Jack Mikulincer
Jack Mikulincer was born in Uzghorod (known as Užhorod in Czech and Ungvár in Hungarian), in what is now Ukraine, in 1923. He was the sixth of eight children born to Eliezer and Leah Mikulincer. His family owned a bakery and he was trained as a baker. In 1940, the Nazi-alligned Hungarian government passed laws that precluded Jews from owning businesses and the family was left with no work.
At the age of 17, Jack moved to Budapest with fake identity papers and worked for three years in a bakery. In 1943, he was arrested when he was discovered to be Jewish and sent to a slave labor battalion assigned to the German army on the Ukrainian front. In late 1943, during fierce combat, he escaped and hid in the forest for a few weeks alone until he was able to find the Russian Army and join them to fight against Germany. Given he spoke six languages, he was assigned to be a translator for the NKVD where he interrogated German POWs and Nazis for the Soviet Army.
After the war, Jack discovered that most of his family had been killed at Auschwitz. His older siblings, Regina and Nathan, died there along with his parents and their own children, and his sister Tzilla died from malnutrition just a few days after the camp was liberated. His brothers Sam and Archie survived and moved to Sweden after the war and his sisters Esti and Ilu also survived and moved to Australia.
Jack met and married Frantiska Mittelman, a fellow survivor who was born in a small village near Uzghorod in 1927. She had also been deported to Auschwitz with her family, and her parents, Shlomo and Raizel, as well as her brother, Aaron, died there. However, Frantiska’s sisters Frieda and Lily survived with her.
In 1948, Jack and Frantiska moved to Israel, where they had a daughter, Rosalie, and Jack served two years in the Israel Defense Forces. He was in combat during the War of Independence and helped defend cities in northern Israel, including Akko and Beit She’an. In 1952, the family moved to Australia, where they lived for over a decade until moving to New York in 1964.
In New York, Jack owned a bakery and then worked as a kitchen administrator and baker for Meals on Wheels until 2020, when he was 98. Sadly, Jack was killed on February 5, 2022, just two weeks after he celebrated his 99th birthday, when he was struck by a car on his way to synagogue for shabbat services. Jack lived and died as a proud Jew and left behind four grandchildren and five great grandchildren, including Heschel students Nate and Lily Weiss. Their father, Heschel parent Eli Weiss, is named Eliezer Shlomo in memory of Jack and Frantiska’s fathers, who perished at Auschwitz, and Nate was named after Jack's brother Nathan who died there. Lily was named for Frantiska's sister with the same name, who survived the Holocaust with her.
