Berthold Beitz, German industrialist who saved Jews

BERLIN - Berthold Beitz, 99, who was honored for saving hundreds of Jews in occupied Poland during World War II and became one of postwar West Germany's leading industrialists, has died.

The steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG, where he was the honorary chairman of the supervisory board, announced Mr. Beitz's death Wednesday. It said in a statement he died Tuesday but gave no further details.

Mr. Beitz and wife Else were honored by Germany's main Jewish group in 2000 for saving hundreds of Jewish workers at an oil field he managed in occupied Poland from deportation to Nazi death camps.

In 1973, he was given the Righteous Among the Nations honorific by the Israeli Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, the highest honor to a non-Jew for saving Jews.

Mr. Beitz was born in 1913 in Zemmin in eastern Germany. He studied to become a banker and took a position at an oil field in occupied Poland in 1939.

He saved many of the Jewish workers there from Nazi death camps, sometimes by even hiding them at his home. The couple had three daughters.

In August 1942, he saved 250 Jews from being deported to the Belzec death camp by saying they were indispensable to keeping up production, according to Yad Vashem's biography of Mr. Beitz.

Asked later about his motivation, Mr. Beitz said, according to Yad Vashem: "There was no anti-Fascism, no resistance. We watched from morning to evening as close as you can get to what was happening to the Jews. . . . When you see a woman with her child in her arms being shot, and you yourself have a child, then your response is bound to be completely different."

In the 1950s, Mr. Beitz agreed to administer the Krupp steel company, which was heavily involved in armaments production during the war. He headed the company in various positions for 60 years.

In 1967, he launched a foundation with the late Alfried Krupp's fortune, supporting projects in Israel among others.