Holocaust, Hollywood, homeless: The incredible life – and bizarre death – of an Aussie rolling stone

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Burying a complete stranger – let alone a child survivor of the Holocaust – was not on the itinerary for a group of Jewish Sydneysiders holidaying this week on the mid-north coast of New South Wales.

Danny Grynberg leading the funeral service for Chuck Vodicka

But when a text arrived on Thursday from Chabad of Rural & Regional Australia (RARA) asking if anyone could fulfil the “great honour” of travelling to Kempsey to make a minyan, nine of them answered the call.

Rudolf Charles (Chuck) Vodicka, who went on to work with some of Hollywood’s elite before winding up homeless in Los Angeles, passed away on Wednesday in Macksville. He was 80.

By Friday afternoon, two carloads of Jewish Sydneysiders who were enjoying their annual pilgrimage to Crescent Head arrived at Chain O Ponds Memorial Park in Kempsey.

But there was a problem. Neither RARA’s Rabbi Menachem Aron nor an Israeli in Bellingen were able to make it to officiate at the first-ever Jewish funeral at the relatively new cemetery.

Undeterred, Danny Grynberg stepped into the breach. “If I had been [forewarned] I would’ve downloaded the service and done a little bit of preparation,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been walking down to the gravesite wishing I had more mobile coverage.”

Despite patchy mobile reception, Chuck Vodicka received a Jewish burial replete with Kaddish, El Malei Rachamim, psalms and yarmulkas thanks to David Phillips, who had a stash in his car.

“[I was] privileged to have been able to take part in the mitzvah of providing the minyan at the funeral of Geshem [his Hebrew name]. It didn’t occur to me not to do it,” Grynberg said.

Charlie (Chuck) Vodicka in his younger years.

Chuck’s son, daughter and several family members were stunned when the Sydneysiders arrived for the funeral and then proceeded to run the service in the absence of a rabbi.

“I feel so grateful and overwhelmed with comfort that strangers would give up their holiday to help,” Chuck’s daughter Angel Bell said. “I feel like it has been such a blessing to have such enormous help from the Jewish community.”

Elijah Grynberg, Jonah Sirtes, Isaac Grove and Matthew Bozic helped carry the coffin to the gravesite. But first, they had to remove the large white cross that was spiked into the mound of earth next to the burial plot.

“It was pretty bizarre,” Matthew Bozic said. “I think he [Chuck] would’ve been happy with it and that’s all that really matters.”

Danny Grynberg, whose father Robert, brother Ari and son Elijah helped make up the minyan, added: “What other people on the planet leave their beach holiday to bury an unknown member of the worldwide Jewish family?”

Rudolf Charles (Chuck) Vodicka was born in Budweis, Czechoslovakia in January 1943. His mother, Helen, was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany but was spared because her husband – who was not Jewish – was a doctor, according to Chuck’s daughter Angel.

“Her number was called to go to the gas chamber but instead they called her in to ask for her husband as … one of the Gestapo was unwell.”

After the war, the family migrated to India and then to Melbourne, where Chuck opened a shop selling “hippie paraphernalia”, his daughter recalled.

He visited Los Angeles in the ’60s where he secured the Australian distribution rights for ‘Don’t Look Back’, the 1965 documentary on Bob Dylan’s tour of England directed by D. A. Pennebaker.

He also secured the rights to ‘Monterey Pop’, Pennebaker’s legendary film about the iconic three-day festival in California in 1967. It featured a star-studded line-up including Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, The Who and Jimi Hendrix, who famously set his guitar on fire and threw it into the crowd at the end of ‘Wild Thing’.

And in January 1970, Chuck was part of the team behind the Ourimbah Festival near Gosford, a two-day “festival of love, peace and music”. Just five months after Woodstock, it was described in the Sydney Morning Herald as “Australia’s first rock festival”.

Chuck Vodicka with his daughter Angel and one of Chuck’s grandsons

“He was a mad man and a rebel with a cause,” his daughter said. “He had so much money, then no money.

“Unfortunately, Chuck discovered pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol which, coupled with his childhood trauma, was his demise.”

About two decades ago, he ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, living in a cardboard box for about five years, his daughter said.

“I hadn’t heard from him for 10 years and out of the blue I get a call from the Australian Embassy in Los Angeles saying your father has had a stroke and you need to come pick him up.”

No nursing home would take him because he was a “flight risk”. “[That’s how] he ended up in Macksville after doing a runner from a nursing home in Coffs Harbour.”

Although Chuck had “no money and no funeral plan”, his daughter said she remembered him telling her that “the Jewish way was to bury”.

Just before he died on Wednesday, Chabad of Rural & Regional Australia sent two Jewish women to sing him Jewish songs and Hebrew prayers.

“He was coherent enough to mouth the words,” Angel said. “I was so touched. A day-and-a-half later he was miraculously buried in the most perfect way.”

“He was a force of nature, a profound influence on me including my path in music,” wrote his friend and fellow Czech-born son of Holocaust survivors John Capek, who went on to compose, arrange and produce with superstars including Cher, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker and Diana Ross. “Charlie played me my very first R&B record on 78 vinyl format. Vale Chuck!”

Chuck Vodicka – child Holocaust survivor, Hollywood associate, homeless rolling stone – is survived by his daughter Angel, son Kaja, brother Peter and grandchildren.