CABINET-MAKING TO PLANE CONSTRUCTION –

Uncovering the Lever Family in the Forces

BY JASON

It alked about my work for the ex-Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to recruit more adult volunteers to run all the great uniformed youth organisations. Yet, in publishing a website of the life and times of my great-uncle, Solomon Lever (1895-1959), I did learn about through family interviews and in archives research many military credentials in Uncle Solly, his brothers and in wider family lives.

In a way, we can blame the Tsar for that. For my greatgrandfather, Nachman (Nathan) Lavetsky, had been an apprentice to the craftsman who laid a new floor of St. Petersburg Cathedral. So, when the family emigrated to London in the face of pogroms, it was natural that they entered the East End furniture making business –according to the 1911 Census, as specialists in bedroom suites.

In common with many other such cabinet-makers, Solomon was not conscripted into active service in WW1 rather his skills were used in aircraft manufacture – as wood was the basic material for aircraft of the time. He served in the Royal Flying Corps. The RAF Muster Roll shows S Lavetsky (no. 104,751, Rigger (Aero)) as enlisting on 16 May 1916 for the duration of the war. When the RAF was formed from the combination of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air

Service, he was given the rank of Air Mechanic 3rd Class and the salary of 2 shillings a day. His brother, Harris (Harry) we think served similarly. Their youngest brother, Maurice, enlisted in the British Army in 1917, having lied about his age, being 16. He was posted to 42nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers and later to 8th Labour Battalion on 22 May 1918. In writing my Uncle Solly website, I came across the interesting figure that 14 per cent of British Jews served in the armed forces in WW1 compared with 11.5 per cent of the wider population.

Their half-brothers - Hyman (Hymie), Emanuel (Manny) and Joseph (Joe) – all served in the British Army in the Second World War. Manny, my grandfather, joined the Royal Army Service Corps attached to the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division and became a Sergeant . Tasked with leading supply convoys on a motorbike, he was Mentioned in Despatches for crossing the Rhine River which was on fire with burning oil in order to save the life of an officer in the river..

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Sgt Hyman Lever served in the Royal Army Service Corps Transport section, seeing service in North Africa, Norway and across Europe, while their youngest brother, Joe, served in India and Europe in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Fast forward to the 2010s when Manny’s great-grandson, Guy, took up the mantle of marching in the annual AJEX Remembrance Day Parade in Whitehall, wearing Sergeant Lever’s medals as he himself had paraded regularly in the 1960s. This prompted me to start coming along to support the parades and since living in Brighton these last ten years my awareness of AJEX has come to the fore. This was through our small but active and Brighton, Hove, and District branch leading commemorative services on a rota basis across the Jewish community, from my Reform to the Orthodox and Liberal & Progressive synagogues. I reflected on the poignancy of Branch members raising the flag during the annual Holocaust Memorial Service on a still and stiff winter’s morning at the exposed Meadow View Cemetary. I proudly look out for the AJEX branch flag and those on parade at the city’s Remembrance Day Service, with the backdrop of George IV’s Royal Pavilion and Gardens providing some exoticism to the sombre formalities of the occasion at which the full diversity of religions, communities, ages and uniformed public services are on display to new generations and visitors to the city.

A few years ago it fascinated me to discover the role played by “elderly retired Jewish gentlemen, seemingly rejuvenated by Brighton air, wading into the fascists with their walking sticks and umbrellas” (Ref: Bance) and helping disrupt Blackshirt rallies on The Level, our then local equivalent of Speakers’ Corner five minutes from my house. This very much reminded me that while Uncle Solly had done his service in the Forces in the previous war, as Mayor of Hackney his office was around the corner from where similar Blackshirts’ activity took place in London. My father, Charles, used to tell me about being in the cinema as a child and seeing his Uncle Solly pop up on the newsreel, speaking at the Annual Congress of the Trades Union Congress in Southport on September 4, 1947. Using his position as General Secretary of one of the smallest affiliating unions to the TUC - the London Jewish Bakers Union - Uncle Solly decried that,

“Fascism in East London marches on... like old times, you know, when Mosley and his Blackshirts marched through London before the war” and warned that the threat posed was not just to Jews but to the “preservation of freedom and tolerance and democracy in this country”

W hile the skills of Jewish and other carpenters was crucial to the early air force of the country in WW1, it was the engineers who were crucial to the Royal Air Force of WWII. On the other side of my family my grandfather, Harold Commissar, was a Territorial Army reservist gunner from 1940 but more valued as an engineer working with Sir Barnes Wallis on the famous ‘bouncing bomb’ design. In an uncanny parallel, my step-grandfather, Josh Shirman, worked on design of plane engines and after D-Day was transferred by DeHavilland to an experimental team developing the Goblin turbojet engine, which became the first to receive its Certificate of Airworthiness in this country.

Just as remembering and celebrating the role of Jewish serving and ex-servicemen and women is a vital and relevant role played by AJEX today, many of us can also filter the wider lens of our community’s contributions to the Forces in this country within their own families – those they knew and those they never had the privilege to know, like my Uncle Solly. Joining and supporting AJEX is for me a must do for all that the organisation, its staff and volunteers do to preserve the memories of past endeavours and support present services personnel, all of whom have fought above their demographic weight on behalf of the Jewish community in the aid of this country.

References:

- Bance, H, ‘Brighton on The Level’, The Preston Pages, July 2013

- Uncle Solly website: www.unclesolly.co.uk