Collections Online

Oral history recording with Marian Lane collected as part of The Hineni Project, an insight into the life and stories of a Jewish community in all its diversity. Hineni was a collaborative project between Cardiff Reform Synagogue and Butetown History & Arts Centre.

My parents were both German Jewish. They had to get out of Germany; they came over to this country in 1935, leaving behind other members of the family. I had an older sister who was born in Germany and I was born in London in 1940. We later moved to Wales, first to Aberdare and then Cardiff. My dad was a dental surgeon; he had to re-take his exams up in Edinburgh. Life was difficult and they had quite a struggle to get started. There were many things that I didn’t understand as a child; my parents very rarely talked about Germany and it was a time when you just didn’t ask questions. In my twenties I managed to get some information out of my mother, found out where she was born, and I had an opportunity in the 1960s to travel to Gleiwitz, now Gliwice, in Poland. I had relatives in Argentina, but another thing that upset me was that everybody else had aunts and uncles and cousins around and I didn’t know what an aunt and uncle was. I had my sister and I had my grandmother. Hitler murdered so many of our people but he also took away our identity, my identity, and I feel that very strongly, even now. In 1961 I saved up and went to Argentina and visited the relatives I’d only ever written to. I loved Argentina; I loved being with my aunt and uncle. We were brought up Orthodox because that was all there was. We kept the festivals, and the Sabbath day was Saturday and not Sunday when everything was closed. The Jewish community was quite large because of all the immigrants that had come to the Valleys. The synagogue was a large room upstairs in a little house in the middle of Aberdare. Those are my earliest recollections of being Jewish and being slightly different to everyone else. I was very happy in school at Aberdare. I was a tomboy; I used to climb walls and go where you’re not supposed to go. It was idyllic; you were surrounded by countryside and there were very few cars around so you were able to play on the roads. I was not happy coming to Cardiff. I really missed the community atmosphere. I mean, obviously it grew on me but there were many things I didn’t like. We eventually joined the Reform synagogue which had just started and that was totally different. It was mixed seating, which was quite odd, and the pronunciation of the Hebrew was different. I don’t know that my father ever got used to it, but I certainly settled in. I quite enjoyed cheder and it was like a big family. I was very interested in travel and worked my way up. I was awarded a managership of a Co-op travel shop in the late ‘60s, which was very, very unusual for a woman. I had been going out with a non-Jewish fella but I couldn’t let go of Judaism – I couldn’t marry out. I married a Jewish man called Geoffrey in 1975 and we had two children. I started getting interested in Judaism again in my late twenties. I think it was always there but something just started again and I started teaching cheder. Friday night I keep at home, whenever I can, lighting the candles, whether my children are here or not. But I go to synagogue on a Saturday morning because the Torah scrolls come out and sometimes you’re called up, and it’s by your Hebrew name, which includes your father’s Hebrew name, and that’s a link to my past that’s important to me.