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 Charles Knight-Keen |
Liberator found his bride among resistance fighters
CHARLES Knight-Keen, who has died aged 86, was a British soldier who helped liberate Vienna from the Nazis.
While in the Austrian capital, he met his wife Claudia. She had remained in Austria during the war and worked as part of the Jewish resistance.
The couple married in Vienna’s English church after the war ended and then moved to England when Mr Knight-Keen was demobbed.
The couple settled in West Hampstead, moving in 1968 to what was to become the Canfield Gardens housing co-op. He lived there for the rest of his life.
Born in Evesham, Worcestershire, in 1920, Mr Knight-Keen trained as an engineer before joining the army at the start of World War II.
He worked as an industrial X-ray expert. Part of his job entailed him being on call to lend his expertise in case of accidents in factories.
A socialist and life-long member of the Labour Party, he was a founding committee member of Fairhazel tenants’ association in 1972. He was also prominently involved in the tenants’ subsequent fight against a number of property companies, which eventually led to the forming of the country’s first self-financed housing co-operative when tenants living in Fairhazel bought the buildings that make up the housing co-operative in 1975.
Monica Ferman, a founding member of Fairhazel Co-op, said Mr Knight-Keen believed passionately in social equality – and this led to an interesting moment one day in court. She recalled: “We went to court to evict some illegal sub-tenants and the magistrate looked at Charles over his spectacles and asked him: ‘Are you hyphenated?’ Charles, who always considered himself a man of the people was appalled by the idea that having a double barrelled surname may influence the judge. He replied: ‘Certainly not’.”
Close friend Martin Stoll, who lived opposite Mr Knight-Keen in Canfield Gardens for 38 years, said: “Claudia was part of the resistance in Austria. She did some brave things.
“She was owed reparations from the Austrian government and they carried on for Charles after she died, even though he kept telling them he wasn’t Jewish.”
The couple, who never had children, were animal lovers and at one time had three poodles, three cats and a rabbit. Ms Ferman added: “They lived for their pets. Charles used to walk miles to Kilburn to get the right sort of pet food’.
Mr Knight-Keen died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead from a pulmonary embolism on August 27 after being taken in with bladder problems.
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