Charters rediscovered

The descendants of Leah Ornstein have been located and communication has been restablished after many decades, through face book. They live in Boston and El Paso in America, and in Israel.
Her daughter Rosalyn married David Charter and they had four sons, Ed, Harvey, Michael and Stephen.

Nearing the end of the Political Road...1950

Mr Austin adopted as candidate; Pledges devotion to Socialist Creed.

Lew Austin, Amatuer Artist

Montego Bay, Jamaica early 1950's Lewis Austin

Spot Valley, Jamaica early 1950's Lewis Austin

Lew Austin M.P.

Herschel Lewis Austin M.P. for Stretford and Urmston, Manchester U.K. shaking hands with prospective Conservative opposition candidate Samuel Storey, 3rd December 1948.

Also Lew, as he was known with his agent, Mr B.C.L. Garrington, 3rd February 1950.

Obituary of Frank Austin

Born London, January 26 1906, Died London 8th August, 1996, aged 90.
Frank Austin, founder-chairman of a successful furniture company was a poor London boy who made good and spent his life working for the good of young people. He never forgot what it was like to be picked out at school because he wore charity clothing. Shrewd and kindly, he was a mainstay of Brady Boys’ Club and the Children’s Country Holiday Fund. The third of seven children who were bought up in the East End, he was only eight when his Polish-born father died but his father had already charged him with responsibility for the family.
Frank joined the Brady club - which had had been founded in 1896 – gaining enormously from its sporting, educational and recreational facilities, aswell as from its meals and showers. He was always conscious of his debt to the club, which he supported through many later crises. When he left the Jews’ Free School at 14 for a four-year apprenticeship in cabinet-making, Mr Austin started up in a Shoreditch workshop business with his four brothers.
The business eventually moved to Leyton, East London, embracing new factory methods of furniture manufacture. After the war, its brandname, Austinsuite, became a household name. With a reputation for being a progressive employer, he became master of the Furniture Makers’ Company in 1974-75 and president of the National Trades’ Benevolent Association.
On the communal front, he was member of the Board of Deputies and spoke out against Oswald Mosely’s blackshirt Fascists in Hyde Park in the 1930s.
As chairman of Brady from 1941, he helped purchase Skeet Hill House in Kent in 1945, to provide country weekends in the fresh air for inner city children. In 1967, he helped to save the club from closure through lack of funds. He was appointed O.B.E. for his social work in 1968. When he stepped down at the end of 1971, becoming life president, the club put on a variety show in his honour and a hall was named after him. The event was attended by Labour ministers Arthur Bottomley and George Brown, who unveiled a plaque in the hall. It was an apposite tribute for a lifelong Labour Party supporter and staunch trade unionist.
Mr Austin’s concern for children was evidenced by his presidency of the Jewish branch of the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, which into the 1970’s provided an annual seaside break for 150 children. When the United Nations “year of the child” was announced for 1979, he chaired the Anglo-Jewish co-ordinating committee. For him, this was a welcome opportunity to bring children’s problems to the forefront of public attention.
The same concerns attracted him to becoming a J.P. (Justice of the Peace) in 1951, sitting on the juvenile court in Stratford. He then went on to the bench in the City of London, and was the first chair-man of the Waltham Forest magistrates’ court until he retired in 1976.
Ever energetic, he loved sport and later took up dairy farming. As the farm was near Glyndebourne, he combined this hobby with a love of opera. In his youth, he sang in an amateur chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Yeomen of the Guard”. His future wife, Jeanne, sang the lead role. She died in 1995.
He is survived by a son, two daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchilden.

Austin Factory Works Lunch

A photo most likely to have been taken in the 1940's at the factory of F Austin (Leyton) Ltd, on Argall Avenue, East London. Seated at the back are the four Austin brothers, who all were company directors. Circled in green is Frank Austin the company's founder, to his left (the viewers right)and circled in red is is his youngest brother Herschel Lewis Austin, the production manager, known as "Mr Lew". The other two brothers are most likely to be Samuel, transport manger and Nathaniel, who are to the right of Frank (our left). Harry, the oldest of the brothers was not employed at the firm. he had emigrarted to Austrailia around 1922, but later returned to England, running a chain of shoe shops in Oxford.

Austin Furniture

An advert from "Flight" featuring the Austin furniture business from 1941, when the company was manufacturing military aircraft including the de Havilland Mosquito, as part of the "The War Effort". The company would later go on to produce a range of furniture, known as "Austinsuite", which would become a household name.

Lew Austin was production manager. On one occasion Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian newspaper entrepreneur who was Minister of Aircraft Production in Churchill's war Ministry, visited the factory and was shown round by "Mr Lew". After the visit one of the men's toilets had two articles graffiti on the wall. The first read "Lord Beaverbrook is a c**t" The second read "No I'm not".

