My father, Frederick David, who has died aged 97, was a Holocaust refugee from Vienna who arrived in 1939 in London, the city that became his home. He trained as an economist, joining the manufacturing and distribution company Bunzl where, by the time of his retirement in 1988, he was managing director.
Frederick – known as Friedl – was raised in Josefstadt in central Vienna. The son of Hugo David and Gertrud Spitzer, Friedl grew up in a large family of aunts and uncles – a colourful parade of eccentrics he would describe with customary wit. His family knew many of the celebrated Viennese artists of the time, including Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, through his great-great uncle Alfred Spitzer, their lawyer.
Following the Anschluss in 1938, Friedl, aged 14, saw the cheering crowds that greeted Hitler and persuaded his mother to seek refuge in Bielitz, Silesia, where the family owned a rice factory. From there, mother and son found safe passage to London thanks to a Czech professor, Emil Korner, who employed his mother as a housekeeper in Scotland while Friedl was sent to a private orphanage in West Norwood, a missionary home for Jewish boys run by the Baptist minister AG Parry. Friedl’s father was eventually also allowed to leave Austria.
In 1949 Friedl was naturalised as a British citizen. Although he had missed out on a formal education – the orphanage took a narrow view of what teenage boys needed to know - his curiosity and acumen earned him a place at the London School of Economics, where he gained a degree in economics. There, too, he met Vladimir Derer, who became a lifelong best friend, and a founding member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, a cause Friedl also supported.
After a stint as a financial journalist, Friedl joined Bunzl, a business run by Viennese refugee brothers. He launched or expanded branches in the Middle East, South Africa and America. Bunzl became a constituent of the FTSE 100 and Friedl was made chairman, then managing director.
He met his future wife, Carmen, at a swimming pool in Perugia, Italy, and more than 57 years later they were still swimming. North London became the couple’s home but Friedl always kept his roots in view: he teasingly named his study, a mahogany-furnished room filled with curious-looking animal ornaments, “little Vienna”. His love of opera, born in Vienna, lasted a lifetime. If his enthusiasm for gardening owed more to Highgate than Josefstadt, his support of animal charities and adoption of rescue dogs revealed an empathy with the abandoned that never left him.
A wonderful husband, father and grandfather, he was unfailingly generous and open-minded. He had a delightfully mischievous sense of humour and will be remembered by many for the twinkle in his eyes.
He is survived by Carmen (nee Von Kukuljevic), whom he married in 1964, and by two daughters – my sister, Nicolette, and me – and two grandchildren.
