German industrialist Berthold Beitz, who rescued Jewish workers in occupied Poland by employing them during World War II, has died.
Beitz’s death July 30 at the age of 99 was announced by the foundation he headed, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Stiftung.
In 1942, Beitz was working in Borislaw, Poland, as commercial director for a German oil company when he prevented the deportation of Jews to a death camp by sending them to his offices and factories as “armaments workers,” according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He and his wife, Else, also hid Jewish children in their house.
Beitz and his wife were both honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles — he in 1973 and she in 2006. The Central Council of Jews in Germany gave the couple its highest award, the Leo Baeck Prize, in 1999. — jta