Hugo Gryn
{{Short description|Czechoslovak-born British Reform rabbi and broadcaster (1930–1996)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2020}}
{{Infobox Jewish leader
|honorific-prefix = Rabbi
|name = Hugo Gryn
|honorific-suffix =
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|image = Hugo Gryn's grave, Golders Green, London.jpg
|caption = Hugo Gryn's grave at Golders Green Jewish Cemetery, London
|synagogue =West London Synagogue
|synagogueposition = Senior Rabbi
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|birth_date = 25 June 1930
|birth_place = Berehovo, Czechoslovakia
|death_date = 18 August 1996 (aged 66)
|death_place = London, England
|buried = Golders Green Jewish Cemetery
|nationality =
|denomination= Reform Judaism
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|parents =
|spouse = Jacqueline Selby
|children =
|occupation = Rabbi
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|alma_mater = King's College Cambridge Hebrew Union College
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Hugo Gabriel Gryn (pronounced green) (25 June 1930 – 18 August 1996) was a British Reform rabbi, a national broadcaster and a leading voice in interfaith dialogue.
Biography
Hugo Gryn was born into a prosperous Jewish family in the market town of Berehovo in Carpathian Ruthenia, which was then in Czechoslovakia, and is now in Ukraine. His parents, who married in 1929, were Geza Gryn (1900–1945), a timber merchant, and Bella Neufeld.{{cite web | url=http://www.hugogryn.com/about-hugo-gryn/ | title=About Hugo Gryn | work=Rabbi Hugo Gryn | access-date=16 April 2013 | author=Albert Friedlander | author-link=Albert Friedlander | archive-date=21 September 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921052832/http://www.hugogryn.com/about-hugo-gryn/ | url-status=dead }}
The town of Berehovo was annexed by Hungary in 1938 as part of the occupation of Czechoslovakia. In 1940 he relocated to a boarding school in Debrecen, Hungary, until 1944.
In early 1944, his father was able to successfully obtain exit visas to Turkey for the immediate family of four. However, he did not proceed at the time, due to concerns about the safety of the larger extended family. In April 1944, the family was forcibly moved out of their home into the Berehovo Ghetto.
Gryn's grandparents, parents and younger brother were deported to Auschwitz on May 28 1944, arriving on May 31. On arrival at the camp, his younger ten-year old brother, Gabriel, was separated from the family and died shortly after arrival in the gas chambers. His mother was also separated from the family; she ended up surviving the ordeal, and was reunited with Hugo after the war.
On arrival at Auschwitz, Hugo Gryn, then in his mid-teens, was reportedly told by a Sonderkommando to say he was 19, to avoid being sent to the gas chambers during the initial sorting on arrival. Hugo and his father were later selected for carpentry work after volunteering that they had experience in this area, and were moved to Lieberose Concentration Camp. After a period of forced labour, they were sent on a death march{{Cite Book|url=https://search.worldcat.org/cs/title/42791757 |title=Chasing shadows |date=2000|access-date = 7 May 2025}} to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1945, before being moved to Mauthausen concentration camp in February 1945, and finally in April 1945 to Gunskirchen concentration camp, a sub-camp of Mauthausen, in May 1945,{{Cite news|url=https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510849 |title=Oral history interview with Hugo Gryn |date=8 May 1986|access-date = 6 May 2025}} where they were liberated by the US Army 71st Infantry Division on May 4 1945.
His father died a few days after he and Hugo were liberated, from suspected typhus.
Gryn came to the United Kingdom in 1946, and was sent to board at the Polton House Farm School in Lasswade, near Edinburgh. He won a scholarship to study Mathematics at King's College, Cambridge, and after graduation volunteered to serve in the Israeli Army during the 1947–1949 Palestine war. In 1950, he went to Cincinnati, in the United States, where he studied for the rabbinate at the Hebrew Union College, a seminary for Reform rabbis.Albert Friedlander, [https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-63186;jsessionid=422CE15935DB6E0BCB15BFCB5AFF9FA2 'Gryn, Hugo Gabriel (1930–1996)'], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, October 2008. Accessed 2 July 2020. (Note that online access to this requires a subscription, either as an individual or through a library that has a subscription.)
Upon receiving his ordination, Gryn was sent to Bombay by the World Union for Progressive Judaism, which had sponsored his studies, and following a spell working for the Union and for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York, he returned to Britain in 1964, where he served in one of the largest congregations in Europe, the West London Synagogue, initially as assistant rabbi and later as senior rabbi, for 32 years. Gryn became a regular radio broadcaster, appearing for many years on BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day and The Moral Maze.
In 1989, Gryn returned to Berehovo, together with his daughter Naomi, to make a film about his childhood.{{Cite web |title=Chasing Shadows |url=https://ukjewishfilm.org/film/chasing-shadows/ |access-date=18 June 2025 |website=UK Jewish Film}} After his death, Naomi edited his autobiography, also called Chasing Shadows,{{Cite web |url=http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/rguides/uk/0140286616_intro.html |title=Hugo Gryn Chasing Shadows – Introduction by Naomi Gryn (penguin.co.uk) |access-date=2007-06-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070522210027/http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/rguides/uk/0140286616_intro.html |archive-date=2007-05-22 |url-status=dead }} which deals movingly with his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.
He married Jacqueline Selby on 1 January 1957, and they had four children together.
Gryn died of cancer on 18 August 1996, aged 66, and is buried at Hoop Lane Cemetery in Golders Green, London. The grave lies in a relatively prominent location, just north-east of the main entrance. The Chief Rabbi at the time, Jonathan Sacks, refused to attend his funeral on principle. Sacks wrote in later leaked private correspondence that as part of the Jewish Reform movement, Rabbi Gryn was a part of a "false grouping" and one of "those who destroy the faith".{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/25/chief-rabbi-jonathan-sacks-editorial|title=Lord Sacks: The two sides of the chief rabbi | Editorial|work=The Guardian |date=25 August 2013|access-date = 29 May 2024}}
Gryn was described as "probably the most beloved rabbi in Great Britain" by Rabbi Albert Friedlander, who was also the author of the entry about Gryn in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
References
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External links
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/9d50288e/ Hugo Gryn] interviewed by Sue Lawley on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, 10 July 1994
- [http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80009070 Imperial War Museum oral history interview conducted in May 1986]
- [http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/158652/everyones-chief-rabbi Michael Freedland: "Everyone's chief rabbi"], The Jewish Chronicle, 26 May 2016
{{Reform Judaism in the United Kingdom}}
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Category:20th-century English rabbis
Category:Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
Category:Auschwitz concentration camp survivors
Category:British people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
Category:British Reform rabbis
Category:Burials at Golders Green Jewish Cemetery
Category:Czechoslovak emigrants to England