Hugo Gryn was born into a prosperous Jewish family in the market town of Berehovo in Carpathian Ruthenia, which was then in Czechoslovakia and is now in Ukraine. Hugo and his mother survived but his brother Gaby was gassed on arrival at Auschwitz, while his father died a few days after he and Hugo were liberated from Gunskirchen - a sub-camp of Mauthausen - in May, 1945.
University of Cambridge.
Gryn’s family were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Gryn came to Britain in 1946. After training as a rabbi in America, he spent several years in Bombay and New York, moving to London in 1964, where he served in one of the largest congregations in Europe, the West London Synagogue, initially as assistant rabbi and later as senior rabbi, for 32 years.
Gryn became a regular radio broadcaster and appeared for many years on British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4"s Thought for the Day and The Moral Maze.
After his death, Naomi Gryn edited his autobiography, also called Chasing Shadows, which deals movingly with his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. He died on 18 August 1996 and is buried at Hoop Lane Cemetery in Golders Green, London.
The grave lies in a relatively prominent location, just north-east of the main entrance. He was described as "probably the most beloved rabbi in Great Britain" by Rabbi Albert Friedlander, who was also the author of the entry about Gryn in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
