Sara Freedland was acclaimed as having revolutionised journalism for children while editing a section of a limited-circulation newspaper. Editors of other journals at first watched her work, then sent letters of congratulations and eventually, studying her approach, changed their own styles of writing for children. No patronising, no whimsy, no real limitation on the subjects chosen — from contemporary events to medieval history to the Holocaust, matters from which young readers of The Jewish Chronicle had always been shielded. But her “Junior Chronicle” shied away from none of them.
It was indeed a revolution. Children were encouraged to debate matters that at one time had seemed to be far away from what their elders and betters considered decent and suitable. Her own editor, Geoffrey Paul, paying tribute to her, said that the feature had “stagnated” before she took it over and changed everything. She still ran more conventional competitions; children were invited to submit articles that could easily have fitted in the main paper; some of them were a lot better than the ones that adults produced and their writers went on to become professional.
She was also a children’s author. Her book Hannukah about the Jewish winter festival, complete with intricate cut-out pages was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and is still in the shops to compete with Christmas books. She was working on a book about Passover at the time of her death.
Writing and journalism were not in her blood, however, although she developed her talents by means of osmosis; her husband Michael Freedland and their son Jonathan are both journalists. But she had a gift for doing a varied number of things, running an import-export company before her marriage and becoming a doctor’s receptionist. When her own doctor (not the one for whom she worked) heard about that part of her biography, he said: “I am not surprised, if I heard she had been a lady jockey or an all-in wrestler, I wouldn’t have been at all amazed.”
Her background, however, showed no signs of any of this. What it did show was an immense courage in the face of constant tragedy.
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She was born Sara Hocherman in 1936 in the then small town of Petach Tikva in Palestine during the days of the British Mandate. Her mother Feige was British, her father Abraham, an impoverished rabbi, who was happy just so long as he could study the holy books and always had a meal to go to at his own parents’ house. It was, however, never a meal to be shared by his wife and two small children, Sara and her older brother (a sister had died in infancy). Sara was a year old when her family living in the East End of London clubbed together to bring the three of them back to England.
The family were evacuated to Hertfordshire in the early years of the war and then went back to London. When the V1 and V2 bombs stared to fall the children were packed off to a relocated Jewish school in Shefford, Bedfordshire. In 1945 her life changed for ever. She had a visit from an uncle to tell her that her mother and Feige’s younger sister had been killed. They were among the 134 people who died on the last day of German raids on the capital. It was the day before the festival of Passover. Sara always said that she could never understand how people could be so happy on VE Day, when she was in mourning for her beloved mother and aunt.
She and her brother went to live with an aunt who, reluctantly, succumbed to entreaties from Rabbi Hocherman to send his children back to what was now Israel. The year was 1949, Israel was in economic crisis and again Hocherman failed to provide for his children who were always close to starvation. Her brother came down with typhoid, and Sara was so malnourished that she was removed from home by social workers who placed her in a boarding school. She was happy there and was well enough equipped when she left at 14 to work for a British Zionist organisation in Tel Aviv.
In 1955 she returned to London to become a secretary at the Israeli Embassy in Kensington — she was fluent in both English and Hebrew and could type in both languages. Later she moved to the City-based Middle East Mercantile Corporation, which bought and sold goods between Britain and Israel. Within a year she was a director there and then put in charge of the London office. She and Michael Freedland were married in 1960.
It was in the mid-Seventies that Geoffrey Paul invited her to run the Junior Chronicle, where she was to enjoy a totally different life until in 1979 another tragedy struck. She developed encephalitis, which is frequently deadly, and was all but given on up by her doctors.
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But with a strength few believed this outwardly slight woman possessed, she ultimately proved them wrong, although she remained gravely ill for ten years. She always said, however, that after her amazing recovery she had more than 20 “bonus years”, writing her books and, above all, enjoying her expanding family.
She is survived by her husband, Michael, whom she married in 1960, and two daughters and a son.
Sara Freedland, journalist and author, was born on November 1, 1936. She died on May 9, 2012, aged 75