Kurt Diemberger

If your bucket list includes standing on top of untouched eight-thousanders and surviving situations where virtually everyone else dies, Kurt Diemberger is your patron saint. The Austrian mountaineer is one of only two humans in history to make the first ascent of two mountains over 8,000 meters—Broad Peak with Hermann Buhl in 1957, and Dhaulagiri in 1960. He's also famous for carrying heavy film cameras up death zones, earning him the title of the "cameraman of the highest peaks."

Unfortunately for our catalog, high-altitude endurance doesn't translate to Hebraic heritage. Mountaineering in mid-century Austria was dominated by sturdy Tyrolean and Carinthian types whose ties to the tribe were precisely zero. Diemberger was born in Villach, raised in the Alps, and educated in Vienna, traversing rock faces and glaciers rather than any synagogues.

Then came 1986 on K2, a season infamous for tragedy. Diemberger survived a brutal five-day storm pinned down at Camp IV while five of his companions, including his climbing partner Julie Tullis, died. He made it down with severe frostbite and had to have parts of his fingers and toes amputated. It is a harrowing tale of human willpower, obsession, and the terrifying indifference of nature. None of which, naturally, makes him Jewish.