Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Lilian Bogod 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 Leeds in 1931 and was an only child. My mother was from Cardiff, and after my father died when I was six, we came to Cardiff because my mother’s sister still lived there. I went to Rumney School, a private school. During the war I was sent to St Michael’s Convent in Abergavenny where I went to school, and I returned at the end of the war when my mother remarried and did my leaving school certificate. We went as a family to Cathedral Road Synagogue but not very often, only for Yom Tovs. We joined the Reform when it first met at the Temple of Peace. I joined the synagogue youth club and was secretary for a while. The youth club was where the social life was in the Reform, and I had a huge quantity of friends and it’s where I met my husband, Michael. We used to have dances, and when we were older we used to go out on a Sunday night for dinner or go off on weekends to Manchester and stay with people. We helped every year with the garden party to serve tea and sell raffle tickets. I remember going around with one of the Continental ladies collecting for the garden party and that’s how I met many people. Everybody was very friendly. It was a very nice mixture of people, and being in a small synagogue, where everybody knows people, makes a difference.