She died on May 27.
Marion Kozak was born in the Polish town of Czestochowa on December 22, 1934, the daughter of wealthy Jewish parents Bronislawa and Dawid, who owned a factory.
In 1939, the Nazis commandeered the Kozaks' factory and turned it into a munitions plant.
In the town, an estimated 2,000 Jews were murdered by Germans on the spot, while another 40,000 were transported to the gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp.
Some 60 members of her extended family were murdered in the Shoah.
She escaped from the Czestochowa Ghetto in 1942 during the Nazi occupation, along with her mother and sister, saved when Polish nuns in a convent took them in.
She credited the “kindness and generosity of acquaintances in Warsaw” for her survival.
In 1947, aged 12, Marion arrived in Britain through a Jewish organisation.
She excelled academically, later studying at the London School of Economics, where she was a student of Ralph Miliband (1924–1994), the influential Marxist scholar and fellow Jewish refugee from Belgium. The pair married in 1961.
The couple’s first son, David, was born in 1965, followed by Ed in 1969.
She gained a PhD in Economic and Social History from the University of Hull, where her 1976 thesis was titled “Women Munition Workers During the First World War with Special Reference to Engineering”.
She was an early activist for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a founding signatory of the Jews for Justice for Palestinians group, a passionate advocate for human rights, and a committed Labour voice.
Long-time friend Tariq Ali wrote in the Guardian in 2015 that she was a “strong-minded socialist and feminist”.
The Milibands settled in north London, and politics was discussed around the dinner table. Ralph abandoned the Labour Party long before his sons were born, believing socialism could never be achieved through parliamentary means, but Marion remained a committed Labour member and is thought to have been a greater influence on her sons' political development.
“There's no doubt that Ed got a lot of his drive from Marion and a lot of his feel for nitty-gritty grassroots politics from Marion too,” Dr Marc Stears, politics fellow at the University of Oxford, said of her.
The leadership contest between the two brothers was reportedly a huge "strain" for their mother, who said it might have been easier if the pair had become acadmics rather than politicians.
David Miliband (R) is embraced by his brother Ed Miliband after giving a keynote speech at the Labour Party conference in 2010 (Photo: Getty Images)Getty Images
In 2009, as then foreign secretary, David Miliband thanked the Polish people for having saved his mother during the Holocaust.
During an official visit to Poland, he said: “My mother was born here, her life was saved by those who risked theirs [by] sheltering her from Nazi oppression”.
In his 2012 Labour conference speech as leader, Ed said: “I believe that we can overcome any odds if we come together as people.
“That’s how my Mum survived the war. The kindness of strangers. Nuns in a convent who took her in and sheltered her from the Nazis, took in a Jewish girl at risk to themselves. It’s what my dad found when he came to these shores and joined the Royal Navy and was part of Britain winning the war.”
Former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman said that Marion “was a fantastic woman who I first met in the 1980s when she played a big role in making the case for childcare. A woman ahead of her time. A feminist pioneer of her generation. RIP. Deepest sympathies to all the family.”
