Ben Helfgott

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Sir Benjamin "Ben" Helfgott (born November 22, 1929 in Pabianice , Poland ) is a survivor of the Holocaust who competed in the 1950s as a weightlifter for the United Kingdom at the 1956 and 1960 Summer Olympics, among others .

War and persecution

Helfgott grew up in Piotrkow . His mother tried to get permission to travel to Palestine as early as the 1930s . After the approval was in place, Helfgott's grandmother persuaded her son, Ben's father, not to leave the country. The family stayed in Piotrkow.

After the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, Helfgott's family fled from Piotrkow to Sulejów . The war caught up with the family on September 3rd, and Sulejów was largely destroyed by a German air raid. Helfgott's family survived, but lost their horse and cart, so that they had to leave behind the belongings they had rescued from Piotrkow when they returned to Piotrkow.

After the establishment of the Piotrkow ghetto , Helfgott lived in this ghetto with his parents and two sisters. In the beginning, Helfgott regularly left the ghetto and even went to the cinema. The cordoning off of the ghetto was tightened further and further in the period that followed. In December 1942, the Germans began to dissolve the ghetto. For this purpose, the inhabitants of the ghetto were taken to a nearby forest and shot there. During this action, Helfgott's mother and his youngest sister Luisa died. Helfgott himself was still employed as a worker. Towards the end of the war, the SS moved the last workers from Piotrkow to Schlieben , where Helfgott was amazed to discover that there were other Jews who had had a similar experience.

As the Allied forces drew closer, the Jewish forced laborers from Schlieben were taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp by train, a journey that took 14 days. Helfgott spent the last three weeks until the liberation on May 8, 1945 in Theresienstadt. There he learned from fellow prisoners that his father had been murdered on one of the death marches to Theresienstadt.

After the war, Ben Helfgott tried to return to Poland from Theresienstadt with his three years younger cousin. At the train station in Czestochowa two Polish officers presented him to whom he presented his identity card, which confirmed that he was a survivor of the concentration camps. The Polish officers took the two boys away. In a backyard the Poles, with their pistol drawn, asked the two boys to go to the next wall. Helfgott begged her to spare him after all the horrors of the camps. Finally the two Poles let the two boys go with the words: "You are lucky. We have killed many of your kind. You are the first to be left alive." Ben Helfgott and his cousin returned to Theresienstadt. Besides his cousin, Ben's sister Mala also survived, who regained her strength in a camp in Sweden after the war. In 1947 Mala Helfgott moved to England, where she initially worked as a stenographer .

The Boys

In 1945, at the instigation of Leonard Montefiore , the British government decided to offer entry to the United Kingdom for a total of 1,000 Jewish children up to the age of 16 who had lost their loved ones in the concentration camps. Ultimately, 732 young Jews came to the UK in this way. “Despite all efforts, not even a thousand surviving children could be found,” says Ben Helfgott about this number. The largest group came from Theresienstadt, where they had come on the death marches. Although some girls were among the rescued, the collective term boys (English for boys) prevailed. Of the 732 young Jews, more than half remained in the UK permanently. About 100 emigrated there after the founding of Israel in 1948. Two hundred moved on to the United States, forty to Canada, and some later migrated to other countries and continents. Ben Helfgott was one of the first three hundred boys who were brought from Theresienstadt to Windermere and who, in addition to compulsory English courses, also tried to catch up on as much school education as possible in a short time.

Ultimately, 732 children including 300 were brought to England by the Royal Air Force since August 14, 1945 . These 300 were accommodated on the site of the former Short Sunderland aircraft plant , which is located near Lake Windermere .

The story was filmed in 2020 under the name The Children of Windermere in a co-production by ZDF and BBC . In addition, there was a film documentary The Children of Windermere - The Documentation , in which those affected, including Arek Hershlikovicz , Ben Helfgott himself and Sam Laskier ; occurred. This was broadcast on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 2020 by ZDF-History .

As the young people gradually left the reception camp and began vocational training or went to local schools, Paul Yogi Mayer founded the Primrose Club in London as a point of contact where the young people met after work and at the weekend. There Ben Helfgott soon founded a weightlifting group.

Athletic career

At the first Maccabiade after the Holocaust, which was held in Israel in 1950, the 1.65 meter tall Ben Helfgott won the lightweight title, he was able to repeat this success in 1953 and 1957. In 1954 Helfgott won his first British featherweight championship, in 1955, 1956 and 1958 he won the lightweight. Helfgott is a seven-time British national champion. Ben Helfgott was the flag bearer and team captain of the British Olympic selection during the Olympic Games in 1956 and 1960 . Ben Helfgott took part in the 1956 Olympic Games as the captain of the British weightlifters and finished in 13th place, in 1960 he reached 18th place. At the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff in 1958 , Helfgott won the bronze medal. Helfgott also took part in four world weightlifting championships.

After the sport

In the mid-1960s, when the Primrose Club had long since become obsolete, some of the boys founded the '45 Aid Society , which has held an annual dinner since 1965, to which up to 200 boys and their spouses appear. The '45 Aid Society acts as a charitable association that collects among its members and passes the money on to charitable projects. For example, Ben Helfgott traveled to Israel with a delegation from the association in 1967 following the Six Day War to donate money to a children's project.

Ben Helfgott worked his way up from a tailor's apprentice to a textile manufacturer. In addition, he took on voluntary activities, including in the '45 Aid Society , with which he organized trips to Poland for Holocaust survivors from the 1980s. After Helfgott had worked for decades to honor the Polish helpers and supporters of Jews in hiding, Helfgott received the Polish Order of Merit in 1994. In 1995 Ben Helfgott was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame . In 2000 Joseph Finklestone published his biography Ben Helfgott: From Victim to Champion .

literature

  • Martin Gilbert: They were the boys . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg 2007 ISBN 978-3-86650-222-2 (English original edition 1996: The Boys )
  • Joseph Siegmann: Jewish Sports Legends . 2000 ISBN 978-1574882841

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gilbert, page 23f
  2. ^ Gilbert, page 65f
  3. ↑ Gilbert, page 88ff
  4. ^ Gilbert, page 144
  5. ^ Gilbert, page 223
  6. ^ Gilbert, p. 256
  7. ^ Gilbert, page 268f
  8. ^ Gilbert, pp. 296–299, the literal quote is from p. 298
  9. ↑ Gilbert page 413f
  10. ^ Gilbert, page 376
  11. ^ Gilbert, page 328
  12. ↑ https://presseportal.zdf.de/pm/die-kinder-von-windermere/ Presseportal ZDF
  13. ^ Gilbert, page 431
  14. ^ Siegmann, page 190f
  15. ^ Gilbert, page 498
  16. ^ Gilbert, page 171
  17. ↑ Ben Helfgott in the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
personal data
SURNAME God, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helfgott, Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British weightlifter
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Pabianice