Jan Krugier, the art dealer who made his fortune from Picasso

Jan Krugier, the renowned international art dealer who survived three concentration camps including Auschwitz, died last week aged 80. The Geneva-based dealer owed much of his fortune (and reputation) to a small kindness he once performed for Pablo Picasso's impoverished grandson, Pablita.

Shortly after the Spanish artist's death in 1973, Krugier (pictured) was telephoned by Picasso's long-term mistress, Marie-Therese Walter, who asked him to help Pablita, who had swallowed what proved to be a fatal quantity of bleach. Through his links to the French government – his brother-in-law was minister of the interior – Krugier was able to help him receive the best treatment on offer. Afterwards, Walter asked him to take charge of her considerable Picasso collection. And then in 1976 Pablito's sister, Marina, asked him to manage her part of her late grandfather's estate.

Krugier, a Polish Jew, cut an elegant figure in the salerooms of the world, where he would sit near the front haranguing the auctioneer in mid-flow, brandishing his silver-topped cane. But his bluff exterior concealed a rather tormented man.

His father was killed fighting the Germans and his step-mother and younger brother were murdered at Treblinka. Krugier avoided the same fate by escaping on a train. He spent several months living rough before being caught, after which he was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He then worked as a slave labourer at a nearby chemical plant, and was sent to Mittelbau-Dora as the Russian army approached, enduring the so-called "march of death" where any who dropped from exhaustion were killed. He finally ended up in Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated by the British in April 1945 and had the good fortune to be adopted by a wealthy Swiss couple.