By BBS member Campbell Bews

Last summer I had the privilege to interview Leon Weintraub, a 99 year-old Holocaust survivor. We met at his apartment in Stockholm, Sweden. had last met Leon seven years ago at a speaking arrangement, in Berlin. The next day he joined my tour of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. We have stayed in touch, and he generously offered his time to be interviewed for the Berlin Tour Guide Association (BBS). Leon gave an account of his life growing up in Lodz, Poland, the chaos and terror under Nazi occupation, and his life after. As we are part of the last generation that will hear survivor’s stories, I felt honored to listen and record what Leon had to say in our nearly two hours conversation. What follows is a summary of his story, with quotes from Leon, and then a short interview. For those with further interest in Leon’s story, he has just released a book, Reconciliation with Evil (Publisher Kadmos, Berlin 2024).

Part 1: Lodz 

Leon began by describing his early life in Lodz, being raised by his single mother with his four elder sisters. Eschewing help from his deceased father’s family, his mother instead opened a small laundry business, which doubled as their residence: 

Leon: This was only two not big rooms. Entrance from the street, and a window on the left side. A desk to take the laundry, then a place for the ready laundry. On the left side a table to the window and behind another place. These three tables become beds for my sisters for the night. 

Having only two rooms and six people meant little space for privacy or hosting friends. It was a loving family, but desperately poor. Leon tried to help in some unconventional ways, and when the landlord would come to collect the rent he would set the dog on him. His hometown Lodz was a heavily industrialized city at the heart of Poland's textile industry. Workers fed coal into the mouths of hungry textile mills’ chimneys, and their soot filled the air. To escape the choking smoke of the city, during the summer Leon would be sent to their aunt’s shtetl. Leon recalls the bucolic summers:

The family lived a modest life and was thankful for that there were no pogroms, no persecution. So they were never complaining. Friday was the day of the week we got a proper dinner, after a ritual baths. We put on cleaned clothes, entered the synagogue, and after the prayer; we could go home and would eat chicken soup and gefilte fish. 

Although he was young, Leon wasn’t ignorant to the political turmoil going on in Europe. Nascent fascist governments in Germany and Italy were lending their arms and support to Franco’s forces in the Spanish civil war. Whereas his sister, Roza thought any revolution was justified, Leon was against the aggression and racism that he saw in Italy and Germany. His suspicions would be well founded. On the 1st of September, under the pretext of a manufactured casus belli, Germany would violently and suddenly sweep into Poland. 

And we waited for the German Army, and they came. They had seemingly endless columns of healthy, good looking, young soldiers. And the sound of the special boots with the spikes on the soles, when they hit the stones made this terrible sound. When I think about this, I get a cold shower upon my back. And it looked like nothing can resist or stop this army. They will destroy everything, everyone that will come in their way. 

At first, Leon didn’t know how to feel. In films such as “La grande illusion,” he had been conditioned to see the German soldiers as honorable and just. German actor Erich von Stroheim portrayed the gentlemanly Captain von Rauffenstein who even in the First World War treated his captured French foes with respect and cachet. The scene he encountered only just outside his door a few weeks later shattered this idealized view: 

I saw a group of German soldiers surrounding a few old Jews. When I came closer, I was astonished, such cruelty. One of the soldiers tried to take away the beard of the old man, but with the skin, it was bleeding terribly. It was such a shock. 

Part 2: The Ghetto: 

And then came the announcement creating a special part of the town, a ghetto. And the president of the area, Friedrich Übelhör, declared, ‘this is a preliminary measure. I will keep my right to decide which way the ghetto is, and in this way, the town Lodz will be free of all Jews. Our aim is to get rid of this pestilence.’ So I was to become a part of this pestilence. 

For the Nazi leadership, the ghetto system in Poland was a step towards reaching a ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, but to Lodz’s Jews, it began merely with a series of confounding and alarming placards. Appearing on the 8th of February 1940, the signs initially forced them to relocate onto specific streets, before completely eliminating their freedom of movement with a palisade on the 1st March. The city would morph in Leons eyes from a place of dreaming, learning and play to an open-air prison. As in all ghettos, the day-to-day administration was forced upon the Jewish community through the so-called Jewish Councils or “Judenrat,” overseen by the controversial leader of the ghetto, Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski. 

[Rumkowski] had a vision and the vision was really the right way. He thought that as long as we are useful for the Nazis, we have a chance to survive. 

Rumkowski’s motto was “to be at least ten minutes ahead of every German demand.” This made him absolutely complicit, but also indispensable. His control over the ghetto was absolute. To cross him meant deportation and/or death, and yet his usefulness to the Germans meant Lodz was the last ghetto to be liquidated in 1944. He remains a divisive figure for the dictatorial power he wielded, but Leon credits him with helping him survive. 

