Robert Maxwell was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch into a poor[2][3] Yiddish-speaking orthodox Jewish family in the small town of Slatinské Doly[4] (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.[2] In Marseille he joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile in May 1940.[5]
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.[2] He gained a commission in 1945, and was promoted captain. In January 1945, he received the Military Cross from Field Marshal Montgomery. Attached to the British Foreign Office, he served in Berlin during the next two years in the press section.[4]
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".[6] Five of his children were later employed within his companies. 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.[7][8][9][10]
After the war 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[11] 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.
In 1964, representing the Labour Party, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham, and re-elected in 1966. He gave an interview to The Times in 1968, in which he said the House of Commons provided him with a problem. "I can't get on with men", he commented. "I tried having male assistants at first. But it didn't work. They tend to be too independent. Men like to have individuality. Women can become an extension of the boss."[12] Maxwell lost his seat in 1970 to the Conservative William Benyon.
At the beginning of 1969, it emerged that Maxwell's attempt to buy the News of the World had failed.[13] The Carr family, which owned the title, had been incensed at the thought of a Czech immigrant with socialist politics gaining ownership, and the company's board had voted against his bid without any dissent. The News of the World 's editor Stafford Somerfield wrote about the corporate disquiet[14] in an October 1968 front page leader article, in which he referred to Maxwell's Czech origins and used his birth name. "This is a British paper, run by British people," he wrote. "Let us keep it that way."[15] The tycoon who had gained control was the Australian Rupert Murdoch, who later the same year acquired The Sun, which had also interested Maxwell.[16]
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