Mary, Mr Litvinoff’s second wife, with son Aaron, holding a photograph of his parents’ wedding in 2006. Inset: Emanuel Litvinoff

Published: 10 May, 2012
by WILLIAM McLENNAN

IT was the emaciated figures in Moscow’s Grand Synagogue that prompted Emanuel Litvinoff to take up the plight of Jews in eastern Europe. But a spot closer to his home in Bloomsbury has been chosen for a memorial to the acclaimed author and poet.

Family and fellow writers gathered in Mecklenburgh Square on Saturday, on what would have been the writer’s 97th birthday, to celebrate his life and works.

The author of Journey Through a Small Planet, which has been reprinted as a Penguin Modern Classic, spent the last years of his life living in the square.

He spent many hours reading and playing with his grandchildren in its garden, where his memorial bench now stands.

His daughter, Sarah Litvinoff, said: “It’s perfect. He used to sit out here and read and he used to bring my daughter here to play when she was little.”

Litvinoff was born in Whitechapel in 1915 and his tough childhood in the East End inspired his memoirs, Journey Through a Small Planet, written in 1972.

Shocked by what he saw on a visit to Russia in 1956, he started to compile news of Jewish communities across the Soviet Union and championed human rights in the face of state-sponsored anti-semitism.   
 
After divorcing his first wife in 1970, he moved to Mecklenburgh Square, where he lived with his second wife Mary, whom he married in 2006, and their son Aaron. He died in September last year.

Aaron Litvinoff, 26, who lives in Camden Town, said his father remained humble, despite his success.

“My father rented the same flat for years,” he said on Saturday. “He didn’t care about accolades and if he could see all the people here today he would be completely overwhelmed.

“He self-identified as a survivor. The community that he came from in London, there were communities like that all over Europe and they were all killed. The fact that he survived meant he felt he needed to take that on.”

At London House, off Mecklenburgh Square, poets Bernard Kops, Michael Horowitz and Elaine Feinstein paid tribute to Litvinoff and read poems and extracts from his memoirs on Saturday .

Mr Kops, who read Litvinoff’s poem Thoughts on the Eve, said: “He was a great writer, but more than that he was a great person, a wonderful human being.”

He recalled Litvinoff’s first visit to Moscow and the horrific scenes of anti-semitism he witnessed there.

“He saw the sad, thin, broken people in the synagogue,” he said. “Nobody knew what was happening to Jews in Russia at that time.”

Litvinoff, who became a father for the fourth time in 1986, was an exercise enthusiast and continued going to the gym three times a week until he was 89.

His son played clips of interviews he had made in his father’s last years, reflecting on life and his exploits. Aaron said: “He admired anyone who exercised regularly and that is the message he would want people to take away from today.”

For more information on Emanuel Litvinoff visit http://www.emanuel-litvinoff.com/Emanuel_Litvinoff.html or http://www.youtube.com/user/EmanuelLitvinoff