Jack Grynberg, longtime Denver oil tycoon and philanthropist, died Oct. 11, 2021 at the age of 89. Funeral services were scheduled for Oct. 14.
Mr. Grynberg was instrumental in significant oil and gas development in the US and Europe, including discovery of the Kashagan Field in Kazakhstan, one of the largest finds ever in that region.
Grynberg read the geological maps in their original languages.
After founding Oceanic Exploration Co. in the early 1960s, Mr. Grynberg discovered the Nitchie Gulch gas field in Wyoming, propelling Mr. Grynberg’s career and fortune.
A Holocaust survivor, Mr. Grynberg was born in 1932 in Brest, Poland (now Belarus). When he was seven, German aggression forced his family to flee to Ukraine.
In 2013, Mr. Grynberg told IJN of his experience with war at the age of 12, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.
“I didn’t have a Bar Mitzvah yet,” Mr. Grynberg said, “but I carried a gun. My job was to guard German prisoners. I spoke Yiddish with them. I didn’t hurt them.”
“Most of them were innocent and released eventually,” added Grynberg. “The Nazis, on the other hand, were killed right away. We didn’t guard them.”
Mr. Grynberg and his family, who had briefly moved to Scotland, emigrated to Palestine on the exact day the United Nations adopted the plan to partition Palestine, Nov. 29, 1947.
He witnessed the sinking of the Altalena off the Tel Aviv beach. The ship was carrying weapons for Israel during its War of Independence. The sinking, under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, was a major source of the subsequent, intense hostility between the Labor Party and Menachem Begin’s Herut (later, Likud) Party. Grynberg, whose father hosted Begin in Brest, joined Begin’s Irgun. Grynberg fought in the War of Independence.
Having missed several years of schooling due to the Holocaust, Grynberg attended high school first in Scotland and later in Tel Aviv.
In 1949 he convinced the Colorado School of Mines to offer him a scholarship. He arrived in Denver with $27 in his pocket, he told IJN.
“I had a State of Colorado scholarship,” Mr. Grynberg said, “so I felt I owed the State of Colorado to repay it.”
In 2012, Mr. Grynberg and his then-wife Celeste gave $1.5 million to the CU medical school.
The Grynbergs divorced in 2018.
Mr. Grynberg is survived by his three children, Rachel, Stephen and Miriam.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
