrace
with a young lad.
I must have been 14 1/2?
And the kiss went on forever.
And then he start
squealing because his lip
had got caught on my hook.
He was absolutely speared to me.
It was like a fish.
- I mean, it was more, it was call it
hanky panky rather than,
you know what I mean.
It was a very exciting era.
And you got away with everything.
Oh, this is gonna come
out terribly, isn't it?
Oh, this is going to come out terribly.
♪ Well, well, a little bit a roll ♪
♪ Little bit a rock, yeah ♪
♪ A little bit a roll ♪
♪ A little bit a rock ♪
♪ A little bit a roll ♪
♪ An itty bitty little
bit of rock and roll ♪
The 1960s
saw some new arrivals
at the hotel.
The Richman sisters
brought in Italian waiters
who would become a memorable
feature of the Green Park
over the next years.
- I was working in
Venice, and the Marriott
and the Richman used to come at the
Excelsior in Venice.
- We were greeted by
the restaurant manager.
He said, "It's now the '60s.
"People are traveling after the war."
He said, "And my boys
need to learn English.
"Can you take any of our
staff, the Italian boys
"in your hotel?"
So we said, "Yes, all right."
- The restaurant manager spoke to me
and said, "Would you like to go?"
I said, "Yes."
So he introduced me.
Those days I couldn't
understand a word of English.
Even now I'm not that good.
- Then we started getting Italian recipes,
Italian cooking, and introduced
all the new cooking styles.
- When Mimmo came, it was unbelievable.
Sensational.
He took over the whole hotel.
Mimmo, he could run the hotel himself.
He was sensational.
For the
guests of the Green Park
these new distractions were
only part of the story.
Young men and women were still encouraged
to marry within their own community,
and the Green Park saw many such matches.
- Well, we actually met in the Green Park.
Apparently, so Bernard tells me, when he
saw me walking across
the foyer of the hotel,
he said to himself, if that girl is frum,
I'm going to marry her.
After dinner on Friday night, there was
quite a group of young people sitting
in a corner of the lounge,
and I was too shy to go
and introduce myself.
But I said, let me just walk by,
and maybe, maybe one of them will say,
"Would you like to join us?"
And that's exactly what Bernard did.
And that's how we met.
- Well, when I met Jackie I was 17
and she was 13.
And how many years later?
- I was 16.
- We'll say three years later.
Three years later--
- I was 16.
At a party
- It was a bit of a transformation.
- A transformation, because 20 year old
I was then, not very discreet, and I said,
"I can't believe it.
"I can't even recognize
you, different person."
So she said, "Well, I'm
away at boarding school."
Her mother had forced her onto
a crash diet or something.
- I ended up staying in
Bubba Richman's room.
The Friday night that we met,
a whole group of young people, we'd all
gone out for a walk.
Bernard and I had ended up spending
the whole time together,
holding hands as we walked back.
And it was quite late by the time
I had gotten back to the hotel.
I didn't want to wake Bubba.
I remember getting undressed, actually,
outside the room and
just creeping in there
as quietly as I could.
I was so pleased that
she was snoring away.
But as I finally got into bed,
she sat bolt upright and she said,
"Where have you been, and mit whom?"
And you had to answer Bubba, so I said,
"Well, I've been out for a walk."
"Mit whom?"
"I met a young man."
"Who?"
"His name is Bernard Taub."
And she thought for a minute and she said,
"I think with this one you should
"put the thumb right in."
And so I did.
For British
Jews though, the 1960s
contained more than mini
skirts and pop songs.
In 1967, Israel, still
less than 20 years old,
was in grave danger.
This danger would unite
Jews around the world.
- Out of the horrors of the Holocaust,
came this precious gift, the ability
to protect yourself, a refuge, a backup.
The thing that you'd been
praying and hoping for
for centuries and centuries.
In '67, that suddenly looked like
it may just be taken away.
- 1967 was my first year at university.
So I remember those events indelibly,
and they changed the whole Jewish world.
We knew they changed us
in the little synagogue
in Thompson's Lane in Cambridge.
