{"id":267244,"date":"2026-01-04T19:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T19:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/267244\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T19:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T19:48:07","slug":"irelands-oldest-man-dies-aged-107-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/267244\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s oldest man dies aged 107 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The death has taken place of Josef Veselsky, a Holocaust<\/a> survivor born in the former Czechoslovakia who established a successful jewellery business in Dublin<\/a> and became Ireland\u2019s oldest man. He was 107.<\/p>\n

Veselsky was on outgoing figure who, for most of his life, knew little about of the killing of his parents, brother and sister-in-law after the German invasion. He saw his parents pushed into a cattle truck but it was only in his 80s that he learned the exact detail of their deportation to the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland<\/a>. They were among some 263,000 of the Jews of Czechoslovakia murdered by Nazis and collaborators.<\/p>\n

\u201cLater in life he said he thought about his parents and brother every day. He never really knew what happened,\u201d said his grandson Nicholas Browne.<\/p>\n

Known to all as Joe, Veselsky\u2019s warm personality drew people towards him. \u201cThere were always people in various stages of his life who felt uplifted by being with him,\u201d said Browne.<\/p>\n

In a varied life marked by the fallout of two world wars, Veselsky made a career in Dublin as an importer of Swiss watches and, later, Japanese pearls. He was also the captain of two national table tennis teams, first for Czechoslovakia and then Ireland, a role he had for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n

He had moved his young family to Dublin in 1949, a year after escaping the Communist takeover of his homeland. \u201cThey packed what they had in a couple of cases,\u201d Browne said, describing how they fled first to Hungary and switched train to Zurich, Switzerland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer Irish president Michael D Higgins with Holocaust survivors Tomi Reichental and Joe Veselsky. Photograph: Tom Honan\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Under pressure to leave Switzerland as money ran out, they secured visas for Australia. But a young child was too weak to undertake the long journey by sea. Ireland was the suggestion of a Czech friend in Dublin. He and his wife, the late Katarina, set up home at St Helen\u2019s, Booterstown.<\/p>\n

With watches scarce after war, Veselsky saw a business opportunity to buy watches from friends in Swiss industry and sell them to Irish retailers. Switzerland then was the dominant supplier of mass-market watches. The country is better known today for luxury watches. <\/p>\n

He was based for decades in an office at Central Hotel Chambers off Exchequer Steet, Dublin. In addition to table tennis, he had interests in horse racing and soccer. He was a member of the Shamrock Rovers<\/a> board and, later, served as a director of UCD<\/a> soccer club.<\/p>\n

Veselsky was multilingual, speaking Czech, Slovak and German and conversing in Hungarian with Katarina. Despite his business career, he was socialist in his outlook. <\/p>\n

He was born to a Jewish family in October, 1918, in Bratislava, at the dawn of Czechoslovak independence, as the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed after the first World War. His father, Maximillian, had made the fateful decision to return to Bratislava \u2013 now capital of Slovakia \u2013 after emigrating to New York with two sisters. <\/p>\n

His surname at birth was Weiss and he grew up in a religious family, with rabbis around him, but later described himself as an atheist. \u201cReligion wasn\u2019t part of his life,\u201d Browne said. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Holocaust survivor Joe Veselsky, Ireland\u2019s oldest man, prepares for anniversary of liberationOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Veselsky\u2019s mother urged him to change his name to \u201csomething a bit more Slovak\u201d during the second World War as the Nazis started mass arrests of Jews. He had come close to a direct encounter with senior Nazi Adolf Eichmann when the man reviled as the architect of the Holocaust met Jewish community representatives. <\/p>\n

He joined the Czech underground movement in the Carpathian Mountains. Later, he was awarded the Slovak national uprising medal. He also became, in 2007, a commander of the Slovak order of the white double cross for outstanding achievement in sport and for his contribution to the development and maintenance of diplomatic relations between Slovakia and Ireland.<\/p>\n

After the war, he became secretary to a minister in the Czech government. Fearing for his safety after roundups began in the wake of the Communist coup d\u2019\u00e9tat of 1948, he revolved to leave. \u201cMy grandmother told him, \u2018all your friends now going missing\u2019,\u201d Browne said. <\/p>\n

\"ProfessorProfessor Peter Higgs (left), who discovered the Higgs Boson, author JP Donleavy (right) and Joe Veselsky at the conferral of honorary degrees at Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Photograph: Cyril Byrne\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Veselsky remained active in old age, becoming the oldest student in Trinity College Dublin (TCD)<\/a> when he started taking extra-mural courses in the school of histories and humanities in 2010. <\/p>\n

In 2016, TCD awarded him an honorary master in arts degree, in the same ceremony as it made awards to novelist JP Donleavy and theoretical physicist Prof Peter Higgs, who unlocked the secret of the Higgs Boson. Then-US vice president Joe Biden received an honorary degree from the university that same day. <\/p>\n

The TCD citation saluted Veselsky as \u201ca veteran and faithful citizen of his native and adopted country alike\u201d and a sportsman of exceptional leadership. \u201cHis is an incredible story of courage and perseverance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death has taken place of Josef Veselsky, a Holocaust survivor born in the former Czechoslovakia who established…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,113295,7,8,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-267244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-the-holocaust","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-trinity-college-dublin-tcd"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115838563377547192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}