The Holocaust Educational Trust is saddened to hear of the passing of our friend Jack Kagan.
Karen Pollock MBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust said: “As the only surviving member of Bielski partisans in the UK, Jack was an incredible man who inspired generations. We've lost a dear friend and he will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his family"
Jack was born in 1929 and until he was 10, lived in Novogródek, eastern Poland with his family. In 1939 Jack’s village was occupied by the Soviets, and then by the Nazis from 1941.
Following the Nazi occupation, all of Nowogródek’s Jews were ordered to assemble: the majority, along with Jews from nearby villages, were murdered. The survivors, including Jack, were forced into a ghetto, an area consisting of 28 houses, where they lived in the most appalling conditions. In May 1942 an order was issued to clear neighbouring towns and thousands of Jews from the surrounding areas, bringing the ghetto's population up to 6,500 people.
At 12 years old, Jack and his father were among 500 Jews who were sent to a forced labour camp and it was here that he heard about the partisans, a resistance movement fighting the Nazis from the forests of Eastern Europe and protecting Jews who had escaped from ghettos.
In 1943, Jack escaped from his barracks through a tunnel dug by himself and other prisoners. He joined the Bielski partisans, a resistance group which later became the focus of the film, Defiance. starring Daniel Craig. Along with over 1,200 men, women and children, the group lived and survived in the Naliboki forest as a community and managed to create synagogues, bakeries, a hospital and even an airstrip.
Jack eventually came to the UK, where he later married his wife, Barbara, and went on to have three children. In 2016 Jack was named in Her Majesty the Queen's New Year Honours List. He received the British Empire Medal (BEM).