Stanley Medicks
STANLEY MEDICKS was born on 27 September 1925 — Yom Kippur — in Nairobi, Kenya. The Medicks family had left Poland in the early 1900s when it was thought a new Jewish homeland was to be established in Uganda. Instead, they settled in Kenya.
He attended the prestigious Prince of Wales School and then joined the King’s AfricanRiflesin1943.Heservedfornearly fouryearsinEthiopiaandSomalia—and also, much to his regret -— trained the later Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin.
After leaving the army, he volunteered for the Haganah and fought as a machal (volunteer) in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
He was posted to the 72nd Infantry Battalion of the prestigious 7th Brigade as a platoon commander and was involved in the liberation of Galilee. The platoon was made up of recruits from South Africa, Europe, Canada, the USA, Costa Rica and India. He was well known by some 60 men who considered him a fearless officer of the “follow me” tradition, always leading from the front. His soldiers have always remembered him with devotion and respect.
After the War of Independence, being a sanitary engineer by profession, he helped to build the sewage system in Mamilla, Jerusalem, and met and married his first wife, Monica. She was an English journalist who had volunteered to serve with the Irgun as an intelligence officer.
They decided not to settle in Israel and went to live in Nairobi. Following the Mau Mau uprising, they moved to London. Unable to find work, Stanley started a second-hand car business in Camden Town that he ran for 30 years.
In 1988, he formed the British and European Machal Association and enrolled over 300 volunteers.
Meetings and reunions were held in Israel, London and European countries. Stanley arranged the belated presentation of Israeli war medals to its members.
With fund-raising assistance from the Jewish National Fund, in 1993 he set up a World Machal Memorial to the 123 volunteers who died in the 1948 war. It was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
In 2012, Stanley travelled to Israel to take part in the opening of a Machal Exhibition — which he initiated and helped to fund — at the Museum of the Diaspora, Beit Hatefutsot, in Tel Aviv.
Stanley is survived by his long-term partner, Marion, and his children, Elana and Ashley, step- children, Charlotte and Clive, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.