Noah Klieger

Klieger's autobiographical account states that he was born Norbert Klieger in Strasbourg, France, on July 31, 1926.[7] His father, Bernard Klieger, was a writer and journalist; his mother was Esther-Thecla, born Eibeschutz.[7] His older brother Jonathan later became a rabbi.[7] The family lived for a time in Luxembourg and moved to Belgium in 1938, where Klieger joined a Zionist youth movement.[7]

After arriving in Israel, Klieger replaced his French-sounding birth name, Norbert, with the biblical name Noah.[3]

During the German occupation of Belgium, Klieger joined the Belgian underground and a clandestine cell associated with Zionist youth movements.[3][8] Beginning at age 15, he helped pass secret messages, distribute ration cards, and assist more than 200 young Jews in reaching Switzerland; an account quoting his daughter gives the figure as 260.[3][8]

In 1942, Klieger and six comrades were caught while attempting to cross the frontier.[3] The Gestapo arrested him and sent him first to the Caserne Dossin transit camp in Mechelen before he was deported to Auschwitz in January 1943.[4]

Klieger was registered at Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz) as prisoner number 172345.[4] As a 16-year-old newly arrived from Belgium, he raised his hand when SS officers asked which prisoners knew how to box, despite having no boxing experience. He and two experienced Dutch boxers were selected for the camp's boxing group.[9] The club brought better rations; Klieger later recalled, "When I joined the boxing club, I got an extra liter of soup that kept me going for a few months."[3] He had also been selected for the gas chamber because of pneumonia but reportedly talked his way out of the sentence in a personal encounter with Josef Mengele.[10]

During one incident at Auschwitz III, an SS officer shot Klieger in the leg with a submachine gun; three bullets struck him.[11] Rather than risk the camp infirmary, he tied a rag around the wounds and continued to walk, including later during a death march.[11] A Soviet doctor warned him after liberation that gangrene might have required amputation had he remained in the camp another two or three months. The wounds did not fully heal until he was in Israel, roughly four years later.[11]

In January 1945, Klieger was forced onto a death march from Auschwitz. He later wrote that after ten days in open railcars—roughly 150 prisoners packed into each car, with so little room that some stood on those who had fallen and died—he arrived at Mittelbau-Dora on January 30, 1945.[12] During the chaotic registration of Auschwitz transports at Dora, he registered himself as a French political prisoner rather than as a Jew. He reflected, "The ruse saved my life twice": several days later, approximately 3,000 Jewish prisoners were killed in the quarries of the Ulrich sub-camp.[12] Klieger then became overseer of a large work commando in the Stollen tunnels, giving him marginally better conditions.[12]

The Stollen were mountain tunnels used for German weapons production. Prisoners worked consecutive 12-hour shifts and initially lived underground without ventilation, running water, or plumbing; they slept briefly on four-tiered bunks and drank contaminated water brought from outside.[12] Klieger wrote that at least 10,000 prisoners died constructing the roughly 15-kilometer tunnel system. The account estimates that around 60,000 prisoners were held at Dora and approximately half were murdered or died of disease, while noting that an exact total was difficult to establish.[12] Klieger described hangings as "an intrinsic part of life in Dora," recalling a U-shaped gallows fitted with five hooks and piano wire.[12]

One episode from the transport stayed with him for years. A young Hungarian prisoner offered bread in return for Klieger and others reciting Kaddish for his father. Only after they had done so did Klieger learn that the father had died minutes earlier and that the prisoners had been sitting on the body.[12] Twelve years after Klieger published an account of the journey, he discovered that the young man, Elazar Zelenfreund, had survived and was living in Haifa.[12]

Prisoners left the Stollen on April 3, 1945, and were forced the following day onto another march across the Harz Mountains to Ravensbrück.[12] Klieger was liberated there by Soviet troops on April 29, 1945.[1][11] After liberation, he was briefly made to repair a road before making his way to France.[3]

Returning to Belgium to search for his parents, he learned from a family friend that they had survived. He found them by chance on a tram after hearing his mother whisper to his father, "Look, he resembles our Norbert." Klieger described it as "the most overwhelming moment imaginable" and "the moment when my new life began."[11] His parents had also survived imprisonment at Auschwitz and Birkenau.[13].pdf)[4]

After liberation, Klieger joined the Bricha organization, which assisted Jewish emigration from displaced-persons camps in Europe.[4] He managed an immigration transit camp near Marseille in June 1947 and then joined the crew of the ship initially called SS President Warfield and renamed Exodus 1947.[4] The vessel carried 4,554 people, most of them Holocaust survivors who lacked immigration certificates for Mandatory Palestine.[4] British forces intercepted and boarded the ship; four people were killed and dozens were wounded, while the remaining passengers were transferred to deportation ships and returned to Europe.[3][4]

