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Oral history recording with Norman Berg 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.

I was born in Cardiff in 1933. My mother was born in Odessa. At the age of five, she came to Wales with her parents who opened an all-purpose shop in Treherbert. My father was born in Reading. His grandfather was the first Orthodox Jew in Reading and my grandfather was the first chairman and president of Reading Orthodox Community. He died when my father was fourteen. A Jewish care organisation arranged for my father to work for a dentist in Port Talbot. When he was nineteen, at the beginning of the First World War, he enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and spent another three years in India as a dental assistant. After the war, he set himself up in Cardiff as a dentist and worked until he was seventy-one. In 1943, his practice was the only place in Queen Street that was destroyed by enemy bombing in the Second World War. My parents met and married in Cardiff and had a daughter and three sons. My sister died aged seven after falling on rocks at the seaside; penicillin had not then been discovered. From the age of ten, I was a member of Habonim – a Jewish youth group – and became the leader of the Cardiff group. I attended University College, Cardiff from 1950-1954, and obtained a degree in economics. For part of my college life, I was articled to a firm of chartered accountants, whose principal was my uncle, David Curitz. After articles I went to Israel and worked on a kibbutz banana plantation. After a year, I returned to Cardiff, as I had promised my father I would. I met and became engaged to my lovely wife, Eileen, when she started working at my father’s surgery, and then joined the Royal Artillery for my National Service. After demobilisation, and having qualified as a chartered accountant, I obtained work at the Steel Company of Wales and progressed to other posts until I was offered a partnership in a Newport accountancy firm, where I remained until my uncle David asked me to join his practice. Soon after he died I became senior partner of a four-partner practice where I remained for some forty years. My wife Eileen and I celebrate our golden wedding anniversary in January 2013. We have two sons, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren who are caring and loving and give us great pleasure. I have been closely involved with a number of charities in executive positions. As well as Habonim, latterly I was financial adviser to the Wallich Clifford Community, which housed the homeless, for thirty-five years, and was an executive officer with the Samaritans. I am now a senior trustee to Innovate, which is concerned with support and guidance for disabled people. When I came out of the Forces, I joined the Reform synagogue. I served on synagogue council and taught religion classes. I was also Secretary of Cardiff Jewish Representative Council for a number of years. Judaism provides me with a modus operandi as to how to behave towards other people on a daily basis. It’s a thick book of instructions. It is a way of life that I try to follow that deals with justice, with love, with the family bit, and much else; it’s very important to me. I love the example: you should accept a person as they are and not make judgements. It teaches us to care for the widows and orphans and the stranger. I get emotional about this. I love my religion, and latterly my beliefs are becoming stronger. I believe there’s somebody up there and He looks after us all very well.