Marion Kozak, a Holocaust survivor, left-wing campaigner, and mother to Ed and David Miliband, has died aged 91.
Her sons announced her passing on Saturday, paying tribute to a “dearly beloved mother, grandmother and sister” and “a force field of life and love”. They noted her life had taken “a remarkable trajectory”.
“She lived an extraordinary life with a spirit of the utmost kindness, warmth and generosity,” they said. “We will deeply miss her, but will carry her spirit and values with us always.”
Born Dobra Jenta Kozak in Poland in 1934, she escaped from the Czestochowa Ghetto in 1942 during the Nazi occupation along with her mother and sister.
She was sheltered by nuns and then a neighbour of her aunt in Warsaw, surviving the war thanks to what her son Ed told the 2012 Labour Party conference was “the kindness of strangers”.
On an official visit to Poland in 2009 while foreign secretary, David Miliband paid tribute to those who had protected his mother, saying her life was “saved by those who risked theirs sheltering her from Nazi oppression”.
Ms Kozak settled in the UK after the war, marrying left-wing academic Ralph Miliband and becoming a human rights campaigner and early activist for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In his 2012 conference speech, his third as Labour leader, Ed Miliband said his mother “probably doesn’t agree with me”, but “like most mums is too kind to say so”.
But in the same speech he drew a link from her escape from the Nazis to his own political philosophy.
He said: “I believe we cannot shrug our shoulders at injustice, and just say that’s the way the world is. And I believe that we can overcome any odds if we come together as people.
“That’s how my mum survived the war. The kindness of strangers. Nuns in a convent who took her in and sheltered her from the Nazis, took in a Jewish girl at risk to themselves.”
