David Dushman

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Dushman (born April 1, 1923 in Danzig ; died June 4, 2021 in Munich ) was a Russian fencing trainer , World War II veteran and contemporary witness who last lived in Munich . Before his death, he was considered the last living liberator of the Auschwitz concentration camp .

biography

Dushman was born in the Free City of Gdansk in 1923 . For political reasons, however, his mother registered Minsk as the place of birth. Dushman's father was a Jewish military doctor of the Red Army with the rank of general , who most recently served as the head of the medical service at the Central Sports University in Moscow . In 1938, during the Stalinist purges , the father was deported to a labor camp north of the Arctic Circle , where he perished ten years later.

Survivors of the liberation of Auschwitz by the 1st Ukrainian Red Army Front (January 27, 1945)

Used as a volunteer for military service, Dushman served as a tank driver in the Red Army during World War II and fought, among other things, in the Battle of Stalingrad . Dushman has received over 40 medals and decorations for his bravery, including the Order of the Patriotic War . At the end of the war he belonged to the 322nd Rifle Division of the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front (under the supreme command of Colonel General Pavel Alexejewitsch Kurochkin ). In the early afternoon of January 27, 1945, Dushman rolled down the electrically charged fencing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp with his T-34 tank , which began the liberation of Auschwitz. On the site he saw the half-starved people, mountains of corpses, hopelessness, unspeakable suffering. At that time he did not know what Auschwitz actually was. "I only found out about that after the war," he said later. In the post-war years he was never invited to the commemorations in Auschwitz, but had no need to return there either: "I couldn't stop crying."

After the Second World War, Dushman devoted himself to the sport of fencing and worked for almost four decades, from 1952 to 1988, as the coach of the Soviet women's national team . In 1960 the Soviet women won Olympic gold in the foil team competition for the first time . By 1988, the athletes supervised by Dushman won numerous titles at world championships and the Olympic Games . In his role as coach, Dushman also witnessed the Munich Olympic assassination attempt on Israeli athletes in 1972 . “We heard gunshots and the hum of helicopters overhead. At that time we lived right across from the Israeli team . We and all the other athletes were horrified, ”he later recalled the events in the Olympic Village . When Matthias Behr and Wladimir Smirnow had a fatal accident at the World Fencing Championships in 1982 , Dushman was one of the first to try to comfort the severely shocked Olympic champion Behr. He took Behr in his arms and said: “It's not your fault. Such a misfortune is predetermined by God. ”In 1988 Dushman ended his coaching role for the Soviet women's national team, but remained active as a fencer until shortly before his death.

After the opening of the Eastern Bloc borders, he left the Soviet Union and moved to Austria for a short time . Since 1996 Dushman lived as a quota refugee with his wife Zoja in Munich-Neuperlach . In 2003 Dushman became a trainer at the Olympic Fencing Club in Munich, where his maxim was: “Fencing is not only a sport for the body, but also for the mind. It's about psychology and about learning to read people, being faster than your counterpart, knowing what your opponent is doing before he does it himself. "Up to the age of 94, Dushman taught almost every day in his fencing club in Munich He regularly appeared in schools as a witness before the corona pandemic and told of his experiences during World War 2. Dushman did not have any resentment towards his new home in Germany. “We did not fight against the Germans,” he said, “but against him Fascism. ”On his 98th birthday, Dushman was made an honorary member of the Munich Jewish Community .

Works

  • David Dushman / Olga Kotlytska: War and Peace ... And Sport! Memoirs , Kharkiv 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b War veteran remembers the liberation of Auschwitz. In: Reuters Archive Licensing. January 15, 2020, accessed on June 7, 2021 : "Dushman was born in Gdansk in 1923, but for political reasons his mother had the city of Minsk entered on his passport."
  2. ↑ a b c N.N .: He was the last living liberator from Auschwitz - David Dushman is dead . In: Die Welt on June 6, 2021 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b c d Helmut Reister: A living legend . In: Jüdische Allgemeine on April 15, 2021 ( online ).
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Helmut Reister: The last liberator from Auschwitz . In: Jüdische Allgemeine on January 28, 2021 ( online ).
  5. ↑ a b c d e Helmut Reister: Auschwitz liberator celebrates 95th birthday: The moving life of David Dushman . In: Evening newspaper on March 30, 2018
  6. ↑ Nikolai Politanow: "We couldn't believe our eyes." In: einestages ( Der Spiegel ) of January 27, 2008.
  7. ↑ Helmut Zeller: The man who rolled down the fence at Auschwitz , Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 26, 2015
  8. ^ Oskar Beck : Death of a fencer . In: Die Welt on July 17, 2016
  9. ↑ Joy in fencing since 1952. Club history of the Olympic Fencing Club Munich ( online , accessed June 6, 2021)
personal data
SURNAME Dushman, David
SHORT DESCRIPTION Russian fencing trainer, World War II veteran and contemporary witness
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Munich