Glimpses - One of the refugees to come out was Abraham Szlapak, who arrived from Poland via South Africa in 1937. Long-settled Simon Medicks, a fellow Pole, not only employed him on his farm in Limuru but helped Abraham bring his wife and 2 sons out the following year, and they lived initially in Medick's Theatre Royal building in Nairobi.

Glimpses - Avraham [Szlapak] had earlier arrived in South Africa and then travelled to Kenya, where he got a job as a farm hand, and returned to Poland to fetch his family [his wife, Rachel, and their sons, Maurice and Charles]. The hard-working Jewish couple set up a second-hand clothes [and tailoring] shop in Nairobi's River Road, an "East End" area of Kenya's capital. The Second World War brought the British army, and the shop was handling officer's uniforms. Then they started making a bissel gelt (some cash), and managed to buy two hotels, the Fairview in Nairobi and the Manor in Mombasa at the coast. It was indeed a story from rags to riches. (Ivor Davies in SA Jewish Report, Oct. 10-17, 2003)

Gazette 1 Mar 1966 probate