Obituary | Former leader of Dutch electronics giant Philips helped spare Jews

Frits Philips, the former president of the Dutch electronics giant that bears his family name, who helped save hundreds of Jewish workers after Nazi occupiers forced him to open a workshop in a concentration camp during World War II, has died. He was 100.

Mr. Philips died Monday of pneumonia and complications resulting from a fall on his estate in Eindhoven in the southeast Netherlands, the company announced.

His strategy in becoming an employer at the prison camp near Vught, about 20 miles north of company headquarters in Eindhoven, was deceptively simple. Mr. Philips put as many Jews to work as possible and argued that they were indispensable, delaying their deportation to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

Of 469 Jewish prisoners who helped make radio receivers and electric shavers for Germany, 382 survived the war, according to a company history.

The company deliberately manufactured faulty radio valves, hid its capacity to make weapons and tried to be as unproductive as possible. After the war ended, Mr. Philips oversaw reconstruction of the operation in the Netherlands and the expansion of the company in South America and Asia.

Awarded a medal in 1996 by Israeli Holocaust authority Yad Vashem, Mr. Philips said he was no hero and that many others had helped save lives.

His personal drama escalated when thousands of workers at his factories went on strike in 1943. The Nazis imprisoned Mr. Philips and threatened to execute him unless his employees went back to work. They did, but Mr. Philips was detained for five months.

The same May day that Mr. Philips was arrested, seven men — including four employees — were executed at a company plant. For the rest of his life, Mr. Philips visited the yard to lay flowers where the men were murdered.

Frederik Jacques Philips was born in Eindhoven on April 16, 1905, the only son of Anton Philips, who co-founded a light-bulb business in the early 1890s with his brother Gerard.

Frits Philips joined the business in 1930. He spent more than 40 years at the company, including a decade at the helm beginning in 1961. The enterprise, now called Royal Philips Electronics, today is Europe's leading electronics manufacturer, with nearly 160,000 employees.

Mr. Philips' wife, Sylvia, died in 1992. He is survived by three sons and three daughters; another daughter preceded him in death.