My Father's Obituary
Created | Updated Jan 16, 2010
With the BBC rationliasing log-ins, I discovered that I had been amalgamated with my late father. A few password adjustments have sorted this, but here is his obituary. It is copied from the Jewish Chronicle with a few minor corrections and abreviations. It was a privilage to be his son, but not always an easy one.
ZBY
Born Bledow, Poland June 15, 1920
Died Leeds, September 22, 2004,
Aged 84.
Ze'ev fled the invading German army in 1939 by crossing east into Russia, but returned 50 years later to his home town, south of Warsaw, unexpectedly meeting the woman who had helped him start his perilous journey.
On his return, in 1996, he passed his old friend, Hela Malachowska, in the street — having never thought he would see her again. She showed him a Jewish gravestone that had been reshaped by a local worker as a millstone. Horrified, he arranged for it to be transported to London, where he presented it to the Imperial War Museum.
He was 19 when he left his family, as the German army approached. He never saw his parents or seven siblings again but his childhood experience of fending for himself stood him in good stead. The family lived in two rooms, the downstairs one used by his father to sell clothing fabric, and the children crammed upstairs.
With a group of 40 boys and Hela, the only girl and only non-Jew in the group, he escaped over the river border into Russia. The runaways were caught and Ze'ev sentenced to three years in a labour camp in North-West Russia, where prisoners extended the Kotlas railway line to the Arctic Circle Gulag at Vorkuta.
In the fearsome Arctic conditions, where the guards were as isolated and wretched as their prisoners, people dropped dead in their thousands from cold, disease, exhaustion and starvation, not from any punishment by the guards. Ze'ev was saved only by the Soviet-Polish agreement which followed Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941. Stalin allowed all Polish prisoners and exiles to be released to fight the Germans.
Working his way south despite illness and lack of food, papers, money and directions, Ze'ev joined General Wladyslaw Anders’ Free Polish army in Iran and fought through Baghdad, on to Tel Aviv, Suez — then, by way of Cape Town and Boston, Massachusetts, arriving in Liverpool.
Once in Britain, he was sent to the Polish army camp in Scotland, where he experienced such anti-Semitism that he and several hundred other Jewish soldiers took a train south to London — technically deserting — to demand that the government re-enlist them in the British army. Their cause was championed by MP Tom Driberg.
Ze'ev was enlisted in the Dragoons, a tank regiment, then attached to the armoured section of the Pioneer Corps. After the war, he became a tough, successful businessman, working in unwholesome industrial environments where he probably came into contact with the asbestos which caused his fatal mesothelioma. His quick intelligence, authoritative personality and physical strength made up for a rudimentary education.
Insistent on hard work for himself and others, he was a major fund-raiser for Alyn, the Jerusalem hospital for physically disabled children.
He married EF in 1951. Her death from cancer in 1969 was a severe blow.
He is survived by his son, DBZ, and two grandsons.
ZBY
Born Bledow, Poland June 15, 1920
Died Leeds, September 22, 2004,
Aged 84.
Ze'ev fled the invading German army in 1939 by crossing east into Russia, but returned 50 years later to his home town, south of Warsaw, unexpectedly meeting the woman who had helped him start his perilous journey.
On his return, in 1996, he passed his old friend, Hela Malachowska, in the street — having never thought he would see her again. She showed him a Jewish gravestone that had been reshaped by a local worker as a millstone. Horrified, he arranged for it to be transported to London, where he presented it to the Imperial War Museum.
He was 19 when he left his family, as the German army approached. He never saw his parents or seven siblings again but his childhood experience of fending for himself stood him in good stead. The family lived in two rooms, the downstairs one used by his father to sell clothing fabric, and the children crammed upstairs.
With a group of 40 boys and Hela, the only girl and only non-Jew in the group, he escaped over the river border into Russia. The runaways were caught and Ze'ev sentenced to three years in a labour camp in North-West Russia, where prisoners extended the Kotlas railway line to the Arctic Circle Gulag at Vorkuta.
In the fearsome Arctic conditions, where the guards were as isolated and wretched as their prisoners, people dropped dead in their thousands from cold, disease, exhaustion and starvation, not from any punishment by the guards. Ze'ev was saved only by the Soviet-Polish agreement which followed Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941. Stalin allowed all Polish prisoners and exiles to be released to fight the Germans.
Working his way south despite illness and lack of food, papers, money and directions, Ze'ev joined General Wladyslaw Anders’ Free Polish army in Iran and fought through Baghdad, on to Tel Aviv, Suez — then, by way of Cape Town and Boston, Massachusetts, arriving in Liverpool.
Once in Britain, he was sent to the Polish army camp in Scotland, where he experienced such anti-Semitism that he and several hundred other Jewish soldiers took a train south to London — technically deserting — to demand that the government re-enlist them in the British army. Their cause was championed by MP Tom Driberg.
Ze'ev was enlisted in the Dragoons, a tank regiment, then attached to the armoured section of the Pioneer Corps. After the war, he became a tough, successful businessman, working in unwholesome industrial environments where he probably came into contact with the asbestos which caused his fatal mesothelioma. His quick intelligence, authoritative personality and physical strength made up for a rudimentary education.
Insistent on hard work for himself and others, he was a major fund-raiser for Alyn, the Jerusalem hospital for physically disabled children.
He married EF in 1951. Her death from cancer in 1969 was a severe blow.
He is survived by his son, DBZ, and two grandsons.
