Jewish radicals: From Czarist stetl to London ghetto

by William J. Fishman

Between 1881 and 1914, London's East End became the refuge for thousands of Jews driven from Russia by the pogroms. The shabby tenements of Whitechapel and Stepney were turned into sweatshops, in which men and women labored under appalling conditions. Some of the immigrants had belonged to the radical intelligentsia before their flight from the Czarist police, and this book describes their struggle to politicize and unite the Jewish workers.

Drawing on many written sources hitherto untapped, William Fishman vividly records the horrors of persecution in Russia and the poverty and alienation in the London ghetto. He traces the spread of anarchist and socialist ideas in England, from Aron Lieberman's pioneering Hebrew Socialist Union to the ascendancy of Rudolf Rocker, the charismatic German gentile who devoted himself to the Jewish immigrant cause. He also re-creates movingly the lifestyle of the activists themselves and their incredible dedication, drawing on eye-witness accounts of many of the events that took place in the East End.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974