The Jewish-German historian and author Arno Lustiger, a survivor of Auschwitz, has died at the age of 88. The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Grauman, said Lustiger would be remembered for his research on Jewish resistance to the Nazis and of non-Jews who helped save Jews from the Holocaust.
Lustiger was born and grew up in Upper Silesia, in what is today Poland. His father’s company, which produced machines for bread production, was confiscated in 1939 by the Nazis. In 1943, the Jewish population of his home town Będzin was confined to a ghetto. In August 1943, the ghetto was closed and the population deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A few days later, the family voluntarily went to a camp of forced laborers in Annaberg, Silesia, in order to stay together. However, they were torn apart.
Arno Lustiger was deported to the concentration camp Ottmuth and later to Blechhammer, a subcamp of Auschwitz. In January 1945 he had to join the death march during the freezing winter toward the Gross-Rosen camp in Lower Silesia. Only half of the 4.000 inmates survived the march. Later, Lustiger was deported to Buchenwald. In April 1945 he escaped during another death march and was rescued by the approaching American soldiers. He became a translator in the US Army.
After the war Lustiger settled in Frankfurt and built up a successful company for ladies' fashion. He wrote articles about the German-Jewish history, the Spanish civil war, the Jewish resistance against the Nazis, and the persecution of Jews by Soviet dictator Stalin, and became a renowned academic.
On 27 January 2005, Arno Lustiger gave a speech before the German parliament, the Bundestag, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day (see picture above).
The late French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, whose parents had emigrated from Będzin around the time of World War I and who had later converted to Catholicism, was Arno Lustiger's cousin.
