Kurt Goldstein, Auschwitz survivor, activist
BERLIN - Kurt Julius Goldstein, who survived the Auschwitz death camp and played a key role in fighting racism and anti-Semitism, died Sept. 24 in Berlin after a brief illness. He was 93.
Born into a Jewish merchant family in 1914, Mr. Goldstein joined Germany's Communist Party but was forced out of the country when the Nazis came to power.
He fled to Palestine, then went to fight in an international brigade in the Spanish Civil War. When that war ended in 1939, Mr. Goldstein was arrested; he was later handed to the Nazis, who sent him to the Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland.
At a 2005 event marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Mr. Goldstein recalled being forced onto a 1945 "death march" as the Red Army advanced.
He was one of fewer than 500 prisoners out of 3,000 to arrive at the Buchenwald concentration camp in central Germany.
After World War II, Mr. Goldstein settled in East Germany, where he worked until 1978 as the director of a leading public broadcaster.
During those years, he also worked for the International Auschwitz Committee, maintaining contact with survivors on both sides of the Iron Curtain and reaching out to young people.
In 2005, Mr. Goldstein was awarded Germany's highest honor, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, in recognition of his role in promoting tolerance and fighting racism and anti-Semitism.
