Connecting histories

by Gemma Romain

Ch. 6 (p. 177-214), "Re-remembering and Forgetting Histories: Memories of Racist Riots in Britain", discusses, inter alia, immediate and long-time reactions to the anti-Jewish pogrom wave of 1911 in South Wales, as well as to the anti-Jewish riots in Leeds and in London's Bethnal Green in 1917. In 1911 the non-Jewish press tried to minimize the antisemitic nature of the pogroms and stressed the economic factor; there was also a tendency to blame the victims themselves. The Jewish press and community generally also tried to deny the anti-Jewish element in the riots, as well as anti-Jewish sentiments in Wales. The riots of 1917 did not receive much coverage in the press, both Jewish and non-Jewish. The common sentiment prevalent among British Jews was that these riots, and especially the Jewish self-defense against them, should be forgotten for the sake of social peace. In the last decades, the memory of the pogroms was reclaimed by the Jewish community in Britain, albeit in a moderate p