Zanwel (Shmuel Zanwil) was born on 6 January 1919 in Kielce, Poland to Chaim and Dewora nee Lubling and he had one brother Icchak. Zanwel’s father died in Haifa, Israel in 1972. Zanwel’s mother Dora was murdered in the Holocaust in Poland in 1943 along with ten of her siblings. It is not known when Zanwel travelled to London from Poland but in 1939 he was living at 69 Kyverdale Road, Hackney where he was listed as a student. RAF records show that he enlisted in Uxbridge after Nov 1940.

On 23 May 1943, Short Stirling BF478 took off from RAF Chedburgh at 23.06 on a night raid to Dortmund. The aircraft crashed in the sea off the Dutch Frisian islands after being shot down by Ofw. Karl-Heinz Scherfling over the North Sea 10 km east of Terschelling at 02.14hrs.

The crew were:
A/G, Ernest Douglas Ager
A/B, Roy Craven Child
Pilot, John Wesley Evans, RCAF
A/G, Ronald Victor Street
F/E, Victor Norman Walker
W/Op, A/G, Harold Ward

All the crew were killed. Sgt Street’s body was washed ashore and was buried at Schiermonnikoog (Vredenhof) Cemetery with the other crew commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial.