PRIVATE ALBERT LAPPIN
ROYAL FUSILIERS
1ST JULY 1916 AGE 19
BURIED: DANZIG ALLEY BRITISH CEMETERY, MAMETZ, FRANCE
There were many Jews in Britain, especially in London, who had no desire to fight in an army that was allied to Russia. Their families were the victims of Russian Jewish pogroms and Russia was the enemy. The consequent low recruitment figures in Jewish areas fanned the endemic anti-semitism present in some sectors of British society. This was fueled by the suspicion that Jews, who spoke Yiddish, an Eastern European dialiect of German, and who had German sounding surnames, were all potential spies.
There were however many Jews who felt grateful to Britain for giving them shelter, and others who had been in Britain since the seventeenth century and felt totally assimilated. Once conscription was introduced it is calculated that 41,000 Jewish soldiers served out of a population of only 280,000.
Albert Lappin lived in Stamford Hill, which is now home to the largest Hasidic community in Europe. By the beginning of the twentieth century prosperous Jews were beginning to move there from the East End of London and Albert's father lived in a substantial three-story house in Osbaldeston Road. I know nothing of their family history, whether they were refugees from Russia or had been in Britain a long time, but in the inscription Albert's father chose for his son he allies himself with Britain's cause, identifies his son as an Englishman but doesn't deny his Jewish faith - a simple inscription that speaks volumes.