He was a bridge champion playing with the likes of Omar Sharif, Zia Mahmood and Rixi Markus, and hoped he had put the past behind him. But it was a visit to Florida’s Holocaust Museum in 1992 that brought 50 years of unresolved grief flooding back. Martin Hoffman, who has died aged 88, stood in the museum weeping uncontrollably. “I wept,” he said, “for all the people who had suffered, too. But this was the first time, since my release, that I wept for myself.”
Martin Hoffman was the second child of Herman and Toby, born in Prague in former Czechoslovakia, with two sisters, Blanche and Betty, and a younger brother Bernie. A fragile child, he was nine when, in 1937, his parents sent him and his younger brother, to the purer mountain air of the Carpathians, and to study Torah. When the Nazis marched in, his parents were transported to Terezin where they died. He spent several years in hiding with his brother and grandparents but, in 1944, they were sent to Auschwitz. He was 14 at the time and a Sonderkommando advised him to give his age as 18. It saved his life. After moving to various sub camps of Auschwitz, he was on a death march to Buchenwald, but was liberated in 1945 by the American Army. He had learned English and the GIs gave him “chocolate, compassion, kindness and warmth.”
On returning to Prague at the age of 15, he discovered that his entire family had been murdered. He next went to Pilsen where he again discovered the friendliness of the GIs, who adopted him as a mascot sergeant and dressed him in their uniform.
Hoffman reached England with other young refugees from Nazism on what was known as The Boys transport to Lake Windermere. A Finchley family with whom he lodged while on holiday in Torquay, took him to a whist drive at their church hall. He won that evening and immediately became hooked on cards. “I could hardly wait to finish work, have my meal, then go and play.”
The family found him a job in their Hatton Garden factory as a diamond cutter, but when the diamond trade began to decline in the 1950s, he turned to professional card playing.
It all led inexorably to bridge. He turned his phenomenal memory — he could immediately recall all the cards he had seen — to professional use. And in time he was regarded as the best pairs player in the world, playing with all the great names in the game. As a bridge professional, he won Master Bridge on Channel 4 in 1982, as well as every important bridge competition in the country.
But there was a guilty secret: he was a gambling addict. First it was dog racing, later horses, and the elation he experienced when winning was replaced by the “downward spiral” on losing. The betting shops were also a hub for criminals and, one day, two men walked into the smoky gambling den where he was chalking up the latest odds as a board-man. The room went silent as the Kray twins walked in to obsequious greetings.
Hoffman’s sexual exploits were luridly revealed in his 2011 memoir Bridging Two Worlds with a preface by Sharif, but he eventually married the bridge teacher Audrey Cookson in 1977, who showed compassion for his gambling addiction, believing it stemmed from the torments of his past. They moved to Bournemouth and later Florida where, despite his success as a bridge player, the gambling bug waned a little. Apart from bridge, he wrote and co-authored several books and columns. Perhaps his emotional breakdown at Florida’s Holocaust Museum helped him acknowledge both his survivor’s guilt and his addiction, and achieve some peace. He is survived by Audrey.
GLORIA TESSLER
Martin Hoffman: born November 15, 1929. Died May 15, 2018
