Emanuel Litvinoff

This YouTube channel is a tribute to my dad, the writer Emanuel Litvinoff 1915-2011. I was born when he was 71, and was 25 when he died aged 96. I started recording him as a teenager because I knew I wouldn't have him forever. He always told such amazing stories, which nobody had thought to record, and I decided that it would be a shame to just lose them to time. Now he's gone I want to share his amazing spirit with as many people as possible.

Here Emanuel recalls ancestral legends passed down by his mother, as well as his experiences from key moments in the 20th century, such as the end of World War One, the great 1918 influenza epidemic, being homeless in the depression of the 30s, as a soldier the second world war, and beyond.

Emanuel was a talented writer and helped many people connect with their heritage and past through his writing, most notably in his autobiography "Journey Through A Small Planet". I'm hoping that the videos I upload here will have the same effect.

For decades Emanuel was a human rights campaigner, lending his voice to those who did not have one. Perhaps your grandparents are dead; perhaps you never knew them. Maybe you did not have the means to record them at the time. Whatever your personal story, I hope that you find great comfort in Emanuel's voice. It was one of the things we loved most about him.

The recordings were made between 2004-2008, when Emanuel was 89-93 years old. For most of this time he was living in obscurity. He was very humble and lived for nearly fifty years in a small one bedroom apartment, where most of these videos were filmed. The production quality here is not the highest, and you will hear ambient noise, such as his wife Mary cooking him dinner!

Emanuel was entirely without vanity. He never played up to the camera and was indifferent to its presence. As such, you get a unique, personal insight into him.

"Journey Through A Small Planet" is out now in Penguin Modern Classics, with a new introduction by Patrick Wright.


Aaron Litvinoff

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