A TIRELESS stalwart of the AJEX Parade since 1954, Arnold Rose is a member of Jewish Care’s Redbridge Jewish Community Centre (RJCC) and Cranbrook United Synagogue on Beehive Lane, which organises a coach to the Cenotaph each November.
He is a popular, long-serving member of the shul choir and also the London Jewish Male Choir which gives concerts all over London and the UK as well as travelling as far as the USA or South Africa.
He inherited his melodious voice, as well as his support for AJEX, from his late father Maurice who sang in Leicester Synagogue choir and was their standard bearer each year in London.
He told us: “My father served in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Dunkirk and also tended the wounded in British hospitals – I still wear his medals to march each year. I followed him into the RAMC during my National Service and in the Territorials.”
“This year my 91st birthday fell the day before the Parade, but I was back on the coach again next day and have no plans to give up yet.”
The week before Remembrance Sunday, Arnold also wore his father’s medals to help lay a wreath at the memorial in Newbury Park (pictured), another reminder of the Redbridge Jewish community’s contribution to the war effort.
