Jackson, Harold

Person

Jackson, Harold

• Josephy, Hans Herman

1921-2012

The son of a wealthy businessman in Berlin, Hans was expelled from the Friedrichs Real Gymnasium under the anti-Jewish legislation of the 1930’s. Unable to pursue his intended career he became a carpentery apprentice in the trade school of the Jewish community in 1937. He worked unpaid with the Reich's Representation of Jews in Germany ('Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden') until February 1939, then later in the same year, emigrated to England on the Kitchener camp scheme.

Despite initially initially helping at a BBC monitoring centre translating German short-wave radio signals for the War Office, he was deemed an Enemy Alien and was interned on the Isle of Man, later travelling in the HMT Dunera to Australia. He volunteered to join the Pioneer Corps in 1941, was posted back to the UK, and sent to Scotland to build stage sets for the Entertainment Corps. In 1942 he enrolled as an evening student at the GSA taking classes in Drawing and Painting, then in later years switching to Commercial Art and Design.

After the war, he formally anglicised his name to Harold Jackson, took up British citizenship, married and opened a very successful Graphic Design business on Pollokshaws Road in Glasgow. Hugh Jackson Screenprint Ltd. became one of the first companies in Scotland to develop the technique of screen printing on plastic.

Following his first wife’s death in the mid 1980s, he began to paint, producing pictures of his experiences before and during the war which were exhibited at the Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Centre. He also helped create the Garnethill Synagogue’s Esterson Archives Room, now part of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre.

• GSA Records
• Jewish Chronicle obituary, 10 August 2012, Allen Sternstein