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Rudy Kennedy (October 27, 1927 – November 10, 2008) was a British rocket scientist, Holocaust survivor, and a protester for Jewish causes. He spent a substantial period of his youth in German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora, and Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, he worked as a rocket scientist and led the campaign for compensation for the survivors of the German policy of "extermination through labour". ==Early life== Kennedy was born on October 24, 1927 in Rosenberg (now Olesno, Poland), a place near Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland). He was six years of age when Hitler was elected and had to face antisemitism and physical attacks from other boys when he went to school, as he was the only Jewish boy in class. After fighting back against boys from the school who had attacked him, Kennedy's father then enrolled him to an all-Jewish school in Breslau. Rudy's whole family, which consisted of his father (Ewalt), mother and a younger sister (Kaitie), were moved to the ghetto in Breslau in 1939. By 1941, Kennedy started working as an electrician with his father. Rudy's family was forcibly relocated by the Schutzstaffel (SS) to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. At his father's direction, he lied about his age at the concentration camp—claiming to be 18 years of age although he was just 15. His sister and mother were immediately sent to a gas chamber and killed, while Rudy and his father were employed for work. Rudy's father was sent to IG Farben rubber factory, while Rudy was put to work working on building roads (where the life expectancy was 6 weeks at most). Rudy's father managed to get him a job in the IG Farben factory where he quickly identified a fault with an electrical system and was kept on to work indoors working for Siemens. Two months later, Rudy's father was killed by the SS when he collapsed due to exhaustion and was deemed "unfit for work", sent to the camp hospital and given a phenol injection. Rudy endured cruel beatings at work and realized that he too would be killed if his work wasn't good enough.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Rudy Kennedy )〕 As the Soviet Red Army approached, the SS evacuated the camp in January 1945. Rudy was sent to Mittelbau-Dora to work in a missile factory where he joined a group of prisoners who tried to hinder the production by urinating or throwing sand into the rocket guidance systems. In April 1945 he was sent to Bergen-Belsen where he was deprived of food and survived only by eating grass. Though the British liberated the camp, they didn't know what to do with the thousands of diseased prisoners, but they didn't want them to go out and mix with the general population. Rudy escaped from the camp with 5 other inmates and they made their way to Hannover. He married Gitti and had two surviving children (Katie and Steve) at the time of his death.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rudy Kennedy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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