Milan Platovsky Stein (1922 – 2012) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places *Czech, ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

an businessman and a

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

survivor. He was born into a

Jewish 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""The ...

family in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. His father, Leo Platovsky, was a businessman. His mother, Rosa Stein, came from the Czech bourgeoisie. He lived a carefree childhood. El Mercurio (Santiago), 26 October 1997, p.D17 Following the Nazi occupation of what was then Czechoslovakia, like other Jews he was harassed by the authorities, subjected to forced labour and ultimately sent to extermination camps 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 ...

and

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

. El Mercurio (Santiago), 30 December 2012, p.C13 He escaped the Nazis in 1944 and made his way to Paris. There he was reunited with his first cousin

Hana Maria Pravda Hana Maria Pravda (, Becková; after first marriage, Munk; after second marriage, Pravda; 29 January 1916, Prague − 22 May 2008, Oxford) was a Czech actress. Biography Hana Becková was born in Prague, 29 January 1916. She trained in Leningrad ...

, the only other member of his family to survive the war. He emigrated to Chile from

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

in 1950, while Hana went to Australia and later to England. They remained close for the next 60 years until Hana's death in 2010. Milan published his biography, ''Sobrevivir: Memorias de un resiliente'', in 1997. It became a best-seller in Chile.

References

1922 births 2012 deaths Chilean Jews Chilean people of Czech descent Naturalized citizens of Chile Chilean businesspeople Sachsenhausen concentration camp survivors Czech Jews Businesspeople from Prague Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Immigrants to Chile 20th-century Chilean Jews 21st-century Chilean Jews {{Chile-bio-stub