An elderly woman who secretly left £1,400,000 to her local town has been revealed as a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany as a child.
Hilda Levi died in a care home in 2022, aged 98, and is buried in an unmarked grave in Whitstable, Kent – but left a lasting legacy.
Her life was shrouded in mystery, with little known about her other than that she never married or had children, lived in a home in the seaside town and rented a flat out in London.
Now, amateur genealogist Julie Hunt has pieced together the life of Miss Levi, an orphaned Jewish refugee whose family was killed in the Holocaust.
An internee record from May 1941 confirmed Miss Levi, then aged 16, was a ‘genuine refugee from Nazi oppression’.
A 1963 report in the Kent Messenger revealed she received a distinction in business studies in the finals of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries examinations.
The report described Hilda as ‘a refugee from Cologne who lost her entire family during the persecutions in the last war’.
It said she was the daughter of Dr Friedrich Hermann Levi and Mrs Irma Levi.
Hilda worked as a confidential secretary in Maidstone and later at the Duke Of Edinburgh Awards Office in Westminster.
But it is still unclear how she gained her wealth or why she spent her final years in a Jewish care home in Prescott, Manchester, where she died.
However, Mrs Hunt’s research did reveal that Hilda had a wealthy uncle, called Herman Hecht, who moved from Germany to San Francisco when he was just 16.
Mr Hecht made a fortune as a partner in a large coffee import export firm. He died in 1951 and left the equivalent of £34.8m in today’s money – leaving most to his remaining siblings and their family, but also to distant relatives and charities.
Miss Levi was buried in Whistable Cemetery in an unmarked grave, next to the plot she previously bought for her adoptive mother, Ellen Nora Jeffrey,who died in 1980 aged 95.
After her death, locals were stunned to realise she had left more than £1,000,000 to local causes.
Miss Levi’s will was written in 1982 and validated at the time through former Whitstable solicitors E A Barton, which later merged with Furley Page in Canterbury.
After her death, they were instructed to hand out her wealth to various local causes and charities – one of them was the League of Friends of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, which has received £500,000.
The same amount was left to Age UK in the hope it would help the local branch, while Moorfields Eye Hospital in London and the Friends of Whitstable Healthcare were each bequeathed £200,000.
Her wealth came as a surprise to neighbour Carol Mott, who said: ‘Judging by appearances, you would have never guessed she was so wealthy but it’s nice to know that she ultimately left her money to so many good causes.’
Louise Coleman, the chairman of the Friends of the K&C, said: ‘It’s a huge amount of money for us and the biggest ever legacy gift in our 70-year history.
‘Contrary to the norm, the League of Friends was informed at the end of the process, not the beginning, and the money has already been paid into the bank. This in turn has meant that we were able to approve two very large purchases for the hospital – an ophthalmology laser system and a urodynamics machine to a sum just short of £100,000.
‘We didn’t know of Hilda, but her generosity will greatly improve treatment for patients.’
The Friends of Whitstable Healthcare will use its donation to buy a new X-ray machine for the Estuary View Medical Centre.
Chairman Georgina Baker added: ‘We have no idea who Miss Levi was but her generosity will bring huge benefits to patients. We are extremely grateful for her gift, which is amazing and a massive help to a charity like ours.’
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Chief officer of Age UK Herne Bay and Whitstable, Linda Cowdry said she’s working to make a claim on her behalf through the charity’s ‘legacy protocol’.
‘I will be notified as to the outcome after their next meeting to consider applications on April 2nd,’ she added.
‘I’m hopeful we will receive a lasting legacy that will have a big impact on local service provision for older people in Whitstable. All charities are facing challenging times and this legacy will make a big difference to us.’
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