Personal Life
Kretzmer was born in South Africa in 1925. He is one of four brothers born to Lithuanian-born William and Tilly Kretzmer, who fled the racist pogroms of Czarist Russia to settle in small-town South Africa early in the 20th century. Elliot, the oldest of the brothers, flew as part of a bomber crew in the South African Air Force during the second World War, eventually becoming the Mayor of Johannesburg in 1991.
In 1961 Kretzmer married Elisabeth Margaret Wilson and they had one son and one daughter. This marriage dissolved in 1973. He married Sybil Sever in 1988.
On 8 April 2011, Kretzmer received an Honorary Doctorate from Rhodes University in South Africa.
Read more about this topic: Herbert Kretzmer
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