The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on 19 April 1943 – the second night of Passover – and continued until the ghetto was destroyed by bombing and artillery, virtually all its inhabitants killed or captured. The Nazis planned to liquidate the ghetto within three days, but the Jews bitterly resisted for twenty-seven days, longer than several European countries! Their chances of survival were minimal, but they chose to fight and die ‘to defend the honour of the Jewish people’.
Trade Union Mass Demonstration
Although the date has been slightly altered for the purposes of the story, the Mass Demonstration against the anti-Trade Union Bill and the wage freeze took place in College Green before a huge crowd; James Larkin did, indeed, set fire to a copy of the Bill as described in the story.
Ben’s mother Marie, an intelligent, self-educated woman from a political family, correctly mentions Michael Davitt and James Connolly as opponents of anti-Jewish prejudice.
TB (Tuberculosis)
Also known at the time as ‘consumption’, the illness is caused by organisms called bacilli attacking the lungs, forming cavities and eating their way into the bronchial tubes. The symptoms include loss of appetite, persistent, short staccato coughing, hoarse voice, and, in the later stages, coughing up blood.
TB thrived in poor social conditions, such as overcrowded tenements with minimal hygiene and poor diet. But the disease, rife in Ireland and Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, also hit the well-off, and many of its victims were young or in their prime.
Frequently the disease was seen as a social stigma, to be discussed in lowered voices, and people avoided mentioning sick family members.
Various remedies were tried – travelling, when possible, to a warm, dry climate, rest, wholesome food, and fresh mountain air. Pine trees were thought to be helpful, which was why they were planted around Crooksling and other sanatoriums. Medical intervention, such as collapsing the lung by injecting air into it, were mostly ineffective.
When Dr Noel Browne became Irish Minister of Health in 1948, he built several sanatoriums like Crooksling, and is credited with greatly alleviating the disease in Ireland. Many of his own family had died from TB, and he explained that it was difficult for later generations to appreciate the sense of desolation and suffering associated with the disease, which afflicted one in ten families and wiped out whole communities. Noel Browne described the primitive fear, bred by ignorance, which caused passengers on a bus in the 1950s to hold their breaths when they came within half a mile of a sanatorium.
Despite Noel Browne’s energy and determination, and even with help of funds from the Hospitals Sweepstake, it was not until the mid-1950s, with the discovery of streptomycin, that the disease was more or less conquered in Ireland.
However, new, resistant strains of the disease are still a major problem in parts of the world, such as Africa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benson, Asher: Jewish Dublin; Portraits of Life by the Liffey, A&A Farmar, 2007
Conaghan, Michael, Ed: The Grand Canal, Office of Public Works, 1992
Corcoran, Michael: Through Streets Broad & Narrow: a history of Dublin trams, Midland Publishing, 2000
Crowley, Elaine: Cowslips & Chainies: A Memoir of Dublin in the 1930s, Lilliput Press, 1996
Daiken, Leslie: Out Goes She; Dublin street rhymes; Dolmen, 1963
Daiken, Leslie: The Circular Road, script of play broadcast on Radio Éireann 1959
Doorley, Mary Rose: Hidden Memories, Blackwater Press, 1994
Gray, Tony: The Lost Years; the Emergency in Ireland 1939-1945, Little Brown 1997
Johnston, Máirín: Around the Banks of Pimlico, Attic Press, 1985
Johnston, Máirín: Dublin Belles: Conversations with Dublin Women, Attic Press, 1988
Kearns, Kevin C: Dublin Voices, an oral folk history, Gill & Macmillan 1998
McCarron, Donal: ‘Step Together!’ Ireland’s Emergency Army 1939, Dublin, 1999
McGrath, Eamonn: The Charnel House, Blackstaff Press 1990
MacThomáis, Éamonn: Me Jewel and Darlin’ Dublin, O’Brien Press, 1974
MacThomáis, Éamonn: Gur Cakes & Coalblocks, O’Brien Press, 1976
May, Ena: A Close Shave with the Devil: Stories of Dublin, Lilliput Press, 1998
Nowlan, Kevin, Ed: Ireland in the War Years & After, Gill & Macmillan, 1969
O’Donnell, E. E., Ed: Father Browne’s Dublin: Photographs 1920-1950, Wolfhound Press, 1993
O’Keeffe, Phil: Down Cobbled Streets; a Liberties Childhood, Brandon, 1995
Rice, Eoghan: We are Rovers: an oral history of Shamrock Rovers, Nonsuch Publishing, 2005
Rivlin, Ray: Shalom Ireland; A Social History of Jews in Modern Ireland, Gill & Macmillan, 2003
About Faraway Home, also by Marilyn Taylor
‘The main characters are appealing, and the setting is intriguing in this well-researched novel … The real strength of the book, however, lies in its realistic portrayal of Karl’s feelings and of the friendships he makes in his new surroundings.’ Booklist, magazine of the American Library Association
‘History, written with the gripping reality of fiction. It is a story which, like Anne Frank’s diary, brings home to us all the horrific misery inflicted by the Nazis – and the need to ensure that we never allow it to happen again.’ Lord Janner, QC, Holocaust Educational Trust
‘The pathos, suffering and bravery are overwhelming. But for me, it is Taylor’s skill in building three-dimensional characters which makes this book so outstanding. This is a story which stays with the reader, long after the final page has been turned.’ Children’s Books in Ireland
‘a remarkable blend of fiction and historical fact, which also reveals a relatively unknown facet of World War Two’ Pauline Devine, The Irish Times
AWARDS FOR FARAWAY HOME
Winner, Irish Bisto Book of the Year Award BBC Blue Peter Award Included by the Association of Jewish Libraries in ‘Best of the Bunch: Notable books of Jewish Interest’
About the Author
Born and educated in England, MARILYN TAYLOR has an economics degree from London University. A ‘war-baby’, she grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust in London in a family involved both in Jewish life and in local and national politics.
