Noah Klieger

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Noah Klieger (2018)

Noah Klieger (born July 31, 1925 in Strasbourg , France sometimes also Kliger, Hebrew נח קליגר; died December 13, 2018 in Tel Aviv , Israel ) was an Israeli publicist and sports and sports journalist official . He survived the Auschwitz extermination camp and, as a representative of the Mossad le Alija Bet, organized the passage of other Holocaust survivors to Israel on the ship Exodus in 1947 . He was considered the doyen of Israeli journalism and conveyed the memory of the Shoah and Aliyah Bet as a contemporary witness .

Life

Early youth

Klieger was born the son of the French journalist Bernard Klieger . His parents came from Poland and grew up in Nuremberg . In the mid-1930s, the family moved to supposedly safe Belgium for fear of Nazi Germany 's urge to expand . In 1935 his parents sent his older brother to study in England.

Second World War

During the German occupation of Belgium in 1941, Klieger joined a Jewish underground organization that, in cooperation with the French Resistance , was able to secretly bring around 300 Jewish children and young people to Switzerland. In 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo and initially held in the SS assembly camp in Mechelen . From there he was taken to the Auschwitz extermination camp via various concentration camps in 1943 , where he almost fell victim to the selection methods of the Germans at the ramp when he wanted to board the truck that was apparently generously made available for the weaker arrivals. A Serbian security guard, who knew that this car was going straight to the gas chambers , took pity and pushed him off again. Only later did Klieger realize that the man had saved him. When the commandant of the Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp , SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schwarz , who was enthusiastic about boxing, set up a boxing team among the prisoners for entertainment for himself and his guards, Klieger posed as a boxer and was accepted. Before the war he had been swimming intensively, but he had never boxed. As a result, he won none of his twenty-two fights in Auschwitz, but the special ration as a boxer (one pot of soup a day) enabled him to survive. The approach of the Red Army , he was on one of the death marches over the Mittelbau-Dora to the Ravensbruck concentration camp sent, where he freed the Red Army; Victor Perez , a friend and also a member of the boxing troop, was shot dead in front of Klieger on the march.

Aliyah and the struggle for independence

On his return to Belgium, Klieger met his parents, who had also survived Auschwitz, by chance in a Brussels tram. In Belgium he met soldiers from the Jewish Brigade and was so inspired by them that he began to campaign for Zionism . In 1947, as a representative of the Mossad le Alija Bet , he was supposed to organize the illegal emigration of around 4,500 Jewish survivors from DP camps in southern France to Palestine . Time for this was running out, as France had to close its borders to Jews on the way to Erez Israel out of consideration for British interests in the Mandate Palestine . On July 9th, the day they left the DP camps, the French truck drivers' union opened a nationwide strike for higher wages and erected road blockades on all long-distance routes. However, Klieger secured the solidarity of the trade unionists by means of a generous donation for the strike fund and on the night of July 10th his refugees reached the port of Sète in 170 trucks . There the French authorities let people aboard an old steamship called President Warfield, which the Hagana renamed Exodus in 1947 , despite obviously hastily forged visas for an alleged passage to South America . The ship was seized by the Royal Navy en route to Palestine . The refugees were distributed to three other ships and initially sent back to France, from where they were to be transported to Germany . On board the leading ship, Klieger and the other leaders of the operation made a plan that the inmates in France should refuse to disembark in protest against British policy towards Jews. However, the refugees on the two other ships had to be informed about this, because if they had docked earlier and disembarked, the project would have failed. When looking for a volunteer who would swim to the other ships, the choice fell on Klieger, who had previously told of his swimming ambitions as a teenager. So Klieger jumped into the Mediterranean , but the following transport ship changed course and avoided him. He drifted in the sea for almost an hour, was on the verge of drowning and was about to give up when he was rescued by the crew of a British mine sweeper . Like the other passengers, he was also brought to Germany and interned there in camps for displaced persons .

After the end of the British mandate and the establishment of the state of Israel, Klieger was finally able to get there with the help of the Machal and took part in the War of Independence .

