Holocaust survivor Josef Veselsky, Irish table tennis icon, dies aged 107

Josef “Joe” Veselsky, a Holocaust survivor, wartime resistance fighter and towering figure in Irish table tennis, has died aged 107.

Born Joseph Weiss in 1918 to a Jewish family in Trnava, then Czechoslovakia, Veselsky was 20 when Nazi Germany invaded. On his mother Bertha’s advice, he adopted a more Slovak surname to help him survive. He later joined the anti-Nazi resistance, spending months operating from the Carpathian Mountains.

Recalling those missions decades later, he told a student interviewer in 2016: “When they sent us on a difficult mission, they gave us a glass of vodka. But I never drank it. I changed it with the boys for half a loaf of bread, so I was the best fed.”

His parents and older brother were murdered at Auschwitz, a fate he only learned in detail later in life. His grandson, Nicholas Browne, said the discovery of Nazi records brought painful clarity. “He was initially very upset to see that in writing… For him it was some kind of closure and relief – to know what exactly had happened,” Browne told RTÉ.

After the war, Veselsky captained the Czechoslovak national table tennis team and received the Order of the Slovak National Uprising for his resistance work. In 1949, he and his wife Katarina fled the Communist takeover and settled in Dublin, where he built a successful jewellery business and helped shape Irish sport.

Veselsky went on to captain Ireland’s national table tennis team for two decades and later become life president of Table Tennis Ireland. In a tribute, the organisation wrote: “Joe Veselsky’s resilience, integrity, and lifelong dedication to table tennis leave an enduring legacy.” He was also honoured by the European Table Tennis Union, which praised a life that “stands as a testament to the unifying power of sport.”

His contributions were recognised beyond the table. Veselsky received Slovakia’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Double Cross, and in 2016 was awarded an honorary master’s degree by Trinity College Dublin, where he was affectionately known as Ireland’s oldest student. The university later described him as “a true gentleman… and an inspiration to all who were lucky enough to know him.”

Following the death of Martin McEvilly in 2024, Veselsky became Ireland’s oldest man – a distinction he held for more than a year.

He is survived by his children Peter and Kate, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.