Every one of us who had been
born after the Holocaust
feared that, God forbid, we might be
about to witness a second Holocaust.
I mean, armies were massing
on all Israel's borders.
Nasser is talking about
driving Israel into the sea.
- People younger than a certain age
don't realize what it was like in '67.
I mean, when I was a kid in 1967,
the sense of pride in Israel,
the sense in the non Jewish community
of plucky little Israel, whatever.
The current situation is obviously
a completely different
one, but at that time
I think there was huge pride
in the Jewish community.
I suspect if you were
in the Green Park Hotel,
Cumberland Hotel, the former hotels
in the Six-Day War, you would have seen
enormous outpouring of support.
- What used to happen was
that the organizations
in London or anywhere,
we need a lot of money.
Can we have a dinner?
And we'd do a dinner for as many guests
as we could take.
And all the donations
were all sent to Israel.
A disastrous defeat
prompts President Nasser's resignation,
which is not accepted by his people.
UAR Commander, General
Munam Abdul Husseini,
meets with Israeli military leaders
to surrender unconditionally,
ending the fighting
in the Gaza Strip.
Nearly 600 Egyptian tanks--
- When victory came, it
was absolutely amazing.
I can remember when they
broke through to the wall,
and seeing the soldiers
praying at the wall
for the first time, and that lovely song,
"Jerusalem of Gold" which was so evocative
of those times.
- After the Six-Day War,
there was a wave of sympathy
for Israel and then a wave of admiration
for the sheer skill and
the speed of victory.
One thing very, very significant happened.
Until then, virtually no one
wore a yarmulke in public.
From then, people started doing so.
That was the moment that we learned
to walk tall as Jews in the public square.
The Six-Day
War rallied the Jews
of Britain to Israel's cause.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973
only furthered this connection.
- One of the flip sides to that was
that it sowed the long-term seeds
of a change of people's habits,
because Israel suddenly became a place
that people wanted to go to.
Before the Six-Day War,
it almost seemed far away,
and you might have gone once in your life
to see a relative, or to see the sites.
Don't forget, until 1967
Jerusalem was divided.
Once Jerusalem was reunited, and you could
go to the holy sites, it
became a much, much more
attractive place for people to go to,
and Israel became an
alternative for holidays,
for Jewish holidays
and for summer holidays
to going to Bournemouth.
Cheap flights and the lure
of predictable sunshine didn't
just affect the Green Park.
The whole culture of
British seaside resorts
was shaken by the popularity
of foreign holidays.
- I don't think Bournemouth
would be regarded
as cool anymore, I'm afraid.
It would be a rainy seaside
town for most months
of the year.
- About the same time, in the 1970s,
I recall you could go for
about 50 pounds a week,
flight and hotel and board included,
perhaps to New York or to Italy
or somewhere like that.
So that was the other nail
in the coffin, really.
Did
it, in your experience,
did it become emptier at the Green Park--
- Unquestionably.
- There was a question of evolution.
As people went more and
more holidays abroad,
a lot of the Jewish, the Green Park's
regular customers started
to go abroad more.
And when they were abroad, they didn't
go to the Green Park.
- Green Park became a
place where older people
could go and spend
considerable length of time
and be in a kind of supervised environment
where they didn't have to
do anything for themselves.
Their meals were always available,
and they would have company
from the other guests.
So yes, it became a little bit
Fawlty Towers-like, in that sense.
- Or a bit like an old age
home, sheltered housing.
For the new
generation of Jewish youth,
separated from the original communities
of the East End by 70
years, and confronted
by the staggering
choices of globalization,
community became less about circumstances,
and more about belief.
- The Jewish community
also became more polarized.
So in the beginning we were
all a fairly homogenous bunch.
Fairly religious, wanted kosher food.
There were always people
who were more or less.
But the next generation, the
generation of my children,
have become much more polarized.
- One of the complaints that I've got
with the way Anglo-Jewry is structured,
is that if you're from
an orthodox concept,
an orthodox side of
the divide if you like,
that you either are in or you're not.
I remember when my kids were very young,
we were walking to synagogue one day.
