Robert Maxwell - Early Life

Early Life

Robert Maxwell was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch into a poor Yiddish-speaking Jewish family in the small town of Slatinské Doly (now Solotvino, Ukraine), in the easternmost province of (pre-World War II), Czechoslovakia. His parents were Mechel Hoch and Hannah Slomowitz. He had six siblings. In 1939, the area was reclaimed by Hungary. Most members of his family died in Auschwitz after Hungary was occupied in 1944, by its former ally, Nazi Germany, but he had already escaped to France. In Marseille he joined the Czechoslovak army in exile in May 1940.

After the defeat in France and the retreat to Great Britain, Maxwell took part in the protest against the leadership of the Czechoslovak army, and with 500 other soldiers, he was transferred to the British Pioneer Corps, and later to the North Staffordshire Regiment in 1943. He was then involved in action across Europe, from the Normandy beaches to Berlin, and achieved the rank of sergeant. He gained a commission in 1945, and was promoted to captain. In January 1945, he received the Military Cross from Field Marshal Montgomery. It was during this time that British Intelligence changed his name several times, finally settling on Ian Robert Maxwell.

In 1945, he married Elisabeth "Betty" Meynard; a French Protestant with whom he had nine children, with the goal of "recreating the family he lost in the Holocaust". Five of his children were later employed within his companies. Two met with tragedy: his three-year-old daughter Karine died of leukemia and his eldest son, Michael, was severely injured in 1961 (at the age of 15), after being driven home from a post-Christmas party when his driver fell asleep at the wheel. Michael never regained consciousness and died seven years later.

After the war, Maxwell first worked as a newspaper censor for the British military command in Berlin in Allied-occupied Germany. Later, he used various contacts in the Allied occupation authorities to go into business, becoming the British and United States distributor for Springer Verlag, a publisher of scientific books. In 1951 he bought three quarters of Butterworth-Springer, a minor publisher; the remaining quarter was held by the experienced scientific editor Paul Rosbaud. They changed the name of the company to Pergamon Press and rapidly built it into a major publishing house.