Terry Samuels:Terry Samuels, one of only a small number of Holocaust survivors permitted to settle in Ireland after the second World War, has died in London at 67.
Born Tibor Molnar in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1939 to a Jewish family, Samuels was deported with his mother and younger sister, Suzi, as the regime of Ferenc Szalasi conspired with the SS to liquidate the country's 500,000 Jews in late 1944. His father had disappeared (presumed captured) earlier in the year; in December the rest of the family was put on a cattle truck transport to the Ravensbruck concentration camp north of Berlin then transferred to Bergen-Belsen for the duration of the war.
While Suzi and the other small children of Belsen, including Zoltan Zinn-Collis, another Irish survivor, made friends and even played together in the camp, the older Terry, badly affected by the loss of his father, was "a bit of a loner". His mother had tuberculosis and his sister had typhus, so it fell to Terry - even at that young age - to look after them. Shortly after the camp's liberation by the British army in April 1945, however, their mother died.
The young Samuels and a small group of unclaimed Belsen orphans came under the care of Irishman Dr Bob Collis and Dutch translator Han Hogerzeil, Red Cross volunteers who had made their way to Germany after the war to care for concentration camp survivors.
After arranging for the children's convalescence at a hospital in Malmo, Sweden, Dr Collis brought Terry, Suzi, siblings Edit and Zoltan Zinn, and Evelyn Schwartz back to Dublin in 1946. The five convalesced further at Fairy Hill, Howth, Co Dublin, a facility Dr Collis had helped establish for the recuperation of Dublin tenement children with TB. Dr Collis adopted Edit and Zoltan and sought Jewish homes for the others.
In 1947, Terry and Suzi were adopted by Willie and Elsie Samuels, a childless Dublin Jewish couple. Where before life had been black and white, it now burst into colour for the children, according to Suzi. Terry thrived in the new environment, taking up cricket - his adoptive father's sport - with gusto and after, learning English with the help of recorded nursery rhymes, overcame his "outsider" status to develop a large circle of friends, first at St Andrew's and then at High School. He was "lively, cheerful, with a great analytical mind - especially for puzzles and anagrams".
In his teenage years, after his bar mitzvah, he embraced Torah study under Chief Rabbi Eloni in the Adelaide Road synagogue. He was a member of Bnei Akiva, the religious Zionist youth movement, and the Dublin Jewish Students' Union. He is perhaps best remembered among the Jewish community as the longest-serving member of the Dublin Jewish Holy Burial Society.
He earned a place studying engineering at Trinity College. Highly intelligent but traumatised by the regime at Belsen, Terry rebelled against the regimentation of college life and left the course before taking a degree. Thereafter, Willie Samuels set Terry up in the printing business, but he did not stick with that for very long either.
Those who knew him at the time said that, unable to come to terms with survival, Terry found living like other people impossible, he just "wasn't able for a normal type of life". He never discussed his experience of the Holocaust with his friends - not even with his sister.
He married Tamara Bloch and had three children: Willie (who died at 16 months), Tanya and Abigail. The marriage eventually broke down, however. His health deteriorated in later life - he suffered from Crohn's disease and diabetes and in 2005 had a stroke. He is survived by his daughters Tanya and Abigail, son-in-law Royce, granddaughter Malia Romy, and sister Suzi.
Terry Samuels: born 1939; died January 10th, 2007.