Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid

Sir Henry Joseph d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 2nd Baronet (born June 10, 1909 , † December 11, 1976 ) was a British officer and politician .

Life and activity

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid was the eldest son of the precious metal dealer Sir Osmond d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 1st Baronet . He attended Harrow School and studied at Balliol College of Oxford University . He then joined the ancestral family business of the d'Avigdor-Goldsmids, Mocatta & Goldsmid (founded 1684), where he worked until 1955.

In 1940 he inherited from his father the nobility title of Baronet , of Somerhill in the County of Kent, which was awarded in 1934 , as well as the Somerhill House and extensive estates at Tonbridge in Kent .

During World War II , d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was a member of the Royal West Kent Regiment and the 53rd Reconnaissance Regiment . By the end of the war he had attained the rank of major. In 1945 he was awarded the Military Cross .

In 1946, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was elected to Kent County Council, to which he was a member until 1953.

In the British general election of 1955, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was elected as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the constituency of Walsall South in the House of Commons , the British Parliament, which he held for almost nineteen years, until the February 1974 election in which he no longer ran for re-election as a member of parliament. During his time in parliament, he served from 1955 to 1956 for a year as the private parliamentary secretary of the housing minister Duncan Sandy . In the House of Commons, he temporarily chaired the Committees on Nationalized Industries (1970–1972) and the Committee on Public Expenditure (1972–1974).

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid also held public offices at the local level, such as that of Justice of the Peace (1949) for the county of Kent and that of a high sheriff of that county (1953).

In addition, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid held numerous honorary positions: at the municipal level, he took over the functions of a justice of the peace (1949) and later a high sheriff (1953) in the county of Kent. The Jewish Colonization Association he was temporarily before as president, while the Anglo-Israeli Chamber of Commerce ( Algo-Israel Chamber of Commerce ) and for Bak Leumi and the Anglo-Israel Bank (1961) post as CEO ( chairman perceived). From 1969 to 1971 he also served as CEO of Pergamon Press . In addition, from 1973 he sat on the supervisory board of the horse racing organization Horserace Totalizator .

family

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid had been married to Rosemary Margaret Horlick since 1940, with whom he had two daughters. His daughter Sarah died in 1963. In her memory he donated a stained glass window designed by the artist Marc Chagall to the All Saints Church in Tudeley, which was installed piece by piece between 1967 and 1985. Since he had no sons, his younger brother Jack d'Avigdor-Goldsmid (1912–1987) inherited his title of nobility.

literature

• Obituary in The Times, December 13, 1976.
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• William D. Rubinstein / Michael Jolles / Hilary L. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History , p. 199.