Josef Veselsky, Holocaust survivor, table tennis champ and Ireland’s oldest man, dies at 107 |
Josef Veselsky, a Holocaust survivor, twice national table tennis captain and Ireland’s oldest man, has died at 107 years old.
Born Josef Weiss in 1918 in Trnava, a city in present-day Slovakia, Veselsky immigrated with his wife, Katarina, to Dublin, Ireland, in 1949, following the communist coup d’état in his home country, The Irish Times reported.
His parents, brother, and sister-in-law had been killed in the Holocaust after being deported to the Auschwitz death camp.
After watching his loved ones being forced into a cattle car, Veselsky escaped the same fate by changing his last name and joining the Czech resistance movement in the Carpathian Mountains, according to The Irish Times, for which he was later awarded the Order of the Slovak National Uprising.
In Ireland, despite speaking little English, Veselsky made a living as an importer of Swiss watches and other jewelry. On the side, he made a name for himself as the captain of Ireland’s national........