Jacques Ochs (18 February 1883 – 3 April 1971), was a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

Belgian

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and Olympic fencer in the

épée The (, ; ), also rendered as epee in English, is the largest and heaviest of the three weapons used in the sport of fencing. The modern derives from the 19th-century , a weapon which itself derives from the French small sword. This contains a ...

style (in which he was champion) and competed in the saber, and

foil Foil may refer to: Materials * Foil (metal), a quite thin sheet of metal, usually manufactured with a rolling mill machine * Metal leaf, a very thin sheet of decorative metal * Aluminium foil, a type of wrapping for food * Tin foil, metal foil ma ...

fencing Fencing is a combat sport that features sword fighting. It consists of three primary disciplines: Foil (fencing), foil, épée, and Sabre (fencing), sabre (also spelled ''saber''), each with its own blade and set of rules. Most competitive fe ...

categories.

Biography

Ochs was Jewish, and was born in

Nice, France Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million

. His family moved to

Liège Liège ( ; ; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east o ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

, in 1893. He was the Belgian Champion fencer in 1912 and competed for Belgium in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, winning a

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have b ...

in the team épée event (his teammates included Gaston Salmon). He also competed in three individual events at the same Olympics. In the individual foil and individual épée categories, he reached the 2nd round before being eliminated (he finished 39th in foil, and 29th in épée.) Ochs's final event was individual sabre, but he was eliminated in the 1st round. Whilst pursuing a career as a professional fencer, he also worked at the newspapers "Newspaper of Liège", "Small Parisian", and "the Belgian Nation", drawing caricatures. His cartoons of personalities on the front page of the weekly ''Pourquoi Pas?'' between 1910 and 1971 made him very famous in Belgium. During the Second World War, he was imprisoned on 17 December in the

Fort Breendonk Fort Breendonk (, ) is a former military installation at Breendonk, near Mechelen, Belgium, which served as a Nazi prison camp (''Auffanglager'') during the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Originally constructed between 1906 ...

camp. .The Germans had a file against him containing, among other things, a caricature that appeared in an old ''Pourquoi Pas?'' newspaper and depicted a Hitler with bloody hands. He was detained in the Mechelen barracks and sentenced to death, but the German debacle saved his life.. The camp's prisoners suffered from starvation, grass eating, torture, hangings, and shootings. He survived imprisonment.''The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II ...'' – James M. Deem
/ref> Ochs died in Liège in 1971, 88 years old.

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bio

Holocaust through Art bio

Jews in Sports bio
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ochs, Jacques Belgian male sabre fencers Belgian male épée fencers Belgian male foil fencers Jewish épée fencers Jewish Belgian sportspeople 1971 deaths Académie Julian alumni Members of the Royal Academy of Belgium Olympic fencers for Belgium Fencers at the 1912 Summer Olympics Olympic gold medalists for Belgium Olympic medalists in fencing Belgian caricaturists Belgian humorists Belgian magazine illustrators Jewish caricaturists Belgian military personnel of World War I Breendonk prison camp survivors 1883 births Medalists at the 1912 Summer Olympics Sportspeople from Nice Belgian Jews Belgian people of French descent 20th-century Belgian painters Jewish foil fencers Jewish sabre fencers

Biography

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