Great Divisions in a Small World

“It was one of those rare summer evenings when it did not rain, and the smoke cleared from the atmosphere, leaving the sky a deep blue color, and the air soft and fresh and balmy. It was the kind of evening when people brought their stiff-backed wooden kitchen chairs out to the front to sit and smoke, and perhaps listen to the Forshaw’s gramophone. They were the only people on our street who had one, and they left their door open so that everyone could hear. In the meantime, the sun would sink, a huge red ball, behind the square brick tower of the India Mill. After it disappeared, there would be fiery streaks in the sky, and these would fade gradually as the sky became very pale, and twilight would fall gently, and you would see the glow of pipes or cigarettes along both sides of the street.

          We had finished our tea, and my two sisters had quickly disappeared before my mother could get them to clear the table and wash up. My two brothers were about to do the same. Having gulped down the last of their tea, and still chewing on their bread and butter, they were half way out the door to join their friends in the street when my mother stopped them.”

From, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers, by Harry Bernstein

This was Bernstein’s first book written at age 93 and published when he was 96. He went on to write three more books before his death in 2011 at the age of 101.

This is a beautiful and at times disturbing memoir of his growing up years in the fiercely divided streets of a small mill town in England where Jews lived on one side and Christians on the other. Anti-Semitism was ugly and raw. And tolerance for either group was seen as a dishonorable weakness.

Born into a home of six children with a surly indifferent alcoholic father, Harry’s valorous mother carried alone, the oppressive burdens of so many children and the endless stresses of tiptoeing around an explosive bullying husband. Their poverty was strangling; their lives dismal.

Out of this immense darkness, however, shines glorious beams of light and Bernstein inspires us with stories of humor, bravery, tenacity and tearful affections. There are many worthy life lessons scattered all over these pages.