In Dublin, married with three children, she worked as a school librarian and later as college librarian in the Jesuit Library.
It was from the perspective of her Irish-Jewish experience that she began writing first for reluctant teenage readers, and more recently carefully researched historical fiction, engaging her young readers in readable stories, in particular on the themes of refugees, racism and diversity.
Long involved in the Irish-Jewish community, she recently co-edited a nonfiction book of photographs and vignettes on the history of Jewish Dublin.
Marilyn has visited numerous schools, libraries and arts festivals in Ireland, both North and South, in Britain, and in New York, speaking to young readers, teachers, librarians and parents. Her other novel in this genre is Faraway Home.
Copyright
This eBook edition first published 2012 by The O’Brien Press Ltd,
12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.obrien.ie
First published 2011
Originally published in larger format 2008 by The O’Brien Press Ltd.
eBook ISBN: 978–1-84717–405–5
Copyright for text © Marilyn Taylor 2008
Copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design
© The O’Brien Press Ltd
While some Jewish people did live in Martin Street in the 1930s and 1940s, the characters in the story, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are fictional and bear no relationship to any current or former residents there.
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Also from Marilyn Taylor
Karl and Rosa’s family watch in horror as Hitler’s troops parade down the streets of their home city – Vienna. It has become very dangerous to be a Jew in Austria, and after their uncle is sent to Dachau, Karl and Rosa’s parents decide to send the children out of the country on a Kindertransport, one of the many ships carrying refugee children away from Nazi danger.
Isolated and homesick, Karl ends up in Millisle, a run-down farm in Ards in Northern Ireland, which has become a Jewish refugee centre, while Rosa is fostered by a local family.
Hard work on the farm keeps Karl occupied, although he still waits desperately for any news from home. Then he makes friends with locals Peewee and Wee Billy, and also with the girls from neutral Dublin who come to help on the farm, especially Judy. But Northern Ireland is in the war too, with rationing and air-raid warnings, and, in April 1941 the bombs of the Belfast Blitz bring the reality of war right to their doorstep.
And for Karl and Rosa and the other refugees there is the constant fear that they may never see their parents again.
More Historical Fiction from O’Brien Press
‘That calm, sunny day is one I’ll always remember … because the twentieth of April, in the year 1910, was the day I, Samuel Joseph Scott, died.’
Fifteen-year-old Sam plunges to his death whilst building his beloved Titanic. Now as the greatest ship the world has ever seen crosses the Atlantic Ocean, Sam finds himself on board – as a ghost.
His spirit roams the ship, from the glamour of first class to the party atmosphere of third class. Sam shares the excitement of Jim, Isobel and their children – on their way to a new life in America.
Disaster strikes when Titanic hits an iceberg. As Titanic sinks to her icy grave, Jim and his family are trapped behind locked gates … Can Sam’s spirit reach out to save them?
When young Con disappears, the others must find him – and quickly. His father Hugh O’Neill, the great Ulster chieftain, is about to depart, forever. The Irish have lost at the Battle of Kinsale, and now there is nothing left for them in their own land. Hugh’s son is in great danger – and he doesn’t even know it! What would the English do to him if they caught him? Especially now as his father may be gathering another foreign army to threaten their own conquest of Ireland?
Can his cousin and friends, Fion, Sinead and James, find him? Will their hunt across wild landscapes, through dense woodlands and over high mountains, chased by English soldiers and adventurers, and occasionally guided by the mysterious ‘Haystacks’, take them to the boy? Will they manage to get him to Lough Swilly in time for the escape boat to France? The Great Hugh O’Neill is waiting anxiously …
What happens when your best friend ought to be your enemy?
Liam and Nora form an unlikely friendship when he lends her a helping hand during a music competition. Liam’s father, a mechanic, is a proud trade union member, while Nora’s father is a prosperous wine importer.
When Jim Larkin takes on the might of the employers in 1913, resulting in strikes, riots and lockouts, Liam and Nora’s friendship is challenged and their loyalties torn.
Caught up in events that they don’t fully understand, the two come face to face with hardship and danger, but also find humour and generosity as they set out on an adventure that may make or break their friendship, but will definitely change their lives forever.
Fourteen year-old Widge has very little going for him, no family, no real name, but he can write shorthand and that is a very valuable asset to the man who wants to steal William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. In those days there was only one copy of the play script, and that was jealously guarded at the Globe Theatre, London by Shakespeare’s company of players.
Widge sets off for London, accompanied by Falconer, a cruel and fearsome cutthroat whose job is to make sure that the mission is accomplished, no matter what the cost. But Widge gets so caught up in the play that soon all that matters to him is whether Hamlet will take action to avenge his father, and he forgets his task. Then his notebook is stolen.
Under threat from Falconer, he manages to work his way into the troupe of actors, who befriend him and, for the first time, make him feel part of a family. How can he betray them now?
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