A LONG Life in the Making – coming of age in the Jewish Gorbals and the East End of London between the wars
by Ben Cohen
eyeglass books £7.95

THE origins of Ben Cohen’s memoir lie within the late 19th-century Jewish community of Vitebsk, Byelorussia. In the 1890s around 35,000 Jews lived in Vitebsk; over 50 per cent of the total population, making the city a major hub of Jewish religious, cultural and political life. For example, the Art School produced two painters of world renown – Chagall and El Lissitsky.
 
The gross discrimination against Jews, their generally dismal living conditions with the constant presence of malnutrition and disease gave rise to political organisations such as the General Jewish Labour Bund, whose goal was to attract Jews to the growing Russian revolutionary movement.

One of the first branches of the Bund was established in Vitebsk and Ben Cohen’s father Philip was a member. During the 1905 revolution the activities of the Bund led to such persecution that Philip Cohen had to flee for his life, ending up in Glasgow where his son Ben was born in 1915.