'It was just like Coronation Street. That's what Jewish life was like in Manchester back then.'
Nowadays its name is rarely heard. But for much of the 20th Century, Hightown was at the centre of Jewish life in Manchester.
As a conscripted soldier in the Russian army his surname was Nikolaevskioy, after the Tsar Nicholas II. But upon landing in England an immigration clerk, a Scotsman called Nicholls, anglicized the name to match his own. "We had a parlour that was the posh room, it only got used for special occasions. It had an outside toilet.
The childhood Mr Nicholls remembers could have been lifted from the pages of Magnolia Street, a best-selling novel of the time. Written by Manchester-born Ukrainian-Jewish author Louis Golding, it was set in Hightown and told the story of a street divided into 'gentile' and Jewish neighbours. "A favourite café of theirs was Walter's on Great Ducie Street near Victoria Station, and they would walk through Strangeways along Bury New Road to Northumberland Street to provoke the Jewish population – there would often be scuffles with the inhabitants of Strangeways, who were very sensitive to the menace of fascism in their midst," he wrote.
"At the time it was the hub of the Jewish community. Everybody came in there to have a chat as well as do their shopping. He was one of the lucky ones. Unable to sleep, he was walking the deck when the ship hit the iceberg. But while he was keen to take advantage of his celebrity to boost the fortunes of his fledgling business, the horrors of the sinking never left him. "The deli was probably a bit of a novelty and the fact that he had survived the Titanic meant there was a bit of folklore around him," said Richard.
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