Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Edgar Salamon 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.

Part i (AV 11708): I was born in Cardiff in 1943. My parents came from Poland where my father worked in a factory called Aero Zip Fasteners, who wanted to open a factory in South Wales. They asked him to work there, which was particularly fortunate as my parents came over three months before the war started. My father worked for Aero Zip all his life, and in 1948, while he was working for them, he invented a machine which was patented. He was a perfectionist in whatever he did and he could put his hand to anything but he was a very modest man. I grew up speaking German with my parents. When they first came to the UK, they couldn’t speak a word of English but my mother picked the language up so quickly it was unbelievable. My father was not so good, but they could both make themselves understood very well. My parents were so happy to be here, they hardly went away anywhere. Nothing else interested them; they had their freedom and that was it. My parents were Orthodox and I was bar mitzvah in Cathedral Road but you couldn’t say we were regular shul goers. My mother used to light candles Friday night and we always used to light a menorah at Chanukah and eat matzo at Pesach, but she didn’t keep strictly kosher. My mother kept most of the Polish customs, like there was always soup to start at every meal and there was always fruit at the end. I was the only Jewish pupil in school and I used to get kids calling me names, but it didn’t bother me and I just ignored it, really. There were black kids there as well and they had the same problem. After I finished school I worked in Halford’s and after that I went into the travel business. When I first started, I worked for a firm in town called Red Dragon Travel, which happened to be owned by the directors of Cardiff City football team. They used to have players coming in and out of the office all day along, so I started meeting some of them, like John Charles and Alan Harrington, and it just went from strength to strength. I actually managed to get on most of the flights and travel with the team to their European games. It was through the travel business that I met my lovely wife, Margaret, and we married in 1985. I’d never thought of joining a synagogue because I’d married out and I thought it didn’t really matter. But after I went to the funeral of a family friend, I thought maybe I should do something. I told my mother I was going to join the Reform shul and she said, okay, she had no problem with that, and that’s how it started. When Rabbi Graf was there I used to go fairly regularly. I found it completely different at first; I still do, actually. I still miss the atmosphere of an Orthodox synagogue but I’m getting more and more used to it now. Margaret is very well accepted there, and she enjoys it because a lot of the service is in English and I enjoy it because of that, too. I enjoy the services but I enjoy the social aspect more. I enjoy meeting with people there. They’re a very nice, friendly crowd of people and everybody’s got time to talk to you, which I think is great, as is the sense of belonging, of being part of a community.