Love, Not Hate, After the Holocaust for Olympian Ben Helfgott

WW II and the Holocaust interrupted a lot of lives, and many of them never got back to normal.  As the excerpt below from an article by Asher Weill shows, however, such was not the case for Ben Helfgott:

A guest of honor at a recent Limmud FSU “Olympics” Festival for Russian-speaking Jews, held in Upper Nazareth, was a diminutive 82-year-old figure with piercing blue eyes. In 1956, 27-year-old Ben Helfgott was captain of the British weight lifting team at the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. Just 11 years earlier, in May 1945, the emaciated and gaunt 15-year-old boy was liberated from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, weighing 38 kilograms.

As a child, Helfgott was a self-confessed sports addict. “I was always challenging the other boys to see who was the best wrestler, the fastest runner, or who could jump higher or longer. I loved all sports and was extremely competitive,” he tells me.

But the lives of the Jews of Poland, and of the Helfgotts among them, were to change drastically when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. He tells the story of that time in an emotional and still heavily Polish-inflected English.

November 1944, Helfgott, and later his father, still in the ghetto, were deported to a labor camp that manufactured army tents, and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp. At the same time, his younger sister Mala was sent to Ravensbruck, a camp for women, and later to the infamous Bergen-Belsen camp.

After arriving in Britain, and even prior to seeing the London Olympic Games of 1948, he soon became involved in the British sporting world and helped set up the Primrose Jewish Youth Club in London. The club was founded in 1947 by the young survivors of the Holocaust who had come under the auspices of the Central British Fund, and had been allowed to settle in Britain on the understanding that after recuperation they would then leave − although where to was never spelled out.

Financed only by private donations from Jewish organizations − the British government did not contribute anything − the club, which continued until 1955, provided a venue for social, sporting and cultural activities.

One of the more remarkable aspects of Ben Helfgott’s life is that he bears no grudges or hatred.  In an interview at Limmud with Yoram Dori, strategic adviser to President Shimon Peres, he said: “I feel no anger or resentment. I love people. After surviving the Holocaust, I decided to spend my adult life fostering the love of people for one another.

How wonderful it would be if we all could have that kind of response to those who offend, and even violate, us.  Helfgott responded much like one of the greatest heroes in the Bible, Joseph, when he forgave his brothers. Genesis 50:20 tells us what he said: “But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save the lives of many people.” We can, perhaps, also help save the lives of many by adhering to Ps. 122:6, which tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

To read more about Ben Helfgott story,click here.