A huge loss to Brighton & Hove: Doris Levinson BEM
Doris with her British Empire Medal on 28th October 2025
Doris Levinson BEM, the co-founder of the Sussex Jewish News and a key figure in Brighton & Hove’s Jewish community has sadly passed away on 3.1.2026.
Bill Smith who is currently completing a film on Doris’s life said:
“Doris Levinson who has just died will be a huge loss to Brighton and Hove. Not only did she bring all the Jewish community together founding the wonderful magazine Sussex Jewish News but she was one of the key figures in bringing all faiths and people of no faith together. In simple language she cared about everyone & desperately wanted the world to be a better place.
A Holocaust refugee who saw many of her family murdered she was never bitter. Just astonished that people can be so hateful about others not for anything they’ve done but just for “what they are.” She devoted her life to bringing people together.
I never heard anyone say a bad word about Doris.
Her achievements are too immense to list here but for me her greatest one is not so well known – personally visiting schools and showing children the evils of antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism of any sort.
I have met many Brightonians but never anyone as caring, sensitive or just plain fun as Doris!”
Doris was awarded the British Empire Medal just a few months ago for her sterling community work and was featured accepting her medal by the Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex, Andrew Blackman, on Latest TV. The Mayor of Brighton & Hove, Amanda Grimshaw was at the ceremony and paid tribute to Doris’s hard work and inspiration in helping to create community cohesion. The Mayor is shocked and saddened about the news of Doris and is glad that the city was able to acknowledge her work with the highest honour prior to her passing.
Doris Levinson was a painter as well as a journalist and editor, and her home in Brighton was adorned with amazing paintings documenting her life. Latest TV has been making a documentary of Doris’ life with footage filmed by the Latest over the last 25 years, which includes Doris being instrumental in setting up the very first Holocaust Memorial Day which was held in Brighton in 2000, and her incredible life story escaping Nazi Germany with her family. Doris has been the catalyst and has documented many cultural events in the city of relevance both to the Jewish and inter-faith communities. She was there when Eva Schloss, (the step-sister of Anne Frank) was invited to Brighton, and they shared their stories and passed on education about the Holocaust and its link to other genocides for an exhibition on Anne Frank’s Diary in 2001.
Doris through her work in co-founding Sussex Jewish News with Arnold Lewis and editing it over 30 years amassed a great deal of rich local history on the culture and news of the Jewish community in Brighton & Hove and wider afield. A recent edition documents over 50 years of Doris’s community work and the application which was made which entailed her being awarded the BEM.
Doris died peacefully on the evening of 3rd January 2025 and leaves behind 3 children, Russell, Hugh and Lucy and several grandchildren.
Doris holding a picture of herself as a young child.
Doris Levinson with her husband, Clive John Levinson
Doris, her brother and mother arrived in the UK in June 1940 from their home in Milan in Italy having caught the last ship from Genoa via Suez and South Africa due to the blocking of the Straits of Gibraltar by the Germans. Her father had reached this country on 3 September 1939.