Sport and journalism

After the war, Klieger turned to journalism like his father and began writing for Jedi'ot Acharonot . He reported regularly from the European basketball championships since 1951, only in those in Hungary (1955) and Bulgaria (1957) did the communist rulers not allow him to enter. He accompanied the Olympic Games in Helsinki (1952), Rome (1960), Tokyo (1964), Mexico City (1968) and Munich (1972) as a journalist, but stopped after the hostage-taking of Munich , even if he was up to them 2004 still attended regularly as a spectator. He reported again on the basketball world championships in Rio de Janeiro (1964), Spain (1986), Athens (1998), Indianapolis (2002), Japan (2006) and Turkey (2010).

For many years he was chairman of the basketball section of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (APIS) and president of the basketball department of Maccabi Tel Aviv and chairman of the media council of the Fédération Internationale de Basketball (FIBA). He was chairman of the Israeli APIS Association. Even if a focused his journalistic activity in sport, since he wrote always about political issues: He reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann , the Auschwitz trials , the Sobibor process that Majdanek processes , the trial of Klaus Barbie and later from Munich on the criminal case against John Demjanjuk . He was the oldest member of the editorial board of the Israeli press and was considered the doyen of Israeli journalism.

As a contemporary witness of the Shoah and the founding of Israel, he has written several books and conveyed this memory in lectures, especially to young people, also in Germany and Switzerland.

Klieger spoke eight languages. He had a daughter and three grandchildren. He lived and worked in Tel Aviv .

Awards

  • Life Achievement in Sports and Sports Journalism Award from the Israel National Olympic Committee (2008)
  • B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism in the Lifetime Achievement Award category (2011)
  • Knight of the Legion of Honor of the French Republic (2012)

Works

  • Noah Klieger: Twelve Bread Rolls for Breakfast - Reports from Auschwitz. wjs, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-937989-68-6 .

literature

  • Bernard Klieger: The way we went: Report on a hellish trip. Codac Juifs Publishing House, Brussels, 1957, DNB 831211326
  • Jaqueline Wolfram: Writing about the Shoah. The journalist and author Noah Klieger. AV Akademikerverlag, Saarbrücken 2015, ISBN 978-3-639-84410-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Israel: Holocaust survivor Noah Klieger dies. In: Spiegel Online . December 13, 2018, accessed December 14, 2018 . Obituary: Noah Klieger is dead. In: Jüdische Allgemeine . December 13, 2018, accessed December 14, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Olivier Brégeard in: lalsace.fr, December 8, 2014 (accessed February 4, 2019)
  3. ^ Christian Eichler: Noah Klieger: The luck of the boxer from Auschwitz. In: faz.net . May 2, 2014, accessed December 14, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Jonathan Stock : Heroes: The Mission of Life . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 2015, p. 53–57, here p. 55 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Thomas Schmid: Portrait of Noah Klieger: Desire for justice. In: fr-online.de . December 21, 2009, accessed December 14, 2018 .
  6. ↑ https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article113071636/Pension-Auschwitz-ueberlebt-Netanjahu-gewaehlt.html
  7. ↑ https://sportspress.lu/2018/12/17/noah-klieger-doyen-du-journalisme-sest-eteint-a-lage-de-92-ans/
  8. ↑ https://www.lalsace.fr/actualite/2014/12/08/noah-klieger-un-destin-juif
  9. ↑ https://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/191578.ich-habe-eine-mission.html?sstr=Klieger
  10. ^ Stefan Osterhaus: editor without retirement. In: DeutschlandRadio Kultur . February 1, 2013, accessed December 14, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Noah Klieger - contemporary witness of the "Exodus". In: nzz.ch . February 12, 2007, accessed December 14, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Henryk M. Broder : The hardcore Zionist who avoids the bunker. In: Welt Online . August 9, 2014, accessed April 10, 2015 .
  13. ^ Lior Zilberstein: France honors journalist Noah Klieger. In: Ynetnews . January 25, 2012, accessed December 14, 2018 .
  14. ↑ shed the insignes de Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur au journaliste Noah Klieger. In: Website of the French Embassy in Israel. April 10, 2013, accessed December 14, 2018 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Klieger, Noah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kliger, Noah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli publicist and sports official
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 2018
Place of death Tel Aviv-Jaffa