Henry John Goldsmith, known as John Goldsmith, was born in Oberkassel, Germany in 1924. He was an only child. His father was a grain importer and his grandfather was a civil commercial judge for which he received a special award. His mother was a dental surgeon from the University of Cologne. His parents divorced when he was 7 and his mother remarried. John went to live for a time with his grandmother. On the whole he had a happy childhood. His step-father, a dentist, was murdered in 1933 by the Nazis and although there was a court case no-one was charged. John and his mother went to his uncle in Amsterdam after this and John lived there, whilst his mother worked in Brussels until 1937. John attended school and had his Bar Mitzvah there. They frequently visited his father and grandmother in Germany. In 1937 John’s mother was given permission under a British government scheme to come to the country to work as a dentist without re-training. Through Mrs Berkhill she found a position in Cambridge. John attended Leys School there was interned in 1940 on his 16th birthday. He was taken to Huyton, then to the Isle of Man and then in July 1940 he was put on the SS Sobieski, a Polish ship and taken to Canada. He came back in Jan 1941 and returned to school to take his exams, which he had missed. He got a place for dentistry in Guys Hospital, London University, and in his first term transferred to medicine. After qualifying he worked as a houseman in Guys and then somewhere else before joining the RAMC in 1948 for one year. He served in Egypt and for a short time in Ireland. He never experienced any antisemitism. On returning, he went to work in a teaching hospital in Birmingham and slowly worked his way up the ladder. He then worked at Great Ormond Street, then Central Middlesex and then Leicester and Sheffield teaching hospitals.