Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Bob Gregory 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 Robert Kraukauer in Vienna, in 1935, to Viennese parents. There was angst and fear amongst the Jewish community because Hitler was already making threatening noises towards Austria. My father, who had a small glove manufacturing business, realised that things were going to get worse, and had the foresight and wisdom to persuade my mother to drop everything and clear out, and we came to the UK in 1938. We arrived in London and had very little knowledge of the language, few possessions and very little money. Times for my parents were very tough. We came to Cardiff in 1939. My father started a glove factory in the Treforest Trading Estate, and my mother helped in the business. When I went to primary school with a foreign sounding surname I experienced anti-Semitism and a bit of xenophobia. In 1946 my father sought British nationality, and on that being granted, he changed the family name from Kraukauer to Gregory, though I have absolutely no idea why he chose Gregory. My parents were very much typical Continental assimilated Jews. Even though my father was one of the founding members of the Cardiff Reform Synagogue, my parents weren’t social animals and were not involved in Cardiff Jewish life. When I was thirteen my parents sent me to a boys’ local prep school with a Christian base, just because it was a good school. I was one of two Jewish boys in an environment of 200 non-Jewish boys, so the early days weren’t very good from that point of view. There was persecution, active and passive, but I was quite a good rugby player, and once you’re involved in sporting life you just become another boy. I did natural sciences at Cambridge and drifted into industrial safety equipment and protective clothing. I started a business from scratch in 1961 near Cardiff, which was successful and grew, and we did a lot of manufacturing, eventually in Hong Kong. I was married in 1960 in the Cardiff Reform Synagogue and had three children. I later remarried in 1989. About twenty years ago I drifted into compiling cryptic crosswords, and since 2003 I’ve been doing a Jewish-themed cryptic crossword every week for the Jewish Chronicle, which is a bit of fun. I’m quite a good linguist. I speak quite a number of languages, and at one time was fairly fluent in Russian. I could read Greek fairly well, but strangely enough, I’d never been able to read Hebrew because I’d had no cheder experience. But I went to one of Rabbi Elaina’s classes and learnt to read Hebrew so I can now follow a prayer book. I had no bar mitzvah at thirteen, but when I was forty-six my son was bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and for good measure I was bar mitzvah alongside him. As I grow older, I have felt more and more Jewish, and have feelings of coming back to my Jewishness. I go to synagogue from time to time on a Friday night and occasionally on Saturday morning. I go for some of the festivals. I certainly go on Yom Kippur, not because I’m religious, but out of sort of a feeling of community and roots; that it’s where I come from and where my ancestors come from. I feel that if people like me don’t occasionally show their face then in due course the community is going to stand every chance of withering and dying. I hope that won’t happen.