Sir Ben Helfgott, who has died aged 93, was considered one of “the Boys”, a bunch of greater than 700 younger Holocaust survivors (a few of them women) who, having left the focus camps behind them, settled in Britain and remained mates for all times. Helfgott spent the postwar years of freedom not simply in constructing his life as a number one clothes producer and Olympic weightlifter however in devoting himself to others who had had experiences just like his personal, however who had not achieved his diploma of success.
The Boys turned the 45 Help Society, based in 1963 to assist those that had been within the camps, but additionally to unfold the phrase about their struggling and emphasise that it ought to by no means be allowed to occur once more, to anybody, wherever. Helfgott was the society’s chairman from its inception till 2016, when he turned president.
He retired from his enterprise on the age of 52. “I had hoped to have the ability to focus on studying extra languages [he spoke seven], however my charity and communal work took precedence,” he stated. He was a number one member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and have become chairman (1985-2005) of its Yad Vashem committee, which promotes Holocaust training, and was a trustee and latterly a patron of the Holocaust Instructional Belief. He was on the chief of the world’s premier repository of Holocaust literature, the Wiener Library in London, was chairman of the Polin Institute for Polish Jewish Research. He was vice-chairman of the Claims Convention, set as much as course of German reparations for Holocaust victims.
Considered one of three youngsters of Moishe and Sarah Helfgott, Ben was born in Pabianice, Poland, however moved as a toddler to Piotrków, a city with a big Jewish inhabitants, the place his father owned a flour mill. When the Germans arrived in 1939, the household had been amongst these moved right into a ghetto of about 24,000 Jewish folks from Piotrków and the encircling cities and villages. For a time, Moishe operated a rudimentary flour mill within the ghetto, with the assistance of a cast exit move and a few former staff residing outdoors who managed to smuggle slightly wheat to him.
Ben was set to work in a glassworks, , employed on the evening shift, which turned out to be what saved his life. When the Nazis got here in the course of the day to deport the Jewish staff, he was not there. It couldn’t final. In 1942 deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp started, and the ghetto’s inhabitants was diminished within the area of every week to lower than 3,000. Later that yr Sarah and Ben’s eight-year-old sister Lusia had been amongst those that perished when a bunch of 500 had been rounded up within the native synagogue, then shot in close by woodlands. In 1944 his sister Mala was despatched to Ravensbrück girls’s focus camp. Ben and his father was despatched to the Buchenwald camp, after which he was transferred on, alone, to Schlieben. Later he found that Moishe, a powerful, enterprising man, had been shot after he tried to flee from being despatched on a pressured “demise march”.
Because the warfare got here to an finish, Ben was transferred to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, as soon as described because the Germans’ “present camp” visited by Purple Cross delegations. Situations had been higher than these at Schlieben, nevertheless it was, in reality, a waystation for these being despatched to Auschwitz. By now, nonetheless, it had one other objective – to carry those that managed to outlive the journeys from the camps the Nazis had evacuated. Lastly, at Theresienstadt, Helfgott was liberated by Czech partisans in Could 1945.
“The Boys”, helped by the Central British Fund for German Jewry, had been fortunate sufficient to seek out properties in Britain. The primary group, together with Helfgott, arrived in August 1945 at a resettlement centre at Windermere within the Lake District, the place, for the primary time in six years, they had been handled as human beings, given good meals, clear bedding and an opportunity to consider the longer term. “It was heavenly,” Helfgott recalled.
Later, they had been taken on holidays, too – to the Isle of Wight. Helfgott was in a position to present he was a substantial athlete, excelling in gymnastics, volley ball, desk tennis and, most remarkably for a teenager who had been residing on hunger rations only a few months earlier than, in weightlifting.
By 1947, the group had scattered, some residing in hostels, some discovering their first jobs. However they needed to keep up a correspondence with one another. The reply was the institution of the Primrose membership in Belsize Park, London, a membership for survivors and for different Jewish younger folks – the intention of its founder, the German-born athlete Paul Yogi Mayer, was that, whereas they needed to remain collectively, they wanted, too, to be uncovered to the companionship of others who had been fortunate sufficient to not endure their destiny.
For Helfgott, Primrose opened the way in which for him to indicate his athletic prowess. Weightlifting turned his speciality. By the early Fifties, he had damaged information and turn into British champion. On the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and at Rome 4 years later, he proudly marched behind the union flag. “I had turn into a British topic and this was the best second for me, to have the ability to present my appreciation.” He gained no medals. “However I by no means anticipated to,” he stated. “I used to be working and solely had about 5 hours every week to practise.” He did win gold medals on the World Maccabiah Video games, the “Jewish Olympics”, representing Britain in Israel in 1950, 1953 and 1957.
In August 2005, Helfgott was awarded Poland’s highest civilian award, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Advantage, for his work for Holocaust training and for Polish-Jewish relations.
Showing on Desert Island Discs in 2007 he spoke about how necessary it was to him to inform the tales of those that had been killed: “We will’t carry them again. Their reminiscence has to remain alive, not only for them however for posterity.”
He was appointed MBE in 2000 and knighted in 2018. Requested how he managed to outlive, he stated: “I used to be fortunate. I had a father who labored to avoid wasting me – and I discovered England.”
He’s survived by his spouse, Arza, whom he married in 1966, and their three sons, Maurice, Michael and Nathan, and his sister, Mala.
Ben Helfgott, Holocaust survivor and Olympic athlete, born 22 November 1929; died 16 June 2023