One of them said to me,
"Do you believe in God?"
My answer to them was that it's not for me
to tell you what to believe in.
That's for you to make up your own mind
when you feel that you're ready.
But we do live a Jewish way of life.
By the mid 1980s, the Richman
and Marriott families
were getting on in years.
The hotel was no longer as
profitable as it once was,
and Ruby decided it was time to move on.
- Somebody came and
offered to buy the place
to redevelop and he decided to do it.
But he came over to us and
said, "I wanna tell you,
"I've sold the hotel for redevelopment,
"but I didn't want you to find out without
"me telling you.
"I didn't want you to see your hotel
"being knocked down without you knowing."
And so that was how it finally finished.
- There was a sense of inevitability
that the hotel would close.
During the less popular parts of the year
it was very sparsely populated--
Very quiet.
And the prices
were cut to such a degree
that they barely made any money.
All my family were getting older.
I think that they all felt that
short of bringing members of the younger
generation into running the business,
and there were no obvious
candidates to do that.
They had no choice but to close.
- Green Park was a piece of history.
And no, when they close
was very, very sad.
- It didn't seem possible
really, that after
all these years, Green
Park was gonna close.
We couldn't believe it.
But it was the best thing Ruby had done.
Over the 43
years that the Green Park
was open, the Anglo-Jewish community moved
from being an immigrant group, to their
integral role in modern Britain.
The Green Park was one
of many establishments
which helped foster the Anglo-Jewish
identity of today.
- Anglo-Jewish identity has never been
particularly introspective.
Jews have always been
strangely subdued in Britain.
I think that's a lot about
the British class system.
I think Jews saw the British class system
and they thought
right, well, we'll take
a bit of the upper class
sort of manner and approach to life
because that seems to be the
way things are done here.
And we'll slip quietly in beneath them
into this sort of middle
class, and we'll get on,
and we'll make some money,
and we'll buy a house.
Because that's what people do in Britain.
And that's what they've
done, and it's been
unassuming, moderate, liberal,
but remarkably successful.
What does it mean to be a British Jew?
It's a strangely compatible union.
- I felt English, I was English,
and I fought for England,
which was my country.
For six years, eight days, and four hours.
- I think they've
acculturated or assimilated
in a different way to
Jews from other places.
There was a definite twin
track of dress British
and think Yiddish.
- Yep, good, well-said.
I think if you ask people today, are you
an Englishman first or a Jew?
In 2015, most people would
say, "I'm English first."
And I think if you'd
have asked the question
50 years ago, and you've
got a truthful answer,
people would probably have
said they were Jewish first.
Do you feel
English or Jewish or Polish?
What's your identity?
- Good question.
I feel free.
I think that's enough.
Okay.
Right, so let's begin at the beginning.
The Green Park was torn down
in the mid '80s, and in its place
there now stands a block of flats.
But across the road, in an
Art Deco apartment block
not dissimilar to the Green Park,
live the Richman sisters,
who never married.
On their walls are photos
of family and friends,
and constant reminders
of their life's work,
running a hotel that exemplified
all that was best about being British,
and all that was best about being Jewish.
The many couples that the Green Park
helped introduce, and
their resulting children,
have strengthened the Jewish community,
and carried it along its journey.
- I think what we need going forward
is to continually
strengthen that inner sense
of Jewish identity.
That sense of confidence,
and a complete lack of fear.
There's huge danger with
antisemitism returning,
and a lot of hostility
to the state of Israel.
The Jews will want to
hide their identity again,
and it's a big mistake.
We should have the self-confidence
to walk tall as Jews,
to continue to be proud,
to seek to continue to be knowledgeable,
to deepen our Jewish practice,
while at the same time not retreating
into a ghetto of our own making.
Because, really and
truly, we become stronger
when we share our
blessings with the world.
And yes, we need new places
like Bournemouth hotels,
like the Green Park.
Whatever the 21st century throws up
by way of those places, we need places
where young Jews can come and meet
and fall in love and somehow or other
build a Jewish future of
which we can be proud.