Contributed Stories

Abraham Minkin

 

Once you leave you’re out in the open; it rains and snows. It snows history, which means what happens to somebody starts in a web of events outside the personal. (Malamud, The Fixer, 1966).

 

 

Abraham Minkin was born c.1883 in Odesa, then Russia. Jews in the Russian Empire were required to register in a particular town for identification purposes, and the family’s place of registration was not Odesa, but Monastyrshchina, a shtetl in Mogilev Gubernia, situated on the eastern boundary of the Pale of Settlement. In 1889 our grandfather Bert, Abraham’s younger brother, was born in Monastyrshchina. Sometime during their childhood their parents died. Bert was taken in by maternal aunts. During the 1890s the extended family began moving west to Warsaw and on to Antwerp. Abraham’s movements, meanwhile, are unclear; a cabinet photograph taken in the late 1890s places him in Odesa, suggesting the brothers were living apart at this time.

 

If they had been separated in Russia, however, they were to be reunited in London. Family stories relate that Abraham was already in London when 16-year-old Bert arrived alone from Warsaw in December 1905. A number of factors likely triggered this particular arrival date, including increased state-sanctioned violence against Jews during the 1905 Revolution (particularly after the 1905 October Manifesto) which included the worst pogrom in Odesa’s history at that point, and attacks in Warsaw. A related factor was the British Government’s 1905 Aliens Act, intended to restrict the number of Russian Jewish immigrants entering the UK, the provisions of which Act were to take effect on 1st January 1906. On a more personal note, the family in Warsaw were already in the throes of moving to Antwerp. Bert had turned 16 and had a decision to make about his future, choosing London over Antwerp. There is evidence that the brothers were joining a maternal uncle, a printer, in London, who may have acted as a guardian for Bert and potentially trained and employed Abraham.

 

From 1905-11 there is a gap in our knowledge of the brothers’ whereabouts and activities, but Abraham surfaces in the 1911 census, occupying a room at 21 Camden Passage, Islington, working as a compositor. The uncle had left for Australia in February 1911, so Abraham appears to be self-sufficient and working for another employer by this time. Significantly, on the census return, Abraham states his nationality as “Jewish” rather than Russian. Many Russian Jews who fled persecution in the Russian Empire did not identify as Russian subjects but as refugees from antisemitic policies and pogroms, so that Abraham appears to affirm his refugee status here.

 

The principal resident at 21 Camden Passage in 1911 was Leon Frederick Westfield, a German subject, his Russian wife Becky, and their children. The family were seat holders in the North London Synagogue at Lofting Road, Islington. Westfield was a self-employed hairdresser working from home. No.21 was a hairdresser’s shop with living quarters above. By 1911 the shop had been the family business for at least 20 years. We don’t know how long Abraham had lived at no.21 prior to the census, but his occupancy there was likely connected with Bert’s decision to train in the hairdressing trade. Bert was probably employed by Westfield, perhaps as a live-in assistant, prior to 1911. Westfield advertised in the Islington newspaper for lather boys to learn the business and gave work to young men, particularly German immigrants, as hairdresser’s assistants. He was an active figure in the trade, and Chairman of the Islington Branch of the Master Hairdressers Association in 1912. Abraham was resident at no.21 for at least 6 years, and the address must have represented one constant in his life, perhaps providing a sense of belonging through a shared language (Yiddish) with the residents and workers, and network of support through Westfield’s connections.   

 

Whilst Bert established himself as a journeyman hairdresser, moving to Kent by August 1914, Abraham’s working life was much more erratic. From c.1913-15 he had no regular work. Although he retained membership of the London Society of Compositors and paid a sub until 1916 when he forfeited his card, he found it increasingly difficult to find employment. Germany’s invasion of Belgium and the subsequent start of WW1 on 4th August 1914, brought the immediate implementation of the Aliens Restriction Act. The Act required aliens over 16 to register with the police and to carry an Alien Registration Card at all times. For Russian Jews, this widening of the gap between citizen and alien worsened pre-existing xenophobia towards them, and made them now subject to surveillance, thereby increasing suspicion and making it more difficult to find regular work. Government records and newspaper clippings in the National Archives describe an atmosphere of antagonism, fear and danger on London streets, increased bureaucratic control regimes and limitations on movement and travel. These conditions and historic narratives structure the everyday, lived experience recounted in Abraham’s letters to Bert from 1914-17.

