Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    My Voice: Henry Monath
    My Voice: Henry Monath
    My Voice: Henry Monath
    Ebook140 pages1 hour

    My Voice: Henry Monath

    By The Fed

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Henry Monath was born in Kraków, Poland in 1925. He grew up in a family who ran the second-largest furrier business in the country. By 1938, his mother recognised the increasing dangers for Jewish people in Poland and travelled to London in January 1939. She managed to arrange for Henry and his sister Rezika to escape to England, where she was reunited with them.

    Henry reflects on the challenges of settling in a new country, and recounts his experience being evacuated from Manchester to Blackpool in 1939 once war had broken out and later living through air raids in Manchester. After the war, Henry married Gloria, and they had two children. He built a successful company manufacturing lampshades. He visited Kraków several times in later life.

    Henry’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherManchester University Press
    Release dateSep 10, 2024
    ISBN9781526186485
    My Voice: Henry Monath

    Read more from The Fed

    Related to My Voice

    Related ebooks

    Jewish History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Liz Kessler

      Jan 21, 2021

      Liz Kessler
      3 min read

    • Article

      Escaping Genocide

      Feb 2, 2020

      The Theresienstadt concentration camp, near Prague, was presented to the world as an idyllic thermal spa, Hitler’s “gift to the Jews”. Hitler’s propaganda machine ensured that the camp, established in an old stone-fortress town, received favourable c

      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘My Prussian Relatives won't Be Forgotten’

      Oct 18, 2022

      Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, the Nazis began destroying Jewish cemeteries and removing their matzevot (singular matzevah) or grave markers. Some were used as kerbstones or building material. Thankfully, many of these p

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Double Life

      Dec 2, 2021

      My Double Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      Family SECRETS

      Apr 7, 2022

      Journalist Michelle Hather, 58, lives in south-west London with her husband Simon. She is originally from Liverpool and has three sons, Oscar, 29, Rorie, 27, and Louis, 25. As mum to three young men, I look at the terrible suffering happening right

      5 min read

    • Article

      From Auschwitz To Africa

      Jun 2, 2023

      From Auschwitz To Africa
      9 min read

    • Article

      The forgotten Kindertransport

      Jan 25, 2024

      The forgotten Kindertransport
      7 min read

    • Article

      Force For Good

      Apr 16, 2023

      These days, “resilience” has become a somewhat hackneyed word. But not for Inge Woolf. The Holocaust survivor, who found love, prosperity, acceptance and influence as an émigré to New Zealand, once declared that resilience was “the hope to see there

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Doctor Is In

      Jul 30, 2019

      The Doctor Is In
      3 min read

    • Article

      Irish Rover

      Oct 25, 2021

      Irish Rover
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Advent Of Christmas

      Nov 9, 2023

      The Advent Of Christmas
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Hatred Is Not The Way’

      Jul 6, 2023

      ‘Hatred Is Not The Way’
      12 min read

    • Article

      “We Had Entered Hell”

      Jan 23, 2020

      “We Had Entered Hell”
      15 min read

    • Article

      Portrait Of A Marriage

      May 26, 2023

      Portrait Of A Marriage
      11 min read

    • Article

      Sex cult

      Feb 10, 2021

      Sex cult
      8 min read

    • Article

      Everyday People Were Civil Rights Heroes, Too. This Is The Story Of One Town's Fight

      Oct 23, 2022

      In 1970, the murder of a Black man in Oxford, N.C., led ordinary people to take extraordinary action. In a country that still struggles with race, stories like theirs show that the past is not dead.

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Call yourself English?’

      Aug 21, 2019

      ‘Call yourself English?’
      19 min read

    • Article

      Holocaust Survivor ‘We Must Remember What Hatred Can Do’

      Nov 7, 2021

      The year was 1943, the world was at war and Yvonne Engelman was a prisoner at the most  notorious concentration camp in history: Auschwitz. Now 94, Yvonne lives in Sydney and believes that it is her duty as a survivor to share her powerful story. “We

      3 min read

    • Article

      A History Of Identity

      Oct 1, 2021

      The doctor was telling me my dad didn’t survive surgery. I remember wanting to hold his hand one last time and asking if I could. I grew up holding my dad’s hand; it was warm and strong and reassuring. Weeks before that, I remember watching my dad sl

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for My Voice

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      My Voice - The Fed

      Chapter 1

      My maternal family

      I was born in Kraków in Poland on 18 January 1925. Like many babies at that time I was given more than one name. My formal name was Henrik Monath, but at that time, 90 percent of Poles had first names which ended in ‘ek’, so everyone called me Henek. As a Jew I had another name, Chaim, named after my great-grandfather on my father’s side. However, it would be fair to say that I was closer to my mother’s family. My elder sister, Regina Rezika, Rezi for short, was actually born in Budapest.

