Emanuel Litvinoff – Writer whose mission was to end plight of Soviet Jews

Storyteller, raconteur and chronicler of life in pre-war East End

Published: September 29, 2011

AUTHOR Emanuel Litvinoff, who has died aged 96, is best known for his 1972 memoir, Journey Through A Small Planet, which explored his roots in the Whitechapel of the early 20th century and was recently re-issued as a Penguin Classic.

Not so well known is his four-decade-long fight to help end the persecution of Russian Jews, which, bizarrely, came about through helping to organise the Soviet Union’s first fashion show in the mid-1950s.

The author was then married to Cherry Marshall, a  model. The couple were at a party in November 1955 when a conversation arose about how Russians had not seen any real glimpses of Western fashion since 1917.

As Marshall wrote in her memoirs: “We reckoned they must be pretty curious about fashion after 40 years in proletarian drab...”

They set up a venture to take a fashion show to Moscow and in 1956 their models strutted the latest designs through Gorky Park. Meanwhile, Litvinoff went to the Moscow Great Synagogue and was astounded to hear of rampant, state-sponsored anti-Semitism.

Litvinoff was moved to set up the Jewish Observer Newsletter, later to become Jews in Eastern Europe. This periodical scanned the Soviet bloc for reports and information on Jewish people.

He continued compiling and editing the pamphlet up to the demise of the USSR, and won praise from ambassadors for his diligence.

He did not allow himself to be hijacked by anti-Communists or Zionists; instead, he worked to promote anti-racism in all its forms.

Litvinoff was born in Whitechapel in 1915. He had eight siblings, and left school aged 14. His lack of a formal education would be a regret throughout his life, so much so he was determined to see his youngest child, Aaron, graduate this year.

He drifted through numerous jobs, relied on charitable help and slept rough. These experiences would later make up the bulk of Journey through a Small Planet.

When war broke out, he had been a conscientious objector, but the threat from the Nazis made him enlist.

He served in Northern Ireland, Africa and the Middle East, rising to the rank of major by the age of 27. His literary career started in the army. In 1942, he published his first poems.

In the post-war period, Litvinoff worked as a ghost writer and penned his own novels.  He wrote various plays for stage and TV, and earned further notoriety for attacking TS Eliot on the grounds of anti-semitism.

A secular Jew, he was agnostic – though he kept a collection of skull caps in his bedside drawer for occasions that demanded them.

For a man whose public persona was defined by his books, he had little interest in being part of the literary world. He read widely, particularly enjoying the likes of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.

He loved to sit in the gardens at Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, where he lived – a rebellion against a youth when his mother would stop him leaving the house. He would read on a bench and watch children play.

He avidly read daily papers and drank copious cups of sweet tea, often asking for four sugars per cup. He loved swing music, listening to artists such as Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday, and enjoyed travelling.

He would travel the world to speak, and enjoyed summer holidays at a house his second wife, Mary McClory, owned in County Down.

Litvinoff was never well off and had come from a humble background. It stayed with him: he wasn’t interested in buying new clothes and drove a rickety old car for years. He lived in a realm of books and ideas rather than creature comforts.

He divorced his first wife Cherry in 1970, and then married Mary in September 2006, aged 91. To celebrate they walked from Camden Town Hall to a small café in Lamb’s Conduit Street – he had said he did not want a fuss made.

Above all, Litvinoff was a storyteller and a raconteur.  He remained fit and active well into his 90s, going to the gym three times a week past his 90th birthday.

He is survived by Mary, Aaron and two other children, Julian and Sarah.
DAN CARRIER