 

On 6th September 1914 Abraham met one of the maternal aunts and her family on their arrival in London from Antwerp as Belgian refugees, and their entry into the Jews’ Temporary Shelter in Leman Street, Whitechapel. He booked a ship’s ticket for his cousin and her infant son who were travelling on to join her husband in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was out of work at this point and in October 1914 began training for the ambulance cars. In July 1915 he wrote to Bert that he could no longer withhold the truth from him about the struggle he had lived through without regular work for the last two years, wandering around from one workshop to the other, “one week work and one month schlep”. In response Bert sent him £3 in postal orders and suggested Abraham apply for Government-related work in Woolwich, a reference to the surge in munitions production at the Royal Arsenal. Abraham replied that some months previously many workers from the Compositors had been taken on there, but that the work was not open to foreigners. The officials at Woolwich had referred him to the Russian Consul who had told him that he did not have the correct documentation, though the Consul likely reflected the Tsarist regime’s discriminatory and suspicious attitude towards Jews.

 

In early August 1915 Abraham was able to pass on some better news, that he had begun work in a smoking pipe factory on a drilling machine, where “the work is very hard and the wages very small”. This was a briar pipe manufactory where the bowl and stem of the pipe were formed from a single block, and the vulcanite (cured rubber) mouthpiece fitted to it. Abraham may have been drilling the mouthpiece bores. In November he apologised for not writing for a while because the drill had slipped and gone through his thumb. By March 1916 he was earning half a shilling more through overtime and hoped he would be able to return the £3 Bert had lent him. However, by May the overtime had stopped and now he only worked to five in the evening. This was still the case in June when he had “plenty of time to spend but very little money to spend!” There was plenty of work, but it was difficult to get the materials, particularly with the government having forbidden travelling around England, and with vulcanite hard to get. They were working short hours so that the store of materials would last longer.

 

In spring 1916 the British Military Service Acts introduced compulsory military service (conscription) for British men of military age. Initially, Russian Jews were not included because they were not British nationals. However, as British men were conscripted and casualties rose, there was resentment that Russian Jews who were “friendly aliens” - i.e. subjects of Russia which was an allied country - were not compelled to join the war effort. As a result of mounting pressure, in July 1916 the British government announced that Russian Jews would be forced to choose between either voluntarily joining the British Army before 30th September or being either conscripted or deported back to Russia to serve there after this date.

 

Many Russian Jews who had fled persecution in the Russian Empire for asylum in Britain had no desire to fight for the regime they had fled from and felt betrayed by Britain for threatening to deport them back. They had escaped conscription into the Russian Army which was institutionally antisemitic, and which they feared would reinstate an earlier 25-year service rule. Many also held to a Jewish rather than national identity and did not see the war as relevant to them. Many also held socialist views believing that the war was in the interests of capitalists rather than the workers.

Abraham clearly held to a Jewish identity, as shown in the census return, and was opposed to military service in a general sense, equating it to loss of freedom: “absolute slavery”. This view of military service as enslaving would have been common among Russian Jews from their own history of forced conscription and was also part of libertarian and anarchist thought with anti-conscription groups active among the Jewish working class in London.

