Jewish Industrialists on the Team Valley: the formative years of a trading estate 1936-1945 tells the little-known story of the contribution and impact that Jewish light industries had on the development of the Team Valley Trading Estate in Gateshead – the first government-financed trading estate in the country and opened in 1936.
While Tyneside was still in the grips of economic depression, local officials recognising the creativity and entrepreneurship seen in Jewish business in 1930s Germany and the need to diversify the industrial work base of the region, encouraged and supported Jewish business leaders to come to the Team Valley not only to save their own business, but lives too.
In difficult and far from straightforward circumstances, the Team Valley story is a story of partnership and of two communities working together in mutual benefit.