ABSTRACT
The victims that night included some Jewish children coming home from a cinema, who died sheltering in a doorway in Christian Street, Stepney. To that point the relationship of East End Jewry to the war had been complex. Some British-born Jewish East Enders had volunteered at the outset, responding among other things to a call for patriotism by the Anglo-Jewish elite of the City and West End. In the opening weeks of 1943 heavy British bombing raids on Berlin received extensive coverage in the London press. The absence of night-time warnings provoked much press criticism of the Home Secretary and Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who resolutely opposed them. For all the elements that Orwell and the historians have uncovered at the root of popular anti-Semitism in London between 1939 and 1945 were articulated for the first time – more vociferously and outrageously – between 1916 and 1918.
