Berthold Beitz

Dr. Berthold Beitz was elected as an IOC Member in 1972 and served until mandatory retirement in 1988, after which he was an Honorary Member of the IOC. During his IOC tenure he served on several commissions, and was on the Executive Board as Vice-President from 1984-88. He was on the Board of Directors for the Organizing Committee of the 1972 München Olympics, and served as President of the Administrative Council for the 1972 sailing events in Kiel. When the München Massacre occurred, upcoming IOC President Lord Killanin was in Kiel watching the sailing competition, but was flown back to München aboard Beitz’s private jet.

Beitz was regarded by both sides as the mediator between East and West, for which he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Greifswald ordered by the GDR Chancellor of State Erich Honecker in 1986. Beitz was an industrialist. During World War II, in 1942, as commercial director of Karpaten-Oel AG in Borysław, Poland, a town now part of Ukraine, Beitz hid Jews in his home and saved hundreds of Jews from deportation trains destined for the Belzec death camp by claiming them as workers. In 1990 he was named Righteous Among Nations, an award given by Jewish groups to non-Jews who had helped save Jews from the Holocaust. In 2011 he was awarded the German NRW State Prize for this work. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he convinced the Evangelical Church to take former East German officials under their protection.

In 1953 Beitz was named Chief Executive of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, known at the time as Fried Krupp. He was responsible for rebuilding Fried Krupp after World War II, reviving its steel base and traveled outside Germany to enter foreign markets for building industrial plants. In addition, it was later revealed that Krupp was the first German company to pay reparations to the Jewish survivors of German concentration camps. Beitz later served in several roles with Krupp, later to become Thyssen Krupp, including being named Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation in 1967, and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Fried Krupp GmbH from 1970-89, and Honorary Chairman of Fried Krupp from 1989 until his death at almost 100-years-old.