George Peter Clare (''né'' Georg Klaar) (21 December 1920 – 26 March 2009) was a British author and

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...

who wrote '' Last Waltz in Vienna'' and ''Berlin Days'', both autobiographies. ''Last Waltz'' won the 1982

WH Smith Literary Award The WH Smith Literary Award was an award founded in 1959 by British high street retailer W H Smith. Its founding aim was stated to be to "encourage and bring international esteem to authors of the British Commonwealth"; originally open to all res ...

. He was born in Vienna in 1920; his father, Ernst Klaar, was an assimilated Jewish banker. He fought during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

for the British Army and worked as a news editor for many years, including for

Axel Springer AG Axel Springer SE () is a German digital and popular periodical publishing house which is the largest in Europe, with numerous multimedia news brands, such as ''Bild'', ''Die Welt'', and ''Fakt'' and more than 15,000 employees. It generated tot ...

. He was

naturalised Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the i ...

in 1947. He died on 26 March 2009, aged 88. His mother was Stella Ernestyne. The Klaars were an upper-class family and George claimed that they led easy lives until the war. He came from a family of doctors, his grandfather was an army surgeon and the first Jew to reach a high military rank and his grandfather was a distinguished doctor also. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by

NUI Galway The University of Galway ( ga, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe) is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. A tertiary education and research institution, the university was awarded the full five QS stars for excellence in 201 ...

. George was married to Lisl Beck, his childhood sweetheart, from 1939 to 1965. They had one son and two daughters. He went on to marry his Foreign News Service secretary, Christel Vorbringer in 1965. They remained married until his death.

Books

In ''Last Waltz in Vienna'' he recounts his childhood and life as a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and goes on to describe Hitler's rise to power and the catastrophe that followed, including his parents' death in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

. It also tells of his escape to

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

where he married Lisl Beck, and subsequent enlistment in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

, first in the Pioneer Corps and then in the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

. In ''Berlin Days'' he recounts his work at the

denazification Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...

bureaucracy, where he became highly skilled in identifying lies and omissions in application forms.

References

External links

Obituary in ''The Independent''
1 July 2009

12 April 2009
''The Times'' obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clare, George British Jewish writers Austrian male writers Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United Kingdom British Zionists Austrian Zionists Writers from Vienna Royal Pioneer Corps soldiers 1920 births 2009 deaths British Army personnel of World War II Royal Artillery soldiers