The article highlights the vibrant cultural life along Finchley Road in the 1930s, particularly amidst the Jewish refugee community from Germany. Etan Smallman narrates how pre-war immigrants enriched the area with continental cafes, cabarets, and unique foods, showcasing a vibrant hub before and during the onset of WWII. It discusses various anecdotes illustrating the cultural divisions among these communities, and how they adapted and contributed to London's multicultural landscape, even while fleeing oppression back home.
By the start of the war, there were so many, mainly Jewish, German speakers along Finchley Road that bus conductors shouted out variations on: Finchleystrasse passports please!
At the Laterndl theatre at No. 153, refugees satirised fascism, with actor Martin Miller doing an impersonation of Hitler that was commissioned for BBC radio.
One of the stories about the social divisions came from Susie Boyt (novelist and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud) who wrote that, at the Cosmo cafe, not only did the Viennese sit apart from the Berliners but, apparently, even the different districts of Vienna were delineated.
Shops were introducing Brits to continental tastes from sausage maker Richard Mattes' many varieties of Wurst at No. 122A to Ackerman's dark chocolate on Goldhurst Terrace.
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