Klieger later explained his determination to reach Palestine by saying that Jews "must rely on themselves" and that he was resolved "to fight to rebuild a country that had existed 2,000 years ago."[3] He immigrated to Israel in 1948 and joined a volunteer Mahal unit of French-speaking soldiers, serving in a special Palmach division in the southern Negev during the War of Independence.[3][4] He sustained a serious leg injury during the fighting.[3]

Klieger began his Israeli journalism career as the Israeli correspondent for the French sports daily L'Équipe in 1953.[3] He joined the editorial staff of Yedioth Ahronoth in 1957, hired initially for his knowledge of sports and languages; it took him five years to master Hebrew and learn to write in it.[3] Over the following six decades, he worked as editor of the newspaper's sports supplement, foreign-news editor, and reporter, publishing thousands of articles about the Holocaust and World War II.[2][8]

As a senior reporter, Klieger covered several major Nazi war-crimes trials: the Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk trials in Israel, the Auschwitz perpetrators' trial in Frankfurt, and trials of Majdanek and Treblinka perpetrators in Düsseldorf.[2] He also covered war-crimes trials in Belgium and France.[1] Beyond courtroom reporting, he led dozens of Israeli delegations to former extermination camps and lectured internationally on Holocaust-related subjects.[2] He estimated that he delivered close to 10,000 lectures in Israel and around the world over more than 60 years, without accepting payment.[11]

In a discussion of Israeli media, Klieger said that Yedioth Ahronoth's weekend edition had "close to a million readers." He described that reach as unmatched by any national newspaper in the Western world, comparing it to the New York Times selling 50 million copies across the United States or two to three million copies in the New York metropolitan area.[14]

He wrote his final column two days before his death. In it, he wrote, "A Holocaust survivor who dreamed of immigrating to the Land of Israel and writing in a Hebrew-language newspaper—I succeeded."[2]

Klieger regarded bearing witness as a lifelong obligation. He participated in the March of the Living at Auschwitz for many years and wrote extensively about Holocaust survivors and war-crimes trials.[13].pdf)[1] Invited to address the United Nations General Assembly at an official Holocaust commemoration, he spoke of three dreams he had harbored while imprisoned at Auschwitz: to survive, to tell the world what the Nazis had done to the Jews, and to help Jews regain their land.[2]

At the United Nations Headquarters observance of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust on January 27, 2017, he served as the keynote speaker.[5] In his address, he said, "When I tell the story, people do not believe me. This chapter is not over," and described himself as a journalist who would remain one until his death.[2] He summed up his philosophy of testimony in the words: "I cannot explain the Holocaust, because it has no explanation. One can only tell."[11]

Alongside his journalism, Klieger built a parallel career in sports administration. He founded and edited Yedioth Ahronoth's sports section and chaired Maccabi Tel Aviv's basketball club from 1951 until 1968 or 1969, with the sources differing on the final year.[1][6] One of his notable decisions during that tenure was initiating the signing of Tal Brody in 1966.[6] He later served intermittently as chairman of Maccabi Ramat Gan from 1970 through the late 1990s.[6]

At the international level, Klieger served for approximately 20 to 25 years as chairman of FIBA's Communications Committee, also described as its Media Council, and chaired the basketball commission of the international sports journalists' organization AIPS.[2][6] In 2015, he became the first Israeli inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame as a contributor.[1][6]

Klieger received numerous honors for his journalism, Holocaust testimony, and contributions to sport. In 1990, he was inducted into a Jewish sports hall of fame in Los Angeles as a representative of the Auschwitz III prisoner boxing group.[4] In 2010, he received the FIBA Order of Merit and a lifetime-achievement award from Israel's Olympic Committee and the organization of veteran athletes.[1][4]

France awarded him the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2011 or 2012. A Ynet farewell report dates the award by President Nicolas Sarkozy to 2011, while Yad Vashem gives 2012.[1][4] In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa.[2]

Noah Klieger died on December 13, 2018.[6] A Ynet sports report described him as 92, consistent with his autobiographical statement that he was born on July 31, 1926.[7][6] Other contemporary accounts, including Ynet News and a later Bar-Ilan University profile, described him as 93.[13].pdf)[2]

Klieger was survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and two stepdaughters, including journalist Iris Lifshitz Klieger.[2] Bar-Ilan University's Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research identifies Iris as his daughter and later listed her among its Spiegel Fellows.[13].pdf)

Several biographical details in Klieger's record differ across sources. His autobiographical account and Yad Vashem give his birth year as 1926, while a Ynet News obituary gives 1925; contemporary reports consequently described him as either 92 or 93 at his death.[1][2] His own account gives the more precise birth date of July 31, 1926.[7]

Accounts also summarize his death marches differently. Klieger described the January 1945 march from Auschwitz and two further marches, while another obituary said that he survived two death marches in total.[2][11] Sources likewise differ in how they summarize his arrival in Israel: one says that he joined the Exodus crew in 1947, was returned to Europe with its passengers, and immigrated in 1948, while another compresses the account by saying that he arrived aboard Exodus.[2][4]