Obituary: Rudy Kennedy

Nazi slave labourer Rudy Kennedy fought a five-year battle with the German government for reparations to these victims.

He accused it of trying to delay payment until the elderly claimants were dead. Since they had never been paid, they had no pension entitlement — unlike Baltic and Ukrainian collaborators.

Rudy Karmeinsky was born in Rosenberg, now Olesno in Poland. Fascinated by everything electrical and mechanical, he was a keen pupil. But as the only Jew, he was bullied. When he fought back, his father, Ewald, was fined and Rudy was sent to the Jewish school in nearby Breslau (now Wroclaw).

In 1939 the family moved to Breslau. In 1943 they were deported to Auschwitz. Rudy, who worked with his father as an electrician, was advised by him to tell the selection officers he was 18, the official working age, not 15. His mother, Adele, and younger sister, Kaethe, went straight to the gas chambers.

Working in the electrical unit for I.G. Farben, the giant chemical conglomerate, in the Buna synthetic rubber factory within Auschwitz, Rudy isolated a fault. After eight weeks, his father collapsed from exhaustion. Rudy discovered 52 years later that he was killed with prussic acid in the camp hospital.

With Auschwitz evacuated in January 1945, Rudy, who had already been marched 50 kilometres through snow and ice to make mines at Gleiwitz, survived a forced march halfway across Germany. He stayed alive in the freezing nights by sleeping under corpses.

In the secret Dora factory, he made V1 and V2 flying bombs. In April he was sent to Bergen-Belsen. A British soldier only realised he was alive when he kicked some corpses and Rudy stirred.

Eating food now instead of grass, Rudy and two friends slipped out and made for Hanover. He collapsed and was taken to a Red Cross hospital in the American zone, where he recovered to become a US army ambulance driver.

From a DP camp near Frankfurt he contacted an aunt and uncle in London, who brought him to Britain in 1946. This time he took two years off his age to gain easier entry. From night school he entered Battersea Polytechnic and got his degree. His TB was dealt with by removing a damaged lung.

He worked for major British technological firms, keeping quiet when he recognised visiting US rocket specialists as Nazi scientists from Dora. He then worked for Rolf Schild and Peter Epstein at SE Laboratories, on medical equipment, where he met his wife, Gitti, Peter’s sister. They married in 1959.

In the 1970s he set up his own company, Digital Electronics Ltd. He sold it to Kontron, the medical electronics division of Roche Pharmaceuticals, becoming a Roche board member.

His campaign started in 1995 when he took his children to Auschwitz for the 50th anniversary of its liberation. His interview there appeared on ITN’s News at Ten. It opened the floodgates.

As a documentary film on his efforts to seek justice was screened on BBC, with extracts shown in the US, he joined fellow-survivors to set up the Association for Slave Labour Compensation in 1996. For him this was a moral issue, involving government and industry.

His perseverance, aided by US pressure, was rewarded in 2000 by Germany’s DM10 billion fund, Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, which also significantly benefited East European forced and slave labourers.

Until suffering Alzheimer’s disease, he contributed to the Imperial Museum’s permanent Holocaust exhibition and the Association of Jewish Refugees’ umbrella group supporting Holocaust survivors and refugees.

Predeceased by a daughter, Nicky, he is survived by his wife, Gitti; son, Stephen; daughter, Katie; and two grandchildren.