Noah Klieger, Holocaust survivor and storied Israeli journalist, dies at 92

Writer, who moved to Israel in 1948 and fought in the War of Independence, continued working until his death

By JTA 14 December 2018, 12:29 am

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Journalist Noah Klieger, contemporary witness and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, stands in the court room of the trial against John Demjamjuk at the District Court in Munich, Germany Dec. 2, 2009 (AP Photo/Peter Kneffel,Pool)

Noah Klieger, who survived Auschwitz by pretending to be a boxer and went on to a storied career in journalism, died Thursday in Israel. He was 92.

As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Klieger was selected for the gas chamber but managed to talk himself out of the sentence in a personal encounter with the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Later, he faked his way on to a boxing squad at Auschwitz that enjoyed better meal rations.

After liberation, he arrived in prestate Israel aboard the ship Exodus and fought in the 1948 War of Independence. Klieger went on to a storied career in journalism, authoring several books and a longtime column in the Israeli daily Yediot Acharonot. He continued to work as a journalist until the end of his life.

Klieger was born on July 13, 1926, in Strasbourg, France, the son of the writer Bernard Klieger. He was liberated in April 1945 by the Soviet Army and worked as a journalist in France and Belgium. He immigrated to Israel in 1948.

In a video documentary earlier this year, he talked about the pledges he made upon his liberation from the death camps.

“Should I survive I decided that I would first speak about the camps for future generations,” he said. “And the second decision was, I became a Zionist.”