Deborah Ornstein (Nee Moser)

This is Deborah / Dvorah or "Dobbie" Ornstein, later Austin who was the daughter of Yiddel and Hannah Moser, of Jagielnica. She is my maternal great grandmother, and was the mother of Leah, Frank, Harry, Nathaniel, Samuel, Herschel Lewis (my maternal Grandfather)and Kitty. This picture was probably taken in the early 1950's.

Jagielnica

This is the town of Jagielnica, where many of the Ornstein and Moser ancestors lived, until the Pograms began.

BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH: The Horn Letter

REMAINING ALONE AFTER THE RUTHLESS AND HORRIBLE POGROMS IN POLAND AND IN THE TOWN OF JAGIELNICA ON 5th OCTOBER, 1942.

A TAILOR,FELIKS HORN WRITES IN BARI, ITALY

BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.

Dark outside, six o clock in the morning,
We stand by the window; a woman comes running and says,
"Oh! Woe is us, the whole town is surrounded."
We know and understand into whose hands we have fallen.

What should I do with my little lamb?
He is still lying asleep in his cot.
Where should one run to hide him?
Ach! It's horrible to endure this.

Quickly, quickly, the mother grabs her child,
Ach! But where does one find an escape?
She flees with him, but only runs a couple of steps.
I watch from the window as she is captured.

Oh! Woe is me! What has happened to me?
I fall into a faint; I cannot move.
I saw how a tall murderer led them away.
I am unconscious and confused.

What should I do, where should I run?
All around there are many, many murderers. A whole battalion,
All one hears are violent cries of "Out, Out!"
They are forcing all the Jews out.

There was destruction in the town.
Why such wrath towards us?
The cries become greater.
Our end has come and the end to all Jewish children.

Oh God! How should I run? Where should I run to?
Through the window, a second murderer
Can be seen leading away my sister
I tear at my hair. Lost, we know, lost, we know.

I run around wildly in the house,
And look for a place to hide myself in,
Just not to surrender myself to them.
Where to? It is already impossible to go outside.

In a flash I am in the attic,
Having first piled things on the stairway
And then pulled up the ladder,
I didn’t lie there very long.

Suddenly I hear my wife's voice.
Is it possible that she has returned?
It seems to me that I must be unconscious,
And that I have imagined her.

But soon I hear, "Take up the child,
We are all lost now.
I met one of them, pleaded,
And I somehow managed to reach his heart with mine".

What should I do with you, little child?
I cannot look at his beautiful, frightened face.
What should I do with you?
Oh God! Why did you come back here?

I run with the child to the back of the attic,
It is sorrowful and bitter for us.
So painful, I cannot look at him
As I press him to my heart for the last time.

We didn’t lie there long.
We hear someone enter and it throws us into a fright.
Suddenly, murderers are standing near us.
At once they order us to go, "Get out!"

Ach! Our end has come.
Sighs and voices are heard.
I received another couple of blows.
My blood flows, as I lead my little one.

We get up at once, they push us along.
Ach! World-murderers that you are,
Why do you come to kill us like this?
Why do you need our blood?

What urges you to conquer the world?
That costs so many Jewish lives.
World-murderers that you are,
Your time will come, too!

You constantly dedicate your culture,
To a more modern and efficient destruction of the world,
This is your idea of a thousand years?
You will not succeed; you will meet your downfall!

They drive us together in one crowded place.
They beat us all the time,
Everyone sitting, not moving, waiting
Until they are sent off.

We waited until four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Get up! Hurry! Get up! Hurry! ".They shouted at us.
Suddenly shoving us together to leave,
God forbid that we tarry!

A long column stretches out.
Adieu, adieu you beautiful sun,
Tomorrow at this time not one of us will remain.
Quickly, quickly, they drive us along.

Shots are heard,
And the dead begin to fall.
Many already lie all around us,
And we still have to look at this!

They start to beat us hard,
As we ascend the big mountain.
How does one endure this?
Shouts and screams, "Out! Go Out!"

Beaten and driven, we arrive at the station.
We are assigned sixty five people to a railroad car.
We sit down again, and cry,
Ach! Woe to us!

You tremble from fear my little lamb.
I throw my jacket over him
And cover his young body
And they push us, "Quickly, Quickly!"

I feel a murderer's hand on my throat.
"Out, Out!" I am dead anyway.
I embrace the child for the last time.
We cry bitterly and look at one another.

Out! Quickly!" I hear once again."
They lead me away to a far off hell.
I hear my wife's last words,
And they touch me deeply.

Go! Go! Perhaps you will save yourself,"
And someday you will tell all." She pleaded me.
"No! No! I must go with you,
Whatever will be or will happen."

They drive us with clubs into the cars.
A deathly fear falls upon us.
Just one minute more to breathe the air.
Adieu, Adieu world, beautiful world.

For the last time, another glance,
Just once more, my son,
I will never see you again.
Ach! How I will suffer from this.

This happened on October, 5th. 1942.
Only a couple of us remain.
How did I remain alive?
To this I can give no answer.