Press Release, 27 September 2007

Julius Kurt Goldstein died

On 24 September 2007 the Honorary President of the International Auschwitz Committee Julius Kurt Goldstein passed away in Berlin, at the age of 93 years.

Julius Kurt Goldstein was born in 1914 in Dortmund-Scharnhorst, in a German Jewish family. Already in his youth he turned to the ideals of socialism and joined the Communist Youth Association.

Being a German, a Jew and a Communist – as he considered himself throughout his life – he had  to leave Germany in 1933. Via Luxemburg, France and Palestine, he went to Spain where he fought in the International Brigades against the Franco fascism. In 1942 he was deported from France to Auschwitz. There he was given the detainee number 58866. He survived 30 months of concentration camp detention: On 11 April 1945 he was liberated in Buchenwald.

In 1951 Julius Kurt Goldstein settled down in the GDR where he worked as a journalist and a radio director-general from 1957 to 1976.

Since 1976 he had been engaged in the International Auschwitz Committee whose Honorary President he was since 2003: “Throughout all his life he was striving to bring the concentration camp survivors together. He found ways between East and West and struggled for the compensation and for the dignity of the former detainees all over the world. He talked about his life experiences to countless youth groups and school classes, until a few weeks before his death”, Noah Flug, the President of the IAC, underlined in Jerusalem.

On the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Julius Kurt Goldstein made a speech in the German Theatre in Berlin, which received wide attention. He said “May Auschwitz-Birkenau, the place where the genocide against Jews, Slavs, Sinti and Roma and against resistance fighters from all parts of Europe was committed, become a centre for international encounters and thus contribute towards peoples’ understanding, towards building a world with more solidarity and fraternity, a world in which human rights are respected everywhere, in which peace is prevailing and in which Auschwitz will never happen again… When we experience today that in our country Nazis have seats in parliaments again and that they demonstrate in the streets, I tell you: All this is unbearable for us, and we are really suffering at this.”

Julius Kurt Goldstein was honorary citizen of Spain. In 2005 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany first-class.
He leaves his wife Margot, four sons and several grandchildren.

“We mourn for Julius Kurt Goldstein – a friend, a world citizen and a German Jew who furiously loved his home country that has to be grateful to him for so endlessly much “, Christoph Heubner, Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee, stressed in Berlin.

For questions: Christoph Heubner, IAC Vice-President, Tel. 0172/393 22 62

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