Lou, my oldest brother, was unique in a way, intellectual, he used to go to Foyle's bookshop and they had things like penny and twopenny books -- all afternoon he used to sit there with these books. He went to Camden Town -- Mornington Crescent secondary school. He formed a friendship with a few of his friends by the cinema, and between them they founded the Association of Young Zionists. He was the President of it. The National Association had groups all over England, Ireland and Scotland... We used to charter (a train) the railways, which were not at that time nationalised. We used to charter these trains on the night travel with different groups to different parts of England and they had debates with other societies. I remember we used to come back and the train arrived too late to go home so we went to Lyons Corner House...
Can I tell you of the reason why you are all here today. I was the secretary of a small society (He'Atid) in Brixton. 'He'Atid' is the Hebrew for the future. At that time the possibility of Jewish home in Israel was impossible to imagine - men weren't even on the moon at that stage. Very few people attended the societies. In fact the only society south of the Thames was in Brixton. One of the members was Harry Golombek - he later became a big-name -- a grand chess master of England. There were two lads still at school, one was Aubrey, the son of the rabbi - (he became) a major in the army and he changed his name to Abba Eban (the renowned Foreign Minister of Israel in the 1960s). The other was a young man who used to take an umbrella on the occasional rambles we had... Lou who was my brother often came too. I have now come to that point. One of the members was my best friend Geoffie Davidson, and he eventually bought his sisters to the society's meetings -- and thereby brought about the coming of the Davnobs.