Peacefully ending his days in the Home for Aged Jews here is the nonagenarian Joseph Isaac Noah, who seventy years ago was tailor for the Russian Imperial family. He has never heard of Hitler and knows nothing of modern Jewish tribulations, but recalls his own days in Czarist Russia very vividly.
Believed to be the oldest Jew in England, the ninety-seven-year-old man sat up in his bed on his birthday and told newspapermen of his youth in an imperial Russia that is only a memory and how he came to be a tailor to the Czar’s family.
Explaining that he passed an examination as a first-class tailor and therefore was able to live in St. Petersburg legally and even open a shop, the aged man said:
“One day a man came into my shop and gave an order. He said (continued on page 8) that if he were satisfied he would send me some good customers. When he left my shop I learned from the detectives accompanying him that he was brother of the Czar.
“Later, I tailored suits for many members of the Russian Royal Family and became the friend of generals and of leading men in the country.”
Asked what he thought of Hitler, the old man stared and said a little peevishly, “Hitler? who is he? I never heard of him.”
And Mr. Noah celebrated his ninety-seventh birthday still ignorant of Hitler and why a Jew should know him.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
