Editing Vidal Sassoon (section)

==Early life==
Sassoon was born to [[Jewish]] parents in [[Hammersmith]], [[West London]], and lived nearby in [[Shepherd's Bush]].<ref name="Tel obit">{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/9255724/Vidal-Sassoon.html |title=Telegraph obituary |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=10 May 2012 |access-date=13 May 2012}}</ref> His mother, Betty (Bellin) (1900–1997),<ref name=autobio/><ref>{{cite book|author1=Abbe A. Debolt |author2=James S. Baugess|title=Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r4WFjKG6vmUC&pg=PA582|access-date=10 May 2012|date=31 December 2011|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-4408-0102-0|page=582}}</ref> an [[Ashkenazi]] Jew,<ref name="jewishledger.com">{{Cite web|url=http://www.jewishledger.com/2012/05/vidal-sassoon-fought-in-israels-war-of-independence/|title=Vidal Sassoon fought in Israel's War of Independence|date=16 May 2012}}</ref> was born in [[Aldgate]], in the [[East End of London]], in 1900. Although she was surrounded by grinding poverty, Sassoon writes that she nonetheless resolved to make the best of her life.<ref name=autobio/> Her family had emigrated to England from Russian Empire in the 1880s to escape the [[antisemitism]] and [[pogroms]] then prevalent.<ref name=autobio/> His father, Jack Sassoon, a [[Sephardi]] Jew,<ref name="jewishledger.com"/> was born in [[Thessaloniki]], in the northern part of Greece.<ref name=autobio>Sassoon, Vidal. ''Vidal: The Autobiography'', Macmillan (2010) e-book</ref> They met in 1925 and married in 1927. They then moved to Shepherd's Bush, which contained a community of Greek Jews.<ref name=autobio/> Sassoon had a younger brother, Ivor.<ref name="Armstrong">{{cite news|url=http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/beauty/article6882818.ece |title=Vidal Sassoon: the man who made English hairstyling great |last=Armstrong |first=Lisa |date=21 October 2009 |work=[[The Times]] |publisher=[[News Corporation (1980–2013)|News Corporation]] |access-date=10 May 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110615164502/http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/beauty/article6882818.ece |archive-date=15 June 2011 }}</ref>

His father abandoned the family for another woman when Vidal was three years old.<ref name=autobio/> With his mother now unable to support the family, they fell into poverty and were evicted, becoming suddenly homeless.<ref name=autobio/> They were forced to move in with his mother's older sister. There, they shared a two-room tenement with his aunt and her three children. The tiny flat where the seven of them lived had no bathroom or inside toilet, forcing them to share the one outside landing toilet with three other families. He remembered often standing in line to use it in freezing weather. Their roof was also falling apart, which let rain pour through. "All we could see from our windows was the greyness of the tenement across the street", writes Sassoon. "There was ugliness all around."<ref name=autobio/>

Due to poverty as a [[single parent]], his mother eventually placed Sassoon and his younger brother in a Jewish orphanage, where they stayed for seven years,<ref name=Telegraph>{{citation|first=Chrissy|last=Iley|title=Vidal Sassoon interview|url=http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG8480525/Vidal-Sassoon-interview.html|date=16 May 2011|access-date=11 May 2012|newspaper=The Telegraph}}</ref> until he was 11, when his mother remarried.<ref name="nyt"/> His mother was only allowed to visit them once a month and was never allowed to take them out.

===Education===
He attended Essendine Road Primary School, a Christian school of about a thousand children. He was frequently taunted by classmates as a "Yid" or with chants of "All Jews have long noses."<ref name=autobio/> One of his proudest days at the school was winning the 100-yard dash in an all-school contest. "The urge to win has never left me", he writes.<ref name=autobio/>

[[File:A group of children arrive at Brent station near Kingsbridge, Devon, after being evacuated from Bristol in 1940. D2592.jpg|thumb|left|Evacuation]]
However, he says that he was "a very bad student" with abysmal grades in most classes, except for [[mental arithmetic]]. After one session of mental arithmetic, his master said teasingly, "Sassoon, it is a pleasure to see that you have gaps of intelligence between bouts of ignorance."<ref name=autobio/> He took a volunteer job as a choir boy for the local synagogue, which gave him one of the few chances to see his mother, who would come on Saturdays.<ref name=autobio/>

