Minster Road 1 | A Kindertransport from Cologne | Time to say Goodbye | The Journey to England | Life in the Hostel | Bar Mizwa

Bar Mizwa

In 1939, the boys in the Minster Road hostel were 12 or 13 years old. On their 13th birthday they had their Bar Mizwa (a Hebrew term meaning „son of commandment“), which is an important date in Judaism that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood for boys. For the first time in his life, the young boy will be asked to read the Torah on the Sabbath after his 13th birthday. At home, this would have been a great family event with a ceremonial service in the synagogue, guests and gifts – but now the boys were cared for by strangers. Paul Katz remembers that day with sadness:

  The Bar Mizwa was still back in London, at the hostel. And the committee would do everything, would do nothing by halves. It was all arranged. … On the Sabbath I went to synagogue, read my portion, successful, without any mistakes and afterwards there was a reception at one of the homes of a member of the committee, but I remember being feeling rather lost and ignored, and was sorry for myself, thought, ‘my family should have been there.’ I am thinking more of my family than of anything else. And in the afternoon there was a party at the hostel for the Bar Mizwa child and I was supposed with a new suit, and short trousers and long trousers, till the days of short trousers. Dr Seligsohn advised me, that when I was asked for a present I should ask for a watch. I did get the watch, a watch and a suit, and of corse, letters and letters from my parents and brothers and my grandparents.

Shimon Ben-Yehuda (Paul Katz) 1998 *

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