Harold’s War – East Riding Theatre, Beverley

Co-writers: Jonathan Levy, Hannah Levy

Co-directors: Jonathan Levy, Richard Avery

Jonathan Levy is very much the impetus for this remarkable evening, moving and smartly co-ordinated, providing the main narration in addition to his writing and directing duties. However, the inspiration for the event (and, in a sense, its presiding genius, though he is currently in Singapore) is his son, Daniel Levy, who recorded a number of astonishing video interviews nearly 30 years ago.

A school project with the title “My Family’s War”, set it off, the 11-year-old Daniel embarking on a series of interviews with members of the Levy, Bermitz and Silver families who all experienced different, but often overlapping, wars. The main focus was Daniel’s grandfather, Harold Bermitz, the youngest of five brothers, three of whom served in the forces. Extracts from these interviews bound together the evening, young Daniel appearing from time to time to ask innocent, but surprisingly astute, questions.

Besides the interviews the evening consisted of Jonathan Levy’s narration, mocked up radio broadcasts, stock World War Two footage, and Hannah Levy, Robert Wade and Peter McMillan performing “radio” scripts as members of the Bermitz family (the least successful part of the performance) and reading letters (among the most moving). The time span was from 1910, when Israel Bermitz and Kayla Waksman fled the pogroms in Poland, got married and settled in Hull to post-war discoveries of what had happened to family in mainland Europe – so often, the gas chambers. The circularity of the Jewish experience was always there, never over-emphasised.

Mercifully the worst that befell the citizens of Hull in the 1930s was seeing off the egregious Oswald Mosley at an attempted rally, but in Europe the Jewish experience worsened, with Berta Rose (interviewed by Daniel) telling the story of her escape via the very first Kindertransport. Later Harold’s brother Solly took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk (very matter-of-fact on the details, mainly just confusion), David’s four years abroad included the Battle of Monte Cassino, and the Bermitz house was just one of the casualties of the Hull blitz. However, the most striking testimony came from Sadie Silver, later to marry Harold, and Bernard Levy. Sadie was seconded to a secret atomic physics project at Cambridge: “You mean like the atom bomb?”, asked Daniel, then capped it all with the question we’d all want to ask, “How did you feel when the bomb ended the war?” “Horrified”, was the reply. Bernard came across the emaciated survivors of Bergen-Belsen and was unable to speak of it until he went back 70 years later: he was glad to register his shared humanity.

The evening was not without humour, notably Kayla worrying constantly about her sons getting enough to eat and going to collect Solly from the barracks for his tea, but the memories of Harold about her death, followed by the letters from David’s CO and David himself, combined with the stories of the Holocaust to produce a very sombre atmosphere to the closing stages.

It’s Jonathan Levy’s intent to develop this project as an educational initiative. As he says, events in the world increasingly echo the 1930s. Throughout the evening our common humanity and the positive effects of immigration kept reappearing – and that’s the message he wants to get over.

Reviewed on 5th September 2024