Jack Henry remembered

An obituary in The Guardian by his son-in-law Jeremy Gavron said he was “an East End boy who became a captain in the British army during the Second World War and was later both home editor and world service editor at Reuters. He always seemed to me the best kind of living history - not a central player, but an ordinary participant in some of the great events of the 20th century.

“His brother and sister became a tailor and a milliner like their parents, but Jack - born Henry Jack Hirschberg near Brick Lane, east London - was drawn to the wider world. Aged nine he would go to Hyde Park to watch the soldiers and workers during the General Strike of 1926. As a teenager he took part in the movement against Oswald Mosley in the East End. He was a good boxer, but he was told not to strike the first punch and when, while he was forming a human barricade, a blackshirt spat in his face, Jack simply held his ground.

“In the war he served as an officer in the Royal Artillery. Promoted to captain, he was sent to Berlin within a few days of its fall, where his responsibilities included requisitioning houses for the army. Arriving one day to find a crowd of Germans refusing to leave their homes Jack stood up in his jeep, rapped his stick on the side and said in German: ‘I am a British officer and a Jew.’ The crowd dispersed.

“After the war Jack returned to Germany as a Reuters correspondent, working in Berlin, Frankfurt, Bonn and later Vienna and Geneva. His work brought him into contact with world leaders such as Vyacheslav Molotov, Zhou Enlai and President Dwight Eisenhower. When he returned to London, he rose through the ranks at Reuters. After his retirement he taught on the journalism course at City University and continued to go to Highbury, where he had first watched Arsenal play in the late 1920s. He was 87 when he saw his last live game. He remained utterly lucid and interested in the news until the day he died.” ■