Ben Jakober, 90
Ben is the co-founder of the Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober, a gallery and sculpture park in northern Mallorca. He is also an artist and sculptor.
“I was born in Vienna in 1930, but after a few years things got a bit difficult, because we were Jews. I remember my father taking me to the main square one evening and there was a small man with a black moustache in a uniform talking to the crowd. My father listened to him as I held his hand and I remember him saying, ‘I think, son, we’re going to have to go soon.’
We moved first to Prague, then I was sent to school in Switzerland and finally I arrived in England with my mother in 1939, just a few months before the war started. My father arrived in 1940; he’d bought a ship in Romania and loaded it with some goods to try to sell – but was promptly arrested and sent to the Isle of Man with all the cargo confiscated. Eventually, my mother sorted things out and got him back.
