Thank you PINKTANK for being part of the answers.

I went to school with many Jewish children whose parents had escaped the gas ovens of Nazi-occupied Europe. Liverpool welcomed them and made them feel at home in time. I am not sure that we lads knew about it or understood it as we mixed freely and happily with boys and girls of all races, religions and creeds. I think it was true that most of us boys had some Welsh in our language - usually some very bad ‘non-chapel’ words but Welsh words of greeting which were in common use or we could at least say Llanfairpwllgwyngllgogerychwyrndrobwllantisyliogoggogoch, the longest word in the Welsh language which means ‘the church of St Mary by the Hollow of white aspen, over the whirlpool, and St Tysilio’s church close to the red cave’.

So it was with our accepting attitude towards race that we absorbed the cultures of the world without anyone using, or trying to use, culture to frighten us or use it as a social control mechanism. I think it is true to say that Liverpool and Woolton (the much older civic centre) was, is and hopefully always will be a multi-faith, multi- cultural city which stands as a beacon of optimism and hope in a pessimistic world. It was such a place that inspired my childhood mate John Lennon and why the world finds and will hopefully always find hope, love, joy and optimism in all Johns and the Beatles’ songs. Though we cannot speak for John I am certain in view of the childhood memories we both had of being bombed during the 2nd World War which the children of Gaza experience as I write

MY OWN FIRST recollections of my mother were on the night of a late bombing raid during the 1939-45 war. My sister Pauline and I had gone into our Anderson Bomb Shelter, at the back of our Liverpool home. I was hugging my Golliwog, called Golly who got me through the worst of the blitz krieg, lying on my bunk bed.

The adults: Mother, (our Dad was on fire watch duty in Liverpool) and our neighbours called Meakin from next door and Miss Newman, stood outside looking up at the sky, watching the searchlights pinpointing the German bombers. The Polish Air force Hurricane Squadron based at Speke Airport defended Liverpool and saved us from the worst of the Nazi onslaught. John and I suffered terribly from the war; we saw dead bodies piled up in the street. My mother put a coat in front of my eyes and for years she denied that it had happened.

John told me that he’d had similar experiences. It really was the basis of John’s search for peace. John, like me, was very much committed to peace because we had that trauma of war. But when the men came home there was no time to listen to our childhood traumas. As kids we were afraid that if our houses got bombed we wouldn’t be able to get out. Every 20th house saved up and bought a fire mans ladder. When I was five John and I drew pictures of us jumping out of our houses onto the ladder some of these pictures turned up just two years ago, after my Mum died.

The tragedy for me as a child who witnessed this horror of being bombed and still have the nightmares more than 60 years, latter I cannot help wondering what the parents of the Liverpool Jewish children we had known as children who also had the nightmare’s of escape from the death camps and our horror of being bombed in Liverpool would say to their children about the genocide being committed by Israel and the west politicians who are not demanding they stop. John wrote, “ All we are saying is give peace a chance “. I only wish we could get they message across but then I am certain we will and we must.
Yours In Peace

David Ashton
Agricultural Journalist, Child of Mother Nature, Beekeeper Poet & Thinker