Jack Aizenberg was a man who lived a life of unimaginable trauma and agonising loss. But his was also one of happiness, fulfillment, and deep pride, particularly in his grandchildren Sophia, Benny, and Lexi.
Jack was born on April 15th, 1928 in the Polish town of Staszów, located south of Warsaw, and not too far from the border with Ukraine. Poland was home to 3.5 million Jews at the time, but by the end of World War II, 90 per cent had been murdered.
Jack Aizenberg
Jack Aizenberg pictured on December 29, 1947, two and a half years after liberation (Photo courtesy of Debbie Greenstein)
The Nazi occupation began in September 1939, and Staszów became a ghetto. Jack, his parents, and his much-loved younger brother, Shmelke, lived as best they could for three years until the Nazis ordered the evacuation of the ghetto.
The day before, Jack’s father took his family to the river and gave him a choice that would save his life: “My father said to me: ‘Look, you’re the oldest son. You don’t have to say yes, it is up to you what you want. I suggest you don’t come with us. Why? In case something goes wrong.’”
“That evening I went into hiding in the attic. That’s it, that was the last time. Makes you sick.”
The next day, his family was among 7,000 Jews sent to Belzec extermination camp, where they were gassed by the Nazis.
Jack had escaped deportation, but only briefly as just two weeks later, he was discovered and sent to a labour camp, where he spent two years. “You were not classed as a human being,” Jack said of his time there.
In the winter of 1944, he was put on a cattle train to Buchenwald, and in April 1945 as allied forces were approaching, he and 600 others were marched to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Only 60 people survived the journey.
“We didn’t march, we shuffled. No food, nothing," Jack said. "We did about seven miles a day. If you couldn’t walk much, you were shot. And we started looking for food and I find a pea on the floor, dried out, and I am really elated - I found food.”
“I know from experience in life that the biggest pain is being hungry.”
Two weeks after they arrived in Theresienstadt, Russian troops liberated the camp, and Jack had survived the Holocaust. The Nazis destroyed records in their attempt to erase an entire people, so precise numbers are hard to calculate, but in Jack’s hometown of Staszów, no Jews remained.
Jack Aizenberg
Jack Aizenberg (centre) seen in archive footage preparing to board a plane to the UK after liberation
Shortly after liberation, Jack was flown to the UK with a number of other survivors in the bomb bay of an RAF bomber. He was one of 300 orphans evacuated to Windermere in Cumbria. After the war, Jack eventually settled in Manchester where he and two other survivors founded a highly successful luggage manufacturing business.
In his latter years, Jack expressed pride at what he had built professionally, but for him, his family was always his favourite achievement: “I consider myself a very rich man for what I’ve achieved, especially my grandchildren. This is a big fortune.”
“I came to England in 1945, but in 1966 I meet up with Rhona. When I see her for the first time, I know this is my wife.”
Jack and Rhona had two children together, and their daughter, Debbie Greenstein-Aizenberg, has three children (Sophia, Benny, and Lexi) who grew up living just around the corner.
Jack Aizenberg
Jack said that he knew on sight that Rhona would be his wife (Photo courtesy of Debbie Greenstein)
Debbie told the JC: “The whole thing was to work and build a business to ensure that the family and his children would be comfortable, so he could support us in any way so that life would be not so difficult for us.”
He adored his grandchildren, and they adored him right back. His oldest grandchild, Sophia Greenstein, told the JC: “He was very funny, and cheeky actually. With his grandchildren, he was literally besotted with us. He would do anything for us.
“He looked at us with such joy, like he’s seen an angel, every time we walked into the room. He just wanted us to be happy and just give us anything and everything.”
Debbie added: “When Sophia was born, he used to come to the school with me, and he used to tear up because he said, ‘do you know how unbelievable this is to see Jewish children free, running around a playground?'”
Jack Aizenberg
Jack Aizenberg pictured with his grandchildren (Photo courtesy of Debbie Greenstein)
His grandson, Benny, held a particularly special place in his heart. Speaking in the 2012-2013 ITV series, Strictly Kosher, Jack became emotional when talking about his younger brother, Shmelke: “He was nine years old. Gassed. What kind of a world is that? What has he done wrong? Yes, he was a Jew. That was his guilt. He was a Jew.”
Decades later, Jack felt he had found Shmelke once again: “My feeling about my grandchildren, I cannot describe it. I had a little Benny, I had a little brother who was murdered at 9. Gassed. And I say to Benny: ‘Benny, you know you are my brother?’ I mean this. He’s the replacement for my brother.”
Benny Greenstein’s middle name is Simon, in memory of Shmelke, and he felt that special connection very deeply, telling the JC: “I remember when I was young, he used to come upstairs and sit with me in bed. People would get bedtime stories read to them, and I had Holocaust tales, and whenever he mentioned his brother and how I was his replacement, he used to get emotional, and that was a really special memory.
“Now, with that name, when stuff is going really well in my life, I know I’m doing it for Jack. I’ve got the highest expectations for myself, and people say ‘why is that?’. I say it’s because of my middle name and my granddad because he did not survive the war for us to just live out life and do something that we don’t want to do.
“Every day that I want to do well, he is the driving force, so I’ve got to thank him for giving me that.”
Sophia said: “I felt like we had a real-life superhero our whole time that we had him. We feel so lucky that we’ve had him for this long. I hope he can rest peacefully knowing that he couldn’t have possibly done anything more for us and he can now reunite with his family that was so unfairly snatched away from him too soon.”
Jack Aizenberg
Jack Aizenberg with his daughter, Debbie, on her wedding day (Photo courtesy of Debbie Greenstein)
When Sophia was born, Jack made it his mission to share the horrors of the Holocaust and spoke in schools. He wanted to ensure that the world knew what happened, and his daughter, Debbie, will be carrying on that legacy: “I think he would want me to be his voice. And I will do that, and I’ll probably get a lot of comfort from it, and continue the work as a second generation of going into schools like he did and telling his story.”
Although Jack lived his entire life after the war in England, his longing to return home, to the life that had been stolen from him, never left: “To me, to go to Staszów, I could live there because that’s where I was born, that’s where my parents were, and I sometimes experience, honestly, I’m in the gas chamber with them. And I don’t mind. Because I embrace them. They are struggling for breath; I am struggling for breath. Finish. We’re all gone together. Because I’m here because of my father who said: ‘Jack, maybe we should split and you should go into hiding'. That’s why I’m here.”
But his love and gratitude to Britain, and Manchester, in particular, was immense: “Manchester is a city where I’ve lived the last 60 years. I’ve seen two worlds: I’ve been in hell, and the last 60 years, in paradise.”
Jack Aizenberg
Jack Aizenberg in his later years (Photo courtesy of Debbie Greenstein)
Jack liked to say that his grandchildren were the biggest revenge against the Nazis: "They stole it from me, and they thought they got away - they didn’t. And what holds the Jews a little bit together is also the history, the suffering.”
“But I must say, God was good to me. I have no argument with God. I’m not asking him why was I in the camps. He made it up to me, he did, I can tell you.”
“I’m quite proud to be a Jew because we have a certain way of living, and we are close to the family. We’re quite decent, and that’s what I’m proud of.”
“In the Jewish prayers, there is mention ‘we the chosen people’. I want to be not chosen. I wish I was in my passport: nationality: human race.”
