My mother's obituary of my grandfather appeared in The Guardian's Other Lives today.
In
autumn 1956 my father, Svend Bock, who has died aged 96, was the
Scandinavian Airlines System representative in Cairo. The Suez crisis
was unfolding, leaving hundreds of British nationals stranded in Egypt.
"At some risk to his own safety," as foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd
subsequently stated in a FO letter, Svend, a Danish citizen, had been
"indefatigable in his efforts to assist British residents,"
surreptitiously organising exit visas - and funding.
It was not the most significant occasion on which Svend had offered
vital assistance. He had begun working with Danish Airlines, in
Copenhagen, in the late 1930s and, following the Nazi invasion of
Denmark in 1940, he had joined the resistance - where his knowledge of
aircraft movements proved useful. And with Mary, his Welsh wife, Svend
was in the network smuggling Danish Jews to Sweden. Some of those
fugitives became lifelong friends.
Born
in Copenhagen, Svend was the youngest of six children of an exuberantly
talented Danish writer and humorist, and a beautiful mother whose
accidental death when he was six shattered his family. Svend, who was
clever and adept at languages, was to end his education early, and then
joined Scandinavia's biggest duvet and pillow manufacturer.
That
job took him, in his mid-20s, to work in London where, at the
English-Speaking Union he met Mary Davies playing ping pong. They
married in 1938, honeymooned in Berlin, and went on to Copenhagen -
soon followed by the Wehrmacht.
In 1946 Svend arrived in Warsaw
to set up a Poland-Scandinavia air route. He never forgot that
devastated city, where his hotel was one of the few buildings left
standing, and where he pulled his bed into the middle of his room to
avoid the bedbugs swarming the walls. The iron curtain was descending,
that venture was aborted and by the late 1940s Svend was with SAS in
Prestwick, Scotland, which, in that pre-jet era was a transatlantic air
hub.
Those were his happiest times, his young family was settled
in the tranquil seaside town, and at the airport the likes of Nobel
prizewinner William Faulkner, Swedish opera singer Jussi Björling and
Elizabeth Taylor passed through. Many shared Svend's fondness for
whisky, and his job also entailed getting the celebrities back in the
air in reasonably sober states. Nobel committees and European opera
houses had much to thank him for.
In 1953 came Cairo. We all
loved the life: bazaars, desert picnics, excursions to the pyramids and
embassy parties. Then came 1956. Two years later we moved to Milan
where, I think, his interests in opera and art rekindled - this led in
retirement to his graduation with an Open University arts degree.
Later,
leaving SAS, he settled in London and finally in Richmond, Surrey. We
three daughters had scattered to three continents, and our parents'
flat became a Heathrow annexe. "Make yourself at home," one of Svend's
favourite phrases, was still repeated when we spent last Christmas with
him.
Caring for our mother in her long illness, he discovered
other talents. After her death Svend continued to visit St John's
Hospital, in Twickenham, working with those suffering from Parkinson's
and Alzheimer's disease, making tea, relieving their carers. At one
point he was chauffeuring and tea-partying at least half-a-dozen
elderly ladies.
It was, as Cyril Marshall, a friend of his ever
since Egyptian days remarked, a privilege to have known a man who was a
natural gentleman. And laughter was in Svend's lifeblood.
He is survived by we three daughters, Clair, Nina and Joanna, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
