STEVEN KALOWSKI: 1942 – 2023
After his father was murdered by the Nazis, Steven Kalowski left Warsaw in Poland after the Second World War to start a new life in Sydney and to train as a doctor.
He would proudly recall in later years how he help save singer Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, from a drug overdose and also singer Roy Orbison from having to cancel a concert by fixing his voice.
Steven Kalowski’s life has been a triumph of spirit over the adversity and horror into which he had been born. Warsaw, on his day of birth, June 25, 1942, was in the second year of Nazi Germany’s decree establishing a ghetto in Warsaw.
The decree required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into a designated area, which German authorities had sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. The ghetto was enclosed by a wall more than three metres high, topped with barbed wire, and closely guarded to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw.
The population of the ghetto was over 400,000 Jews forced to live in 3.3 square km, with an average of 7.2 persons per room. His parents, mother, Halinka and father, Henryk Chencinski named him Stefan, the most Christian name they knew, in the hope that this name would enable him to survive.
Read the article by Alan Slade in The Sydney Morning Herald.