Career
A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young manitoba In 1934-1935, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP"s bookshop at 35 Bride Street, near Ludgate Circus. As chair of the ILP Guild of Youth, he visited Barcelona in 1937, where he again met Orwell.
In the early war years he contributed articles on military strategy to the Evening Standard, and in 1942, on the recommendation of Michael Foot, was hired by Aneurin Bevan as de facto editor of the left-wing weekly Tribune.
He was fired from his Tribune job after disappearing from the office in December 1947 to Istanbul to negotiate safe passage with the Turkish authorities for two ships sailing from Bulgaria with thousands of Jews aboard bound for Palestine. Kimche is the author of The Secret Roads: The "Illegal" Migration of People, 1938-1948, Secker and Warburg, 1954.
The book details the passages of Jewish refugees throughout Europe en route to Palestine. Kimche documents this group"s activities in arranging for Jewish orphans to arrive from all over Europe to Marseilles in 1947 and board the Exodus, which was bound for Palestine.