IN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR MARCEL ANISFELD DIED AT THE AGE OF 89. Marcel was none other than Lance Forman’s father, an entrepreneur and Holocaust survivor who settled in Britain after the war and became known as London’s smoked salmon king.
Marcel was born in the small Polish town of Nowy Sacz, south of Krakow, in 1934, to Osjasz Anisfeld – a local banker who also owned a food business – and his wife Regina, daughter of an egg wholesaler.
When German soldiers marched into Nowy Sacz on Sep- tember 6, 1939, one of them offered four-year-old Marcel sweets. Regina forbade him to take any, fearing poison–a mother’s instincts are often correct. Poland was invaded on opposite flanks by the Germans and Russians and the Anisfelds felt they might fare better under the Russians, so moved east to Lvov, then under Russian occupation.
TRANSPORTED TO SIBERIA Weeks later, Red Army soldiers banged on the door in the middle of the night and, suspecting they were German spies, gave the family 10 minutes to gather possessions before being marched into a cattle-truck train bound for Siberia. After six weeks with only one meal a day they reached the tiny village of Osino in the Omsk district of southwestern Siberia with snow drifting above the doors of buildings. They were ordered to cut down trees to build their own houses. “No heating, no lighting and no indoor toilet; just one room divided by a hanging blanket, for two families”, recalled Marcel.
“THEY WERE ORDERED TO CUT DOWN TREES TO BUILD THEIR OWN HOUSES"
After Germany declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Polish prisoners were free to move and the Anisfelds migrated south to Bukhara in Uzbekistan, a city that back then had a large Jewish population. Somehow they scraped by, with Osjasz buying and selling food as a spekuliant (speculator), considered a serious crime in communist Russia punishable by up to 15 years in jail. Marcel carried foodstuffs to clients as it was safer than his father risking imprisonment.
SURVIVAL INSTINCTS For four years Marcel was barefoot in all conditions and educated at home when his parents had time and energy. He supplemented the family income by cutting news- papers into small pieces and selling them to people for rolling cigarettes. He also hauled water from the nearest well to sell by the mug.
As if this were not torment enough an epidemic of typhus in the summer of 1943 swept through Uzbekistan; Marcel was the only member of the family who avoided illness and so kept his parents and sister Jacqueline alive as nurse and breadwinner, bartering valuables for medical help. Sadly, his grandfather died.
Marcel in the Ridley Road yard, 1959. 31
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