Born lancut, Poland, July 12, 1912. Died London, March 16, 2009, aged 96.
April 29, 2009 16:25A survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Dachau, Daniel Falkner became a hugely generous benefactor to Jewish science students.
Educated in Rzeszow, a town with a thriving Jewish community, he was unable to study science, due to the quota system and a lack of means. But during military service he became a reserve officer before joining an import-export firm in Warsaw.
At the outbreak of the Second World War he was sent to Poland’s border with East Prussia. The reservists eventually surrendered. He escaped back to occupied Warsaw, only to be herded into the Warsaw ghetto, where he married 18-year-old Guta Hoffman.
In 1943, with increasing violence and rumours of Jews being transported to concentration camps, Danny (as he was always known) and his wife smuggled themselves out of the ghetto in haycarts to his wife’s old nanny’s flatlet.
Hiding with his wife and her brother for over a year, they whispered and wore socks or slippers to avoid being heard. From the flat they witnessed the Warsaw ghetto uprising and its destruction in 1943.
They were finally discovered and taken to Gestapo headquarters. Danny’s experiences were called upon by actress Maureen Lipman for her role in the 2002 Oscar-winning film, The Pianist. His testimony also formed part of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition, which opened in 2000.
Transported to Dachau camp near Munich, he finished up further north in a subcamp of Buchenwald. Life expectancy was two or three months for the slave labourers who quarried into the mountain range to carve out spaces for aircraft manufacture.
In April 1945 the thousands of inmates were told to prepare for evacuation. Danny was one of several who hid in the camp until all the rest had gone. For three days there were no guards, food or water.
Then suddenly the Americans arrived. Danny, weighing under five stone, was sent to an American hospital. He was discharged into a Polish Displaced Persons camp in the British Military Zone, where his English, German, Russian and Polish allowed him join the British Army as an interpreter.
Through the International Red Cross he was reunited with his wife. In 1947 they came to the UK to start a new life. After a successful career as a clothing importer, he retired in his late 60s to concentrate on charitable causes, particularly in the science education he had so longed for. After Guta’s death, he married Dr Jane Chomet in 1974.
In 1984, with two friends, Julius Tigner and Ludwig Kleiner, he established the annual Juludan Prize (from their combined names) in Israel for scientific research into life-enhancing technology. He set up a trust for Jewish postgraduates and brought Israeli high school pupils at his own expense to the annual International Youth Science Fortnight in London, often putting them up them in his own home.
In 2001 he established a PhD scholarship at the Weizmann Institute and in 2004 the Daniel Falkner Scholarship Endowment Fund for Desert Research at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
He last visited Israel in 2007 with his co-trustee step-daughter to present the Juludan prize and contact scientists sponsored by him. A member of the West London Synagogue, he served as warden for three years in the 1970s.
Predeceased by his wife in 1994, he is survived by his step-children Julian, Ann and William, and their families.