Refugees | Untold Stories

Minkin was born in Odesa, part of Russia, but we know very little else about him. He can be found in the 1911 census living alone in Islington, at 21 Camden Passage. He was single, a compositor and gave his nationality as ‘Jewish’. Odesa had been the scene of anti-Jewish pogroms in or around 1905 and Minkin might well have been a very traumatised refugee.

Liebermann was born in Vienna. After Hitler came to power she and her husband, Ludwig, and two children came to Britain, living in Wembley. When war broke out they were treated as enemy aliens. In 1940 Ludwig was interned on the Isle of Man and Susi and the children sent to Holloway Prison. It was not until 1941 that they could all return to Wembley.

Like many other victims of the Inquisition Rebecca d'Israel's mother, Clara, fled Portugal to London with her children, where she could finally make a public profession of her Jewish faith. Rebecca was the first wife of Benjamin D'Israeli, a merchant and grandfather of the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. They owned a second house in Essex Road, then called Lower Street.

Nathan was born in Pesaro, Italy, where she married Moses Meyer Nathan, a German stock agent. They moved to London in the late-1830s, living initially in the Aldgate area and moving by 1840s to 58 Myddelton Square. In addition to having 12 children, she had a full life as a political activist, becoming a devoted disciple of Giuseppe Mazzini, the architect of Italian unification.