Professor Felix J. Weinberg, FRS (1928-2012)

摘要

Felix Weinberg, Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Fellow at Imperial College, passed away on December 5,2012. Felix was born in the Sudeten part of Czechoslovakia with a very happy early childhood providing security and contentment. Circumstances changed, beyond comprehension for those of us fortunate enough to be born in a different era, following the annexation of Sudetenland and the subsequent occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany. Felix subsequently lost his mother, his younger brother and other members of his family under horrific and degrading circumstances in Nazi camps. Felix spent three years in a series of concentration camps, Terezin, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Blechhammer, Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald. He also survived the Death March from Blechhammer in 1945. Felix never spoke much of this time apart from making the observation that other holocaust survivors, such as Primo Levi, could not safely revisit memories. Despite such reservations and at the insistence of a family friend, Ms Bea Green, Felix eventually wrote his memoirs (Boy 30529: A Memoir) with the final corrected proofs submitted to the publishers a few days before his death. Publication is scheduled for Spring 2013. A direct consequence of his early life is that Felix did not receive any formal education beyond the age of 12. He arrived in Britain in a stripped out Lancaster bomber on VJ Day, unable to speak English and having forgotten how to write.