Berthold Beitz

Berthold Beitz (26 September 1913 – 30 July 2013) was a German industrialist. He was the head of the Krupp steel conglomerate beginning in the 1950s. He was credited with helping to lead the re-industrialization of the Ruhr Valley and rebuilding Germany into an industrial power. He gained acclaim for saving some 250 Jewish workers during World War II by declaring them to be essential workers at an oil facility in Poland. In 1973, for saving Jews, he received the Righteous Among the Nations title awarded by the Israeli Yad Vashem, the highest honor given to a non-Jew.

Beitz was born in 1913 in Zemmin, Hither Pomerania. He began his career as a banker at the "Pommersche Bank" in Stralsund and started to work for Shell Oil Company in Hamburg in 1938.

Beitz remained in the employ of Shell Oil when World War II began in 1939. Following Germany's invasion and occupation of Borysław in July 1941, Beitz was assigned to supervise the Carpathian Oil Company operating the Borysław oil fields in what is now Ukraine. Given the importance of the oil fields to the German war effort, Beitz was able to designate workers as essential to the war effort. The Borysław area had a large Jewish population, with many Jews holding positions as chemical engineers, laboratory assistants, mechanics, and laborers in the area's oil industry.

After witnessing the "Invaliden-Aktion" in August 1942, an SS-led evacuation of a Jewish orphanage in Borysław, Beitz became determined to act to save local Jews. Having a position of importance, Beitz received advance word of Nazi actions against local Jews and provided warning to the Jewish community. He also had the opportunity to select suitable workers from Jews who were being held at transfer points for deportation to concentration camps. In August 1942, he "extricated 250 Jewish men and women from the transport train to the Belzec extermination camp by claiming them as 'professional workers.'" Beitz recalled, "I should have employed qualified personnel. Instead, I chose tailors, hairdressers and Talmudic scholars and gave them all cards as vital 'petroleum technicians.'"

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