|
|
 |
| |
Phyllis Hillel |
School’s gran who helped hundreds to read
PHYLLIS Hillel, who has died aged 91, became known for her untiring work for schoolchildren as a volunteer at Fleet Primary School in Gospel Oak.
She spent more than 20 years helping teach hundreds of children to read, in her own time, and becoming known as the school’s unofficial grandmother.
Two years ago she was honoured by the Camden New Journal and the Town Hall when she won an Exceptional People In Camden award in recognition of her tireless and selfless work with young people.
She was born in Hackney, the daughter of Pinkus Nirenstein, a grocer who ran a store in Victoria Park Road.
When her parents registered her birth at Hackney Town Hall in 1915, they wanted to call her ‘Sprinzer’, a Yiddish name, but the clerk could not spell it and gave her the name Priscilla instead.
The chance to change a name she never liked came in strange circumstances. When World War II broke out, she opted to work on farms with the Land Army. While waiting in line to volunteer, she saw names being written down, and decided to change hers. But she had yet to decide on a new name when she reached the front of the queue, so she said the first one that came into her head: Phyllis. It was a name she didn’t particularly like either, but it stuck.
Tragedy hit her family in the first months of the war. She had been posted to work on a farm in Lincolnshire when one of the first German bombs to land on London scored a direct hit on her family home in Mornington Crescent.
Inside the house were her father, sister and two brothers. Only one survived.
The Imperial War Museum has a photograph of the destruction.
Deeply traumatised by the loss, she returned to London and was then evacuated to Bedford. Although she had never driven before, she was asked to deliver milk, given a three-hour driving lesson and then let loose on the roads with her own van and delivery round.
However, she was soon to return to the Land Army in Lincolnshire, where she was one of only two Jewish girls working in the Land Army in the area at the time. The other was her friend, Neema Serota, with whom she learnt the rudiments of animal husbandry, helping out during the lambing season.
It was a new and interesting experience for a young woman who had been brought up in the hard times of the East End in the 1930s. Her family had been Communists, and she fought Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts at the battle of Cable Street.
While stationed in Lincolnshire, she met her husband-to-be, Max Hillel, a fellow Communist and East Ender. The son of a kosher dairy owner, he had been conscripted and stationed in Lincolnshire, where he heard of two Jewish girls working on a farm.
He cycled 12 miles to introduce himself and the pair married soon after.
But their time together was at first interrupted by the war. Max served in the 8th Army, fighting through the desert against Rommel, and then took part in the D-day landings. Because he was able to speak German, he was in the unit that was the first to reach and liberate the concentration camp of Buchenwald, an experience he carried with him for life.
After the war, the couple eventually settled in Brookfield Park, Dartmouth Park, and continued to be involved in politics. Phyllis devoted her time to reading and music, being involved in reading groups at Kentish Town library, working as an assistant to her husband, who was an optician, bringing up her family and helping at Fleet Primary School.
DAN CARRIER |
 |
|
|
|
