From escaping Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe as a 10-year-old boy to buying and selling Christmas trees on the streets of Dublin as a student, the extraordinary life of Holocaust survivor Jan Kaminski was celebrated at a ceremony in Harold's Cross in Dublin on Monday.
About 150 people attended the humanist ceremony at the Mount Jerome Victorian Chapel for Mr Kaminski, who was born into a Jewish family in Poland in 1932 and gained Irish citizenship in the 1950s. He died in Dublin last Tuesday.
The humanist celebrant, Brian Whiteside, called on congregants to “look back and celebrate this man” whose “strength and character” was on show from when, as only a child, he escaped the Nazis as they overran his hometown of Bilgoraj in Poland.
“In 1942, Jan’s family, along with all the other Jewish families in the neighbourhood, were taken away in the most brutal and terrifying manner,” said Mr Whiteside. “I need not spell out the terrible fate that befell them.
“But, Jan got away. Never to see any of his family again. Of course, there was huge sadness in that – never seeing his family again – but, goodness me, he got away. He was 10! Jan survived.
“The great strength and character, which a lot of you knew later in Jan’s life, was already there when he was just 10. He dodged the terrible oppressors who stole his family, and he lived by his wits.”
Mr Kaminski’s son, Jas, also recalled the “traumatised childhood, shaped in the white heat of what can only be described as the very epicentre of hell”, as having been the foundations for “such a rich life”.
“His first job was to retrieve food parcels that had been thrown but mistakenly landed between rows of barbed wire fencing that surrounded the ghetto in which he and his family had been incarcerated along with the Jewish population of his rural hometown.
“This could be dangerous work. At times he was caught by guards who set dogs on him, while other guards in surrounding buildings took pot shots into the ghetto out of boredom and for entertainment.
“He lost his impromptu work when the ghetto was destroyed and the Jewish population of his village was immediately gassed. He escaped in the demented melee during the round-up, fleeing into the nearby woods.
“It was his fair hair and blue eyes that were to betray him next. Soon after his emergence from the woods and in a round-up, he was ambushed and soldiers made the mistake of thinking Jan would make a good Aryan.
“Jan was sent with hundreds of other Polish boys to be Germanised and eventually help restock the Reich.”
However, as Mr Kaminiski’s friend Nick McGillicuddy had earlier recounted, he once again escaped when a tailor bribed a guard with a bottle of vodka.
Mr McGillicuddy also spoke of how Mr Kaminski spied on the Nazis for the Russians; how his birth name of Chaim-Srul Zybner had to be changed for his protection; and how he eventually arrived in Ireland in 1954 and attended Trinity College on a scholarship.
“Buying and selling Christmas trees, carting them around various markets in Dublin; meeting Pope John Paul II when the Pope hardly understood his ancient Polish; his Concorde travel agency; his hotel in Kilkee.
“On leaving college, Jan found employment with a data processing company in Dublin. He also opened a late night steak and chip cafe called the Last Post . . . Quite simply, Jan was truly my very best friend, and I, and our family, will miss him sorely.”
Mr Kaminiski is survived by his children Orla, Jadzia and Jas, grandchildren Kazia, Liadain, Lana and Isak, sons-in-law Stephen and David, and cousin Sura.
