Elena

A refugee twice before she was 17, training in medicine in Sheffield during World War 2, Elena Zadik was as brilliant a doctor as she was terrible a driver (she never took a test). Following her childhood in Ukraine during the Russian civil war in a tiny Jewish family to a briefly peaceful childhood in Germany, then to the UK as lone teenage refugee in 1937, the story shows Elena breaking glass ceilings to become a doctor. Practising in working class Sheffield she sees terrible deprivation and rejoices at the founding of the NHS, to which she gives 40 years’ service. She finds belonging in a Lancastrian mill and mining town as a GP, witnessing the destruction of the 1980s on the industry and culture of the town, as her own career and life wanes. Her parents die in Auschwitz, she spends decades fighting for restitution, and then shares the money she receives among hergrandchildren.