Chasing shadows
Rabbi Hugo Gabriel Gryn Rabbi Hugo Gabriel Gryn CBE, MA, DHL, DD (25 June 1930-18 August 1996), rabbi, community leader, educator and broadcaster, was born in Berehovo (Hungarian name Beregszasz), Czechoslovakia 25 June 1930, in a home filled with great learning and warmth. His father, Geza Gryn (1900 -- 1945) was a timber merchant and his first teacher. His mother was Bella Neufeld of Silce (marriage in 1929). Hugo Gryn was among the 10,000 Jews confined to the Berehovo ghetto in April 1944. All were sent to Auschwitz on May 28, 1944 and arrived there on May 31. Hugo went with his mother, father, grandparents, and his brother Gaby aged ten. Hugo, aged thirteen, was advised to say that he was nineteen, a carpenter and joiner. He and his father were sent to work, his brother and grandfather were sent to the gas chambers. Hugo Gryn and his father, together with 2,600 Jews were sent to the death march from the Lieberose camp to Sachsenhausen and than to Mauthausen. Less than a thousand survived that march. Hugo was freed in Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945, but his father died a few days later from typhus and exhaustion; his mother, Bella, survived. The closing words of his book are: "Time is short and the task is urgent. Evil is real. So is good. There is a choice. And we are not so much chosen as choosers. Life is holy. All life. Mine and yours. And that of those came before us and the life of those after us."
Print Book, English, 2000
Viking, London, England, 2000