Marion Kozak

Marion Kozak or Marion Kozak Miliband (1934- ) (born: Dobra Jenta Kozak, also known as Maria Kozak) is a Polish-born Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1950s having married Ralph Miliband in 1961, while their two sons, David Miliband and Ed Miliband have risen to prominence in modern-day British politics.

Birth and early life
Writing in the UK Sunday Telegraph in 2010, journalists Robert Mendick and Matthew Day have researched her early life. Kozak was the daughter of wealthy Jewish parents, in the Polish town of Czestochowa with a Jewish population of about 35,000. In 1939 when the Germans took control, the Kozaks’ factory was commandeered and transformed into a munitions plant. In the town, an estimated 2,000 Jews were murdered on the spot and another 40,000 transported to the gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp. At some point nuns in a convent took the Kozaks in and hid them from the Nazis. Marion refuses to divulge where or when this took place. She also credits the “kindness and generosity of acquaintances in Warsaw” with her survival. She was also known as Maria. The only official version of events, a biography of her husband Ralph Miliband written by a family friend, Michael Newman states that: “For the rest of the war Marion, Hadassa and their mother had been in constant danger and owed their lives to several brave people, Jewish and non-Jewish, many of whom were themselves killed.”

In 2009, David Miliband serving in his capacity as the Foreign Secretary expressed his thanks to the Polish people for having saved his mother during the Holocaust. During an official visit to Poland he said: "My mother was born here, her life was saved by those who risked theirs [by] sheltering her from Nazi oppression" that was regarded as an "extraordinary revelation." The report states that "Miliband’s Polish Jewish mother, Marion Kozak, is from Czestochowa in southern Poland and emigrated in the 1950s" and that "his paternal grandparents were also Polish Jews" as reported in the Daily Mail. Israel has awarded over 6,000 Righteous among the Nations awards to Poles more than to any others.

Marriage to Ralph Miliband
A report in the UK The Guardian, states that Marion Kozak had once been a student (at the London School of Economics) of the Marxist scholar and fellow Holocaust survivor Ralph Miliband. They married in 1961. Her background and politics were similar to his, and she had a comparable, though less high-profile, career as an activist and academic. Yet she was more outgoing and had broader interests. In 1965 their son David Miliband was born. Marion hosted relatives, left-wing writers, dissidents such as Joe Slovo of the South African Communist Party, academics from abroad, the occasional politician. Sons David and Ed Miliband (born 1969) were encouraged to join in.

Political views
Despite her quiet demeanor and private persona, Kozak has been described in London's The Jewish Chronicle as a long-standing human rights campaigner and an early activist for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Kozak is described as being "a long-standing supporter of left-wing pro-Palestinian organisations" and is a signatory of the founding statements of both Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) (founded 2002) and a supporter of Independent Jewish Voices (launched 2007) (IJV).

Influence and stance towards her sons
A report in the BBC, calls Marion the "campaigning mother" who unlike her husband Ralph, remained loyal to the UK Labour Party, and is thought to have been a greater influence on the political development of her sons. "There's no doubt that Ed got a lot of his drive from Marion and a lot of his feel for nitty-gritty grassroots politics from Marion too," says Dr. Marc Stears, politics fellow at the University of Oxford. Friends have stated that the contest between the brothers has been a huge "strain" for their mother and that she has even told people it would have been much easier had they simply become academics rather than politicians.

She has therefore had to maintain a delicate balance as in 2010 her son Ed Miliband defeated his older brother David Miliband to become leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom.

As an example, the UK Daily Mail reported that during the Labour party contest for party leader in 2010 between her sons, she would miss the climax of the contest because she could not bear to watch the result, and would not be present for an announcement.