Hugo Gryn

Rabbi Hugo Gryn
Hugo Gryn's grave at Golders Green Jewish Cemetery, London
Personal life
Born	25 June 1930 Berehovo, Czechoslovakia
Died	18 August 1996 (aged 66) London, England
Spouse	Jacqueline Selby
Alma mater	King's College Cambridge Hebrew Union College
Occupation	Rabbi
Religious life
Religion	Judaism
Denomination	Reform Judaism
Position	Senior Rabbi
Synagogue	West London Synagogue
Buried	Golders Green Jewish Cemetery

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.

The town of Berehovo was annexed by Hungary in 1938 as part of the occupation of Czechoslovakia. In 1940 he relocated to Debrecen in Hungary to a boarding school until 1944.

In early 1944, his father was able to successfully obtain exit visa's to Turkey for the immediate family of four. However he didn't 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 28th 1944, arriving on May 31st. 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 at Auschwitz. His mother was also separated from the family, she ended up surviving the ordeal and survived to be reunited with Hugo Gryn after the war.

Gryn on arrival at Auschwitz 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 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. 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.

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 and appeared 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. After his death, Naomi Gryn edited his autobiography, also called Chasing Shadows, which deals movingly with his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

He married Jacqueline Selby on 1 January 1957 and they had four children together.

He died of cancer on 18 August 1996 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".

He 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.

External links

• Hugo Gryn interviewed by Sue Lawley on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, 10 July 1994
• Imperial War Museum oral history interview conducted in May 1986
• Michael Freedland: "Everyone's chief rabbi", The Jewish Chronicle, 26 May 2016