Sassoon and the other children at the school were [[Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II|evacuated after WWII]] began on 3 September 1939. He was 11 years old. "It's a date I'll never forget", he said. "Suddenly my brother and I and all our fellow orphans were on trains with hundreds of thousands of other kids, moving out of London."<ref name=autobio/> He and his brother were taken to [[Holt, Wiltshire]], a small village of a thousand people.<ref name=autobio/>

=== First jobs ===
[[File:The Home Front in Britain during the Second World War HU44272.jpg|thumb|An underground bomb shelter in London during World War II]]
After his return to London he left school at the age of 14 and worked as a messenger. The war was in full force with London still being bombed, which forced him to sleep in [[London Underground|underground shelters]]. During work hours, he said "I got used to seeing bodies and blood, and hearing cries of agony" as he carried messages from central London to the docks.<ref name=autobio />

Upon the insistence of his mother, they tried to get him into a hairdressing apprenticeship; his mother told him that her ambition was for him to become a professional hairdresser.<ref name=autobio /> However, he saw himself becoming a football player, a sport he excelled at. "I could not imagine myself backcombing hair and winding up rollers for a living."<ref name=autobio /><ref name="nyt" /><ref>{{Cite web|title=Vidal Sassoon|url=http://www.biography.com/people/vidal-sassoon-20888267|website=Biography.com|access-date=3 September 2014|archive-date=29 June 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629224452/https://www.biography.com/people/vidal-sassoon-20888267|url-status=dead}}</ref>

When she took him to the hairdressing school of a well-known stylist, Adolph Cohen, they were disappointed immediately when they were told it was a two-year programme and would cost much more than they could afford. "My mother looked so terribly dejected", he said, that as they left the salon, "I thought she might faint."<ref name=autobio /> A few minutes later, Cohen called them back to the salon, then told him, "You seem to have very good manners, young man. Start Monday and forget the cost." His mother began to cry out of joy.<ref name=autobio />

===Wartime activities===
At the age of 17, although he had been too young to serve in [[World War II]], he became the youngest member of the [[43 Group]], a Jewish veterans' underground organisation founded by [[Morris Beckman (writer)|Morris Beckman]] which broke up fascist meetings in East London<ref name=warrior/><ref name="The Archive Hour 2008">''The Archive Hour'', BBC Radio 4, first broadcast 19 April 2008.</ref> to prevent [[Sir Oswald Mosley]]'s movement from spreading "messages of hatred" in the period following World War II.<ref name=warrior>{{citation|title=Vidal Sassoon: Anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1585110/Vidal-Sassoon-Anti-fascist-warrior-hairdresser.html|date=14 April 2008|access-date=12 May 2012|newspaper=The Telegraph}}</ref>

In 1948, at the age of 20, he joined the [[Palmach]] (which shortly afterwards was integrated into the [[Israel Defense Forces]]) and fought in the [[1948 Arab–Israeli War]], which began after Israel declared statehood.<ref name="The Archive Hour 2008"/><ref name=fresh_air>{{cite journal |last= Gross |first= Terry |author-link= Terry Gross |date= 10 February 2011 |title= Fresh Hair on Fresh Air |journal=NPR Fresh Air |url= https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=133650184 }}</ref> Sassoon arrived in [[Mandatory Palestine]] in April 1948, a month before Israeli independence. He fought in the [[Negev]] against the Egyptian Army.<ref>[https://blog.nli.org.il/en/hoi-sassoon/ Israel, 1948: Vidal Sassoon in Combat]</ref> During an interview, he described the year he spent training with the Israelis as "the best year of my life", and recalled how he felt:

{{blockquote|When you think of 2,000 years of being put down and suddenly you are a nation rising, it was a wonderful feeling. There were only 600,000 people defending the country against five armies, so everyone had something to do.<ref name=Telegraph/>}}