Ben Fenton

He was born in Lodz, Poland on 12 Oct 1920 and lived there with his family at 11 Piepszowa (which was subsequently part of the Ghetto). Immediately after the German occupation of Lodz in Sept 1939 they were forced to wear the yellow star. As an active Trade Unionist and Jew his position was especially bleak. Shortly after the formation of the Ghetto in January 1940 (having been subject to forced labour, beatings and curfews) with regular executions of Jews with known left-wing affiliations, he managed to escape to Malkin, where he was caught by the Nazis and imprisoned. He was severely and continually beaten until he was released after several weeks. After that he crossed the border to Bialystock where he found occasional labouring work until July 1940. Then he was then rounded up with all Polish Jews (by the Russians) and sent to Siberia to work in a forced labour camp, given starvation rations, no clothing, and having to work in the most severe conditions. He was finally released in August 1941 after the Nazi invasion of Russia.
He joined the Polish forces in Russia on 23 Sept 1941 and crossed to Iran where he was enlisted in the Free Polish Army under British Command. Between 1941 and 1944 he served in the Middle East (notably in Iraq and Palestine) as a jeep driver. In 1944 he was sent to Italy after the Allied invasion there. He served in the front line of the Italian campaign until the end of the war in May 1945. In particular, he served with distinction at the battle of Monte Cassino from Jan to May 1944 where many of his Polish colleagues were killed. He often told a poignant story that, during the battle several of his Jewish colleagues were shot in the back by non-Jewish Poles while they advanced on the German lines. He returned to Poland shortly after the end of the war to discover that his entire family (parents, three brothers, sister, grandparents, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts and cousins) had been murdered by the Nazis in the Lodz Ghetto liquidation/deportations and there was, of course, no trace of the family possessions. In 1946 he came with the Free Polish Army to Scotland. When he was made a reservist in May 1947 he moved to London. He was honourably discharged from the Army in April 1949.
He arrived in England penniless in 1947, and struggled to bring up a family with three children in conditions of extreme poverty. He worked on and off as a tailor in the workshops of the East End of London until he retired due to ill health in 1985,
He died in January 2012