Cockney Girl

Cockney Girl is a second-generation Jewish-British child's eyewitness account of tumultuous East London and her eccentric family in England 1934-1950. The writer was then aged 5-20. This zeitgeist, before, during and after World War Two, is based on memories and diaries and is, according to Elie Wiesel, 'unmapped history'. Both cockneys, friend Joycey Kennel and I, roamed East London most Saturdays while my operaphile mother set and permed ladies hair and my deaf, barber father, shaved dockers for pub nights and Christmas. In 1939, London children were hastily evacuated from expected Nazi bombing to country foster parents who ranged from kind to concupiscent. When she was 14, her mummy sent her to The White House Jewish refugee orphanage: Great Chesterford. Here, she began her diary, rejoined the tribe and, while a teenager, met Yank servicemen and wounded British soldiers. With peace, aged 16, I returned home, a stranger, attended LSE and immigrated to America, but remained a Cockney Girl.

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