Born in Barbados, Simon Kreindler spent years chronicling the island’s Jewish history

Rosh Hashannah services on Barbados in 1945. Fom left: Moses Altman, Ephraim Burak, Yehudah Brzozek, an unknown U.S. army serviceman, Bernard Konigsberg and Srul Jacob Bernstein. (Photo courtesy of Betty Konigsberg Feinberg,)

Subscribe to (opens a new window)

Simon Kreindler was born in Barbados, where he lived until he graduated high school. After that, it was off to Canada—he left behind the Caribbean island’s few dozen Jewish families and studied medicine at McGill University. But decades later, in 2013, he felt an urge to revisit memories of his old home and his family’s settlement there.

He began researching his parents’ journey from Europe to Barbados, and reached out to acquaintances who shared their own family histories. Kreindler stitched these tales together into a self-published book, Peddlers All: Stories of the First Ashkenazi Jewish Settlers in Barbados, released in 2017.

Kreindler joins Yehupetzville, The CJN’s podcast about Jews in small communities around the world, to discuss his research, what’s left of Barbados’s community and what it was like growing up Jewish under the Caribbean sun.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To learn how to support the show by subscribing to this podcast, watch this video.