 

The September deadline passed and on 16th October Abraham noted that very few had volunteered and that as a result he would take no notice of a paper sent to him by the Home Office inviting him to volunteer and instead would wait until it was compulsory. But the situation for the Russian Jews changed dramatically with the February 1917 Revolution when the Tsar was deposed, and existing antisemitic restrictions were abolished by the new Provisional Government. After the failure of the 1916 attempt the British saw this as a chance to force the issue. The Military Service (Conventions with Allied States) Act, commonly known as the Anglo-Russian Military Service Convention 1917 was an agreement signed in July 1917 between the British and Russian governments, that Russian men of military age residing in Britain choose between conscription into the British Army or repatriation to Russia to serve in the Russian Army there. This took effect in August 1917, with nearly 4,000 Russian Jews returning to Russia under the Convention. The returnees became known as the Conventionists.[1]

 

The deposition of the Tsar appears to have influenced Abraham’s decision to return. He had decided before the Convention was signed, as on 6th June he informed Bert that he had registered with the Russian Consul whom he had asked for help to return to Russia to serve in the Russian army in order to “protect the freedom”, which must refer to the replacement of the Tsarist autocracy by the Provisional Government. At 11.30am on 13th June 1917 Abraham was in the street in Islington when the first attack on London by a squadron of German Gotha aircraft took place, throwing him into the middle of the street which was full of people dead and wounded. He reported that the burning street was medicine to help him return to Russia. Abraham’s decision to return pained Bert, and he wanted to explain to Bert the circumstances compelling him to return. On 29th August Abraham wrote that he had been sent a notice that he must leave England on Wednesday 5th September at 11.30pm from Euston station. He wanted to spend a day with Bert to talk it through. On 5th September Abraham wrote again, presumably before setting off for Euston, that he was very sad that they must part and he hoped they would hear good from each other in time. Disturbances were reported at Euston in the large crowds gathered as families saw off loved ones. Abraham wrote again from aboard the ship anticipating his departure. The letter card is censored to redact dates as the deportation ships were potential targets for German forces.

 

After around two weeks at sea Abraham arrived in Archangel, Russia, on 24th September 1917 (11th September by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia), and by 31st September (18th September Julian) was in Moscow from where he wrote to Bert that he was not sorry that he had left because Russia was “really free in the full sense of the word”. He had to stay in Moscow until the commission inspected his papers and enrolled him. In a choice echoing his former connection with the place, he had enrolled to go to Odesa. It is not clear who the commission Abraham mentions here were. Although the Conventionists had ostensibly registered to return to serve in the army of the Provisional Government, they would likely have known it was weak. By September 1917, the Provisional Government was still the central authority in Moscow, but its power was being challenged by the Moscow Soviet dominated by the Bolsheviks. It was the Soviet that represented workers and soldiers and issued papers regarding the enrolment of soldiers. On 15th October (2nd October Julian) Abraham wrote again from Moscow reckoning to stay there until 10th November (28th October Julian). Until this time he had been given a temporary certificate. He was staying in a hotel where food and board were free and was also issued free tram tickets to travel around the city. He had nothing to worry about for the moment but did not know what would happen after this. He had visited a maternal uncle and his family in Moscow, and the uncle had invited him to stay, but Abraham had answered that he thought he was not his equal, that the uncle’s family were rich and educated and that he was a poor worker. He ended the letter with “Don’t worry about me, I won’t come to any harm”, passing on his uncle’s address for Bert to write to him.

 

On 24th and 25th October 1917 of the Julian calendar, the October Revolution had begun with the Petrograd Uprising, when the Bolsheviks brought down the Provisional Government in a near bloodless coup. The seizure of power continued from 25th October - 2nd November with the Moscow Uprising, which was more prolonged and bloody with a week of bitter street fighting before the Bolsheviks took control. Abraham had expected to remain in Moscow until 28th October and one possible implication of this is that he was overtaken by events and never left.   

 

From the British government’s point of view the Convention was an embarrassing failure. Of the 30,000 Russian Jews of military age eligible to be returned, around 7,600 applied to go back, and of these around 4,000 returned to Russia, many of whom were never heard from again.

 

Bert wrote to Abraham at their uncle’s address in Moscow in January 1918, but the letter was returned with “SERVICE SUSPENDED” stamped on the envelope. He wrote again in February, but this was sent back with a “RETURNED TO SENDER BY THE CENSOR” label stuck on. Bert wrote another letter to Moscow in May 1918. This was also returned. No further letters survive. Bert died in 1942.

 

 

[1] Shukman, Harold. 2006, War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain 1917. Vallentine Mitchell.