Tributes paid to ‘extraordinary’ Holocaust survivor who served his community for 40 years

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.

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He lectured on metallurgy at the Technical University of Manchester and the couple had three children Michael, Claire and Jane. Paul’s daughter Jane O’ Neill is following in his footsteps by standing in the new Cheadle East and Cheadle Hulme North seat at this year's local elections.

She has described her dad as a ‘humble and caring man’. “He cared for his family and cared about the people he represented on Stockport council,” she said in a tribute to her late father.

“We are all saddened that he has left us, but the messages of support from those people he helped and worked with are proof that he leaves an incredible legacy behind him. We will miss him