My brother, Michael Nelki, who has died aged 78, was a family doctor who had a GP partnership in Somerset for more than 30 years, and worked for many refugee charities.
Michael was born in London, to Erna (nee Liesegang), a primary school teacher, and Wolf Nelki, a dental surgeon, who were political refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Wolf was also Jewish. Michael grew up in south London, without speaking German and without any religion.
In 1962, after attending Emanuel school in Wandsworth, and before starting at St George’s hospital medical school (now St George’s, University of London), he went on a three-week journey by ship to the US to attend a progressive secondary school run by a refugee friend of our parents in Baltimore.
On a Greyhound bus to visit some relations in Mexico, he met his future wife, Jo Eisenhandler. Their relationship flourished across the Atlantic and, after Michael had qualified as a doctor, Jo, a nurse, moved to London. After marrying in 1970 in Lasswade, Scotland, they then drove in their self-adapted Land Rover across Europe and Africa to Tanzania.
Michael and Jo were keen to work in Africa, but they did not want to go with a religious charity. Fenner Brockway, the MP and campaigner, had befriended our parents when they came to the UK as refugees, and Michael was named after him – his full name was Michael Fenner Hermann Nelki. In 1970, through his connection with the then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, Brockway arranged for Michael and Jo to work in Dodoma government hospital on local salaries.
After two years they returned to the UK and Michael took up a GP partnership in Yatton, Somerset, where he stayed for 32 years, and he and Jo brought up their three children.
Michael loved his work as a doctor and, in return, was much loved by his patients and partners for his dry humour, warm manner and careful approach. Although he moved to Clifton, Bristol, in 2001, he continued to work as a GP in Yatton for a few more years.
Michael was a longtime volunteer for the Freedom from Torture charity, the Helen Bamber Foundation and Medical Justice, writing medicolegal reports for people seeking asylum, carrying on some of this work after he retired in 2006.
He was also a volunteer for Legs4Africa – he loved their blog headline “Retired GP turns to dismantling legs” – and on the Clifton Rocks Railway. He and Jo went back to Africa many times, always with a Land Rover and often to the Sahara (“dune bopping”).
Michael is survived by Jo, their children, Emma, Anita and Benjamin, their grandchildren, Shayla, Isaac, Mannie and Blake, and by me.
