Josef Veselsky, a Holocaust survivor and table tennis champion who spent more than a year as Ireland’s oldest man, died on Jan. 10 at 107.

Born Joseph Weiss to a Jewish family, he was 20 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. He changed his name after his mother, Bertha, urged him to change his name to “something more Slovak,” according to the Irish Times.

He joined the resistance and survived the war in the Carpathian Mountains, according to Holocaust Education Ireland. His older brother and parents were killed in Auschwitz.

Following the war, Veselsky served as the captain of the Czechoslovak national table tennis team and was later awarded the Order of the Slovak National Uprising for his actions during the war. He also served as the captain of the Irish national table tennis team for 20 years, and became life president of the Irish Table Tennis Association.

In October 2024, following the death of Marti McEvilly at the age of 108, Veselsky became the oldest man in Ireland.