The extraordinarily modest but highly distinguished and beloved former cantor of the New London Synagogue, George Rothschild, has died in London at the age of 90.
I had heard George’s impeccable rendering of the services at the New London Synagogue in the old days, with his grammatical precision and slight Hungarian accent, communicating prayerfully and in perfect Anglo-Jewish choral traditional style.
Until late in life, George declined to reveal details of his wartime experiences as a child under fascist rule. As recently as 2022, he agreed to place on record limited details of his life for the Jolles Encyclopaedia of UK Chazanim. Further details emerged from published wartime memoirs of a neighbour. He was born to Lazar and Flora Rothschild in Szalkszentmárton in rural Hungary, the fourth of five children, three boys and two girls. Early in his life, the family moved to Szikszó in northern Hungary where his popular and charismatic father operated a riverside flour mill. The family was religious but spoke Hungarian rather than Yiddish.
From a young age, George loved cantorial music. Indeed the family was proud to have met the legendary cantor Zavel Kwartin on holiday in pre-war Italy, where Kwartin had been invited to intone the haftarah, delighting those present with his beautiful voice.
In 1944, when the Jews of Szikszó were to be rounded up and deported to Auschwitz, the local gendarme, who liked Lazar Rothschild, warned him a day in advance, allowing him time to prepare a hiding place in a ditch near his mill. As search parties hunted for them, the Rothschilds were forced to strangle the family dog to escape detection. Subsequently they were briefly hidden by a neighbour before moving on.
George was arrested at the age of nine and was forced to work as a water carrier in prison camps across Hungary.
It appears that his sisters were hidden in a Budapest convent but were discovered and shot by the Arrow Cross militia by the River Danube shortly before the city was liberated by the Russians. Flora, fatally weakened by the terrible wartime conditions, died shortly after the war and received a Jewish burial.
Lazar and George’s elder brother had managed to survive by living in disguise in Budapest. The elder brother managed to emigrate to Israel and afterwards to Canada.
After the war, a further nightmare struck the family. Lazar’s evidence against collaborators resulted in his imprisonment until the Hungarian uprising of 1956, when he was able to leave the country. He followed his eldest son to Israel, America and Canada.
George fondly recalled how Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld of London organised for a converted Dakota military aircraft to bring surviving children to Britain in 1946 from Bratislava airport.
This transport probably included his slightly older brother Ernest, to whom he was very close, but who passed away in 1986 aged only 54, having suffered a chest illness. George felt his own subsequent chest illness echoed his brother’s suffering.
In London George lived in Stamford Hill where he had a maternal uncle and aunt. Here he imbibed the beautiful choral nussach Anglia services led by renowned Cantor Jacob Goldstein with Harris Rosenberg’s choir in Egerton Road’s New Synagogue.
He was accepted as a student at Gateshead Yeshivah, where he studied for four years before moving on to the Chazanut class at Jews’ College, led by Cantor Salomo Pincasovitch. Here he rubbed shoulders with such future cantorial luminaries as Simon Hass and Philip Copperman.
By now he was highly competent in Hungarian, Yiddish, English, Aramaic and Hebrew. Those who heard his Torah or megillah reading in later years would attest to his impeccable accuracy and clarity.
His ambition not to depend upon a clergyman’s salary led him to decline a full-time career in the ministry, despite an acclaimed start with the United Synagogue at its beautiful Bayswater shul in 1959-1961. He was approached to become the cantor of the New London Synagogue from its beginnings in the mid-1960s and became a close and devoted colleague of Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs next to whom he arranged to be buried. He undertook full ministerial duties during the year when Rabbi Dr Jacobs was at Harvard. He notably officiated at the memorial service for Brian Epstein with all the Beatles, Lulu, Cilla Black and Bernard Delfont in shul for the occasion. Despite all his erudition, he declined the title, Reverend, preferring simply, Mr George Rothschild.
In recent years, he became a stalwart attendee of the regular cantorial soirées organised at the home of his friend of over 70 years, Cantor Moshe Dubiner. Widely travelled, George’s last international trip was to visit his late mother’s grave in Hungary.
Until recently he was trustee of a charity linked to the Balint family. Assiduous and wise, he was a perfect disburser of funds to Jewish charities. He will be sadly missed by his colleagues, friends and family across the world.
Rabbi Jeremy Gordon of the New London Synagogue writes: “George’s legacy is a love of tefillah imprinted on the hearts of all New Londoners. Even before I ever understood Hebrew, it never felt I couldn’t understand the prayers of our tradition, so clearly were they shared from our bimah.”
A celebration of George Rothschild’s memory will be held at the New London Synagogue, on May 26 at 7pm.
George Rothschild: born May 27, 1935. Died March 26, 2026
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