Tributes have been paid to an ‘extraordinary’ Holocaust survivor who served as a councillor for 40 years, following his death at the age of 87. Paul Porgess was first elected to Stockport council in 1978, winning the old Cheadle East seat in a shock by-election result. He was one of the first Liberal councillors to represent the Cheadle area and would continue to do so for the next four decades.
He was born Pavel Kraus, in Trebivlice, Czechoslovakia to parents Victor and Olga. During the Second World War, his family was deported to the ghetto in Terezin and then to the Warsaw ghetto. After falling ill he was separated from his parents but was helped to escape from the camp by the Polish Resistance. He was taken to a Christian family in Warsaw who sheltered him during the war.
Tragically, his parents are understood to have died in Warsaw in 1942. Paul came to England after the war, earning a doctorate in chemistry at the University of London, before moving to Cheadle with his wife Joan.
