Berlin (AFP)
David Dushman, who was the last surviving liberator of the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp and a talented fencer, has died at the age of 98.
Mr. Dushman, a Russian of Jewish faith, died in Munich in southern Germany where he had resided for several years, the International Olympic Committee said in a statement on Saturday.
"The death of David Dushman saddens me deeply", reacted Thomas Bach, president of the Committee and former German fencer.
"When we met in 1970, he immediately offered me his friendship and his advice despite his experience of war and Auschwitz," he said, "a deeply human gesture that I will never forget ".
Originally from the former Soviet Union, David Dushman was a soldier in World War II and fought the armies of the Third Reich.
He notably participated in the murderous Battle of Stalingrad, lost by Nazi Germany.
At the controls of his tank, he took part on January 27, 1945 in the liberation of the Auschwitz camp located in Poland then occupied by the Nazis, where there were some 7,000 survivors.
He was then 21 years old.
Over a million victims perished in this concentration camp.
After studying medicine and sports, he became the best fencer in the Soviet Union in 1951, before coaching the women's fencing team from 1952 to 1988.
In this capacity, he was present in Munich during the hostage-taking of the Munich Olympics in 1972, when members of Israel's Olympic team were taken hostage and murdered by members of the Palestinian organization September Black.
David Dushman often intervened in schools to tell his story.
Until the age of 94, he went to his Munich fencing club almost every day to give lessons, says the Olympic committee.
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