Ari’s great-great-grandfather Harry (my Grandad) was born on 22 May 1908 in Hackney, London. I think I got my love of words from Harry, and I treasure the books I inherited from him which have his pencilled notes in the margins, as well as two that he gave me as presents: a lovely small hardback edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales in 1968 and Three Men in a Boat in 1973 (which says in the front ‘An unbirthday present from Grandad’). I remember playing word games

Judith (Judy) was Ari’s great-great-grandmother. She was born on 30 September 1910 at 6 Gore Road, Hackney, the daughter of Maurice Katz and Rachel (Raye) Cohen. The family can be seen there in the 1911 census. When Judy was 3, her sister Rosalind was born. This is a photo of Judy with Harry Loshak, taken to mark their engagement, which was announced in October 1930 in the Jewish Chronicle. And this is their wedding, which took place on 26 July 1931 at Cricklewood Synagogue.

Ari’s 3x great-grandfather Meyer Loshak was born on 4 April 1884 in a town that is now called Hritsiv in Ukraine. Before WWI the town was called Gritsev, and it was in the Volhynia district of the Russian Empire. In 1879, the year of the Russian census, the Jewish population of the town was 979. There was a pogrom there on 21 Sept 1917. The town was captured by the Germans on 5 July 1941, and a ghetto was established. All the Jewish people of the town (c.1900 at that time)  w

Eleazer (or Lazarus) Loshak was Ari’s 4x great-grandfather. We know he was born in about 1845, somewhere near Gritsev, Ukraine. The date of birth comes from this amazing papercut, handed down in the family and now in my possession, which gives the date of his bar mitzvah in Hebrew. I found this information by uploading the image to a wonderful resource called ViewMate on the website JewishGen, where you can ask for translations. Rivka Chaya Baddiel kindly sent me this very he