My mother-in-law, Zena Clayton, was a leading light in the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry – also known as “the 35s” – whose efforts contributed to hundreds of thousands of Jews being allowed to leave the Soviet Union for freedom in Israel and the west.
A middle-class housewife who brought up three daughters in comfortable north London suburbia, Zena, who has died aged 84, became a formidable activist in middle age. She was a founding member of the 35s, and was active in the group for eight years from 1971 until 1979, during which time she had responsibility for setting up and maintaining contact with groups outside London as well as in Europe and Canada.
She also compiled the group’s weekly newsletter, chained herself to the railings of the Soviet embassy in London, disrupted artistic and sporting events, and took every opportunity to publicise the plight of fellow Jews in the Soviet Union. Zena and the other 35s were PR-savvy, highly articulate and vocal, and extremely polite but also, within the Jewish community, anti-establishment. They were set up – and acquired their name – in response to the 1970 detention in the Soviet Union of Raiza Palatnik, a 35-year-old librarian from Odessa who was arrested when she applied to emigrate to Israel. From that point onwards the 35s played a significant role in helping UK citizens to campaign for the freedom and human rights of Soviet Jews.
Zena was born and brought up in Stamford Hill, north London. Her mother Hélène (nee Schiff) was heavily involved in charitable and communal work in the local Jewish community and her Polish-born father, Hyman Schiff, who had a wholesale hardware business, was active in the United Synagogue, the governing body of Orthodox Jewry in the UK.
Zena had a natural talent for languages and, having passed her higher school certificate in French, English, Latin and German at John Howard secondary school for girls, she accepted a place at Queen Mary’s College, London to study French. However, following the death of her father when she was 18, she devoted herself instead to family and community, training and then working as a secretary. She met her future husband, David, a chartered accountant, at a wedding, and they married in 1956.
After the heady days of the 35s, Zena found she had the taste for community engagement. She qualified as a counsellor and became highly respected in her many roles – as a Samaritans volunteer, as a counsellor at the Heathfielde Medical Centre in Hampstead, and as founder of the Jewish Bereavement Counselling Service in the early 1980s. It is impossible to spend any time in the north London Jewish community without being told how profoundly she affected the lives of many who had suffered bereavement, particularly children.
After retirement at the age of 80, Zena fulfilled her lifelong dream by emigrating to Israel with David, who died just three years after they moved. She is survived by their three daughters, Clare, Lisa and Geraldine, and by five grandchildren.
