08 October 2007
Kurt Julius Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor who was active on the International Auschwitz Committee, has died in Berlin aged 93. Goldstein fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and fought in Spain against Franco's fascist troops. He was deported from France to Auschwitz in 1942. Goldstein spent 2 1/2 years in concentration camps and was finally liberated from Buchenwald in April 1945.
He was a journalist and radio director in communist East Germany and became involved with the International Auschwitz Committee in 1976. Since 2003 he was the honorary president of the Berlin-based group of Shoah survivors. "All his life he has tried to unite survivors of concentration camps," said Noah Flug, the president of the committee, in a statement from Jerusalem. "He found connections between East and West, and fought for reparations and respect for the former prisoners around the world."
Goldstein, who called for a united front against neo-Nazism, received Germany's highest honor, the Federal Cross of Merit, in 2005. He was also an honorary citizen of Spain.