      Although I was brought up in Poland, I could hardly speak Polish when I started school. My parents spoke fluent Polish, but mainly spoke German at home as they were both born in German-speaking towns. So at five years old I was fluent in German, but within a couple of years at school, I spoke only Polish.

      My mother was also born in Poland on 6 January 1900 in the small town of Gorlice, which was annexed to Austria at the time. Her name was Fanny Rivka Fröhlich. I always remind everyone Fröhlich was spelt with an umlaut on the o. She was one of five children, with two elder brothers, a younger brother and a sister.

      A young boy looks ahead on the left. He has dark hair and wears a shirt and blazer. On the right is a young girl, who is also looking ahead, with her dark hair in French braids, wearing a collared, button-up dress.

      1 Rezika and me

      My maternal grandfather, Eliyohu Dovid Fröhlich, had come to Poland in 1925 from Hungary where he had a business. Grandfather left with the family because of antisemitism and set up a furrier business in the building where I was born in Kraków. After my mother got married, my father, who was called Solomon or Salo for short, joined the business. Many of our family have been named after my grandfather. They include my half-brother, Edward, my mother’s son from her second marriage, and a number of my great-grandsons.

      My maternal grandmother was called Rosalia, or Shoshana in Hebrew, and was an exceedingly pious woman. Not only did she wear a sheitel, but her head was shaven. My grandfather was very learned but still firm and rational in his views, whereas I have to say, my grandmother was somewhat irrational. My immediate ancestors were certainly religious, and some were Chasidic, though that became a story in itself.

      My grandfather Eliyohu was also Chasidic as a young man, years before my mother was born, but I’m told that he was involved in an amazing incident which drove him away from Chasidism. He had become quite fanatical about religion, so much so that every Pesach he would take his wife and family to the rebbe. It was the custom of that time. Then one year, the rebbe had a number of issues which needed to be settled, so my grandfather stayed over for quite some time helping out.

      When my grandfather returned home, he was walking down the street and saw a nanny with a small child. He commented, What a lovely child! The child was actually his son Ichel. The nanny told him in no uncertain terms in Polish, Damn it. The man doesn’t recognise his own child. I was told this story by two independent sources, so I believe it must be true. My grandfather was quite shaken. He realised that Chasidism had overtaken him and from then on, he vowed to turn his back on the sect.

      By the time my mother was born, the family had turned against Chasidism, so much so, that when I was born, she was actually anti Chasidic. And that’s how I was brought up. My father was reasonably orthodox, but he grew up in a more relaxed atmosphere.

      My mother had three brothers and the eldest, Marcus, was the dominant one. He actually introduced my mother to my father in Vienna. The youngest was Israel and the middle one, the boy grandfather didn’t recognise, was Ichel. My mother and Marcus often clashed because they were strong characters, while the other boys just went with the flow.

      A man stands on the left in a suit, holding a black top hat and a white glove. Leaning in towards him is a woman, she wears a white wedding dress and long veil. She holds a bouquet of flowers. Both are subtly smiling.

      2 My mother and my father on their wedding day

      My mother’s younger sister Rezi remained in Budapest when the rest of the family left for Poland. She married in Hungary and had two sons. Tragically, one of my earliest memories as a boy was when my aunt Rezi came from Budapest with her two children. The younger one, Yankel, fell ill as he struggled to breathe. Frantically, they tried to get a pipe down his throat, but he died in our house. I think it was diphtheria.

      My aunt Rezi eventually recovered from that episode and had two more children, Sonya and David.

      Chapter 2

      My paternal grandparents

      I don’t remember as much about my father’s parents, Ephraim Monath and Rivka (née Weiss). They came from Tarnobrzeg in Poland. Their family had been Chasidic, but I’m not sure exactly which ones. In fact, it was Grandfather Ephraim’s second marriage. A wife was arranged for him, but the first time he saw her face was when they unveiled her. She had smallpox marks on her face and he refused to consummate the marriage. A year later, he met Rivka and wanted to marry her. He asked his wife for a divorce, but she refused. However she, in turn, met someone whom she wanted to marry, so she agreed to the divorce.

      The marriage took place and Grandfather thought that would be the end of the matter as far as he was concerned. Then his first wife had a child who sadly died, and some folk said that it was because she had refused the divorce originally. So she asked Grandfather to forgive her. However, he said, Look I have got nothing to forgive you for. I’m a happy man now. Leave me alone!

      The woman then had a second child who also died. This time the Jewish committee went to see my grandfather with her and told him whatever he felt towards her, it was very important that he gave her an official pardon. So Grandfather said, "If that’s

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1