An attack on my childhood home
- Attfield Dutt
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
You will have noticed that I normally only post shamelessly about stories I’ve published. Yesterday at lunchtime I finished writing my latest post to you and went into the kitchen to turn on the kettle – and Radio 4. At once I was caught up short by yet more shocking news about Golders Green: something terrible had just happened while I had been chuntering on to you about my website or something… Two men who “looked Jewish” had been stabbed, seriously but by sheer luck not fatally.
You see this is where I grew up. All through my childhood my Danish mother walked along the Finchley Road to Golders Green Road every day to do her shopping, often with me in tow. I once fell down running along the Finchley Road, cried in panic, and was put back tenderly into my pushchair. Later I walked to school in the Garden Suburb for eleven years, where a third of the girls were Jewish. Many of our neighbours were Jewish, and so was Joan, one of my best friends in Guides.
She’s still a close friend of mine in fact – these days we are both Quakers in South Wales - and she’s just published a fascinating book called DIASPORA FAMILY by Joan Darbyshire, telling the history of her family from the mid-nineteenth century in central Europe, on to her father’s birth in Australia, and finally how some of the family came to settle in Golders Green. I say settle, but Joan talked to me fairly recently about how Jews always metaphorically keep a packed suitcase under the bed just in case…
I had a peaceful happy childhood there, myself; I think my parents chose Golders Green to live because my father was Indian and they felt at home in a mixed accepting neighbourhood. They took in German Jewish refugees during the war, as most people did. My mother apologised to them about how cold our bathroom was, but they said “Oh don’t worry, Mrs Dutt – we’ve seen worse!”
It is terrible to realise that people who live in Golders Green now are afraid to go out. Where once I cycled round on my own at leisure, exploring the neighbourhood, people now worry about being seen. We must not allow this to continue. We must speak out as a nation.
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