Jackie Young, Lost and Waiting to be Found (My Voice, 2024)

Jackie Young was born in 1941 in Austria and was a child survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp where he spent two years and eight months before liberation by the Soviet Army in May 1945. He came to England at nearly four years old and was adopted by a loving couple, the Janofskys, who told him nothing about his background.

Jackie only learnt he was adopted at nine when a boy at school told him and he started to understand why he always felt different from everyone else. Five years later, his grandmother Polly told him he was Austrian. Jackie was gobsmacked but when he asked his parents for further information, they refused, afraid the truth would only lead to their rejection. As a result, Jackie’s life has been a 70 year-long quest to find out the truth.

Bit by bit, Jackie has uncovered the missing pieces of his background. He learned his mother was killed at 32 at Maly Trostenets near Minsk, most likely shot by the Nazis along with a further estimated 200,000 Jews.  He also feared his father was a Nazi as his mother was unmarried. It was only going on the BBC TV show ‘DNA Family Secrets’ in 2022 that he discovered his father’s DNA was Ashkenazi Jewish and he had two cousins living up the road in London.

A retired London taxi driver, Jackie has been married to the love of his life Lita for 60 years and has many treasures now – their two daughters and three grandchildren.