The nine year old Freddie Overlander watched from his balcony,days after Hitler came to power in 1933, as the windows of the next door business were smashed and anti-Jewish graffiti sprayed on the wall. Overlander, who has died aged 98, would one day tell his own nine year old grandson how he read Nazi antisemitic propaganda in Der Sturmer and thinking “there aren’t many people who look like that around here.”
Overlander, grew up in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s and saw his father Max Oberlander arrested on Kristallnacht, in 1938 and taken to a concentration camp. He was later released and left for London as the Second World War began.Freddie’s younger brother Joachim escaped Germany via Kinderstransport, on September 1, 1939. But Freddie, his mother Regina,née Schreier, grandmother and other family members were trapped.
Freddie’s school, Adass Yisroel, Berlin was closed in 1938 and he went to Havelberg Hachshara camp, which prepared students for aliyah, on land owned by a Jewish baron. A good student with an ear for music and languages, he experienced a humiliating Yom Kippur when Nazi storm-troopers stormed the camp making the Fast Day even harder.
In 1940, Freddie and 128 other young Jews were granted transit visas to British-administered Palestine, and left on March 24. He spent the next two years on a northern moshav with Ukrainian immigrants. But the farming life was not for him, and he cycled to Haifa on a bike he had brought from Berlin. Answering an ad for English speakers, he briefly became a Palestinian policeman until he decided to join the British Navy in Palestine. However, his German passport with a big red J stamped on it, did not go down too well, so he became naturalised and joined the Navy as a Palestinian citizen. He remained there for over two years, working his way up to become an officer.
In 1945, his sympathetic captain transferred him to England where, in full white naval uniform, he met the father, brother, uncle and aunt he had not seen for over five years.
After the war, news from Germany was scarce but a powerful letter from Freddie’s captain to the Home Office enabled the family to be reunited. In the final act of the family saga, Freddie travelled to Germany to collect his grandmother from a Displaced Persons camp. She had only a simple room and a stove in the camp, but knowing Freddie was coming, she had prepared lochshen soup. On the boat back to London, he struck up a conversation with a copper merchant who offered him a job.
This would launch his long career with Oakland Metal Company, which eventually became Amalgamated Metals, finally taken over by the late Sir Sigmund Sternberg. As an aluminium trader Freddie used his German to trade in metals behind the Iron Curtain, between the former Soviet Union and East Germany. His skills took him from the UK to Europe and America.
Freddie was also an expert bridge player. In his eulogy, Rabbi Daniel Friedman said: “Bridge for Freddie was simply a metaphor for life –– Freddie was a bridge builder, who effortlessly connected with people and left a trail of smiles and goodwill.”
In 1952 he changed his name to Overlander. He married London-born Betty Benn and they had three sons, Michael, Clive and Gershon. They lived in London and Florida and travelled the world together. Betty knew just as much about Freddie’s business life as he did: and was always happy to advise him. They were both active members of Finchley United Synagogue in Kinloss Gardens, where all three sons celebrated their barmitzvahs. Philanthropic by nature, Freddie supported the Neveh Chana children’s home. He saw no contradictions between the Judaism he practised in his Orthodox Berlin family, in a secular moshav, and then later in London at Kinloss, and Alyth synagogues. He is survived by his sons Michael, Clive and Gershon, 12 grandchildren, six step grandchildren, and 16 great grandchildren. Betty pre-deceased him in 2018.
BEN OVERLANDER
Freddie Overlander: born August 13, 1923. Died November 23, 2018
