Joshua Sur­tees

Hans Stech­er, who was the last of Trinidad's Jew­ish World War Two es­capees, has died at home at the age of 90.Ar­riv­ing with his moth­er and fa­ther in 1938 at age 15, Stech­er es­caped Aus­tria a year be­fore the out­break of war and the hor­ror of the Holo­caust, which killed six mil­lion of Eu­rope's Jews.

Soon af­ter Britain de­clared war on Hitler's Ger­many in 1939–af­ter Hitler had an­nexed Aus­tria and Czecho­slo­va­kia and then in­vad­ed Poland–the Ger­man and Aus­tri­an Jews who had ar­rived in Trinidad (in­clud­ing the Stech­er fam­i­ly) were round­ed up by mil­i­tary po­lice and in­terned in British pris­on­er-of-war camps down the is­lands. Lat­er they were moved to an in­tern­ment camp, spe­cial­ly built at what is now Fed­er­a­tion Park.

Ger­mans and Aus­tri­ans were con­sid­ered the en­e­my by the British and with sus­pi­cions abound­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al Nazi spy net­works, British-ruled T&T took no chances.They locked up any­body who held those pass­ports, re­gard­less of the fact that they were Jew­ish refugees.Back home, some of Stech­er's ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly be­came vic­tims of the Holo­caust.

In 1945 he found­ed the Stech­ers jew­el­ry store of which there are now ten branch­es na­tion­wide. He al­so was not­ed for be­ing the longest-stand­ing mem­ber of the Ro­tary Club of T&T, hav­ing joined in 1957.A death no­tice in the T&T Guardian said he was pres­i­dent of T&T's Jew­ish So­ci­ety.His fu­ner­al takes place to­day from 9.30 am at Li­ons Civic Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. He will be buried at the Bet Olam Jew­ish sec­tion of Mu­cu­rapo ceme­tery at 2.30 pm, along­side his par­ents, wife and aunt.

Stech­er's wish was to have his rites de­liv­ered by a re­formed rab­bi, since he was not an or­tho­dox Jew, but T&T does not have any syn­a­gogues or rab­bis.At short no­tice, find­ing a re­form rab­bi from abroad was dif­fi­cult. In­stead, Adam Zil­ber, an Is­raeli who of­fi­ci­at­ed at the bur­ial of Hans' wife, Sheila, will pre­side and per­form the cer­e­mo­ny ac­cord­ing to re­form Jew­ish rites.Mem­bers of T&T's small Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, num­ber­ing no more than 50, paid re­spects to Stech­er.

Bar­bara Ma­lins-Smith, the Guyanese-born Is­rael hon­orary con­sul, told the T&T Guardian:"I first met Hans Stech­er in 1966 when, as a young girl, I was the house guest for Car­ni­val of him and his beloved wife, Sheila. They were vis­it­ed that year by his cousin Charles Stech­er, a sur­vivor of the Holo­caust whom Hans re­con­nect­ed with in the ear­ly 50s."

"Hans has served his adopt­ed coun­try with dis­tinc­tion, in tourism as chair of the Tourist Board, as Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent and as longest-serv­ing Ro­tar­i­an.

"It was through his ef­forts that ex­tend­ed shop open­ing hours be­came a re­al­i­ty in T&T. He was al­so hon­orary con­sul for Aus­tria."She de­scribed him as a "walk­ing en­cy­clopae­dia," knowl­edge­able on every­thing from ar­chi­tec­ture to lan­guages and ge­ol­o­gy."He was the most gra­cious man I ever knew and we have lost a trea­sure. It is the end of an era," she added.

Life-long friend Jean-Paul Si­mon­et de­scribed Stech­er as "a man who was pas­sion­ate about life and trav­el, had a wealth of knowl­edge and loved to share. He was wise, kind, a great leader and a loy­al friend. A true re­nais­sance man."Nicholas Jagdeo, a young mem­ber of Trinidad's Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, de­scribed Stech­er on Face­book as a "pa­tri­arch of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty who in­cul­cat­ed with­in me a love for Trinida­di­an Jew­ry and showed me the im­por­tance of fight­ing to keep our tiny com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er."

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian, Jagdeo added: "Hans was 60 years my se­nior but he was my friend.

"When I re­turned to Trinidad from Is­rael in 2009 I be­gan to re­gard him as a sec­ond grand­pa.

"Hans shared with me many sto­ries of his long and var­ied life but the one which stands out to me the most, even more than the ad­ven­tures he had es­cap­ing Nazi per­se­cu­tion, is the sto­ry of how he met his wife Sheila."

He ex­plained: "Sheila walked in­to his Stech­ers store on Fred­er­ick Street and asked him if they had a par­tic­u­lar am­ber neck­lace. Hans didn't have it but he searched high and low and sourced it.

"A week lat­er, when she re­turned, he pre­sent­ed it to her and with a con­fi­dent smile asked her on a date. Hans loved Sheila so much, it was in every­thing he was.

"We talked about the arts, busi­ness, lit­er­a­ture, sci­ences, trav­el­ling, re­li­gion and Ju­daism but there was noth­ing he was more pas­sion­ate about than Sheila, who passed away in Au­gust of 2010 in Mykonos, Greece, while they were on va­ca­tion."

Mar­i­an­na Col­limore, who passed away at the end of 2010, was the sec­ond last Jew­ish es­capee from Nazi Eu­rope.

It was Stech­er's wish that his col­lec­tion of Jew­ish mem­o­ra­bil­ia should be do­nat­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.