Leon was shifted around in factories in the ghetto and finally working as an electrician. The work was grueling 12 hours a day, and he received only ration coupons in exchange. 

We got one piece of bread, about 2 kg per head per person, per week... on the working place we got a soup at lunch time and in the evening, when we got back from 12 hours work, my mother tried to make something warm to eat. In summertime it was mostly bad potatoes, and in the wintertime, frozen potatoes, but mostly yellow feed swedes. This is only for cows, to feed them, not for people. 

This was a meagre ration but was higher for a worker like Leon compared to those too young or too old to work, who had to be supplemented by relatives. By September 1942, war was raging to the East of the ghetto, and the Nazis' hunger for supplies and food would spell doom for those unable to work. On the 4th of September Rumkowski announced that he had been ordered to deport the weak, elderly and the young. He assembled the ghetto’s inhabitants and made the impossible demand “Fathers and mothers, give me your children.” 

So, they arranged ‘die grosse Sperre’, the big closing. They surrounded a block of houses, and the German and Jewish policemen went from flat to flat and took all the old, sick and kids younger then 10 with them. And in about a few days, the ghetto became poorer by about 15-20.000 people. We were mourning and mourning. 

Leon and his family continued to survive for the next two years as the eastern front raged over a thousand kilometers away. In February of 1942, Hitler’s 6th Army had surged their way into Stalingrad but found themselves trapped and defeated. By the beginning of 1944, the Soviet Union was on the offensive, on the verge of the massive success that would become Operation Bagration. The front was moving steadily closer. Leon only learned of this through signs that started to appear throughout the ghetto. 

But then come plaques on the wall that have information, and it is very, very cynical... because the front comes closer, and we should not come between the front and get hurt, the ghetto will be placed in safety in the German Third Reich. 

The Soviets’ persistent advance put Lodz in their reach. Even though it had proven to be a valuable source of labor, by February 1944 the SS decided to shut it down. As terrible as the ghetto was, most of its residents feared more what lay outside the camps and the probable separation from their family. Some chose to go into hiding rather than risk deportation, but their need for food eventually drove them out and into the transports. In August, Leon together with his family was ordered to stay overnight in a prison, where he was transferred the next day to a cattle car in a train. It was so crowded that all were forced to stand for the entire dreadful three-day journey to Auschwitz. 

Part 3: Concentration Camps 

And after the third day, the train stops, the doors open, and there are special persons dressed in pajama-like outfits,  stripes, grey, white, blue and they shout, “out, out, out.” I wave my hand to my mother... To the right, not useful to work, to the gas chamber immediately... That’s what happened to my mother and her sister, Eva. 

The chaotic moments of the arrival would be the last Leon would see of his mother. Once the prisoners were off the platform, a Nazi doctor directed the prisoners to their fates in the camp. Leon was ushered towards the temporary reprieve of the barracks, his mother directed towards gas chambers and certain death. Leon was forced into a shower, after which a prisoner roughly shaved his head and his body, then scrubbed his body with a coarse mop dipped in an anti-lice chemical. He still recalls the pain of the chemicals on his bloody, hairless skin. Leon was never tattooed, as he was never registered; instead, he was kept with other young prisoners in Block 10. He was desperate, depressed, but ever aware of the comings and goings around him. 

One day I saw between block 16 and 18 a big group of naked men. So, after hesitating, I asked them, “what are you doing here naked?” “We’ve got a registration we are waiting for clothes to go out for work” they replied. And these words, “out” and “work” were a signal for me, I didn’t think not a second, only looked left and right, no SS and no kapos, in the shadow of the wall, I put away the shirt, the jacket and the trousers and mixed deep in this group of naked people. 

Leon’s instinct to go mix in with a group that was useful and working, would save his life, although his friends and family presumed him dead along with the other young people he had been kept with. After the war, reunited, his friends and relatives were shocked that he had survived. One family friend, who Leon would later reunite with, saw him enter Block 10 in Auschwitz, and presumed he shared the fate of all the young prisoners inside. This acquaintance was an eyewitness when they took all the youngsters to the gas chamber and killed them. 

Leon was loaded into a train and sent northwest to the Gross-Rosen camp in the neighboring state of Upper Silesia. Although it was not a death camp, the working conditions, particularly for Jewish prisoners, were brutal. To avoid allied bombing, the SS had tunnels dug underneath the Owls mountains, where private companies like Krupp and IG Farben could exploit workers without fear of interruption. 

So, we came to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. When they asked for electricians, I said I was one, so we were brought to a subcamp, and they had me working for this big project, Projekt Riese. They created big chambers in the hills for future weapon factories with tunnels. 

Leon found that in the relatively unsupervised tunnels he was able to take the risk of changing the triangle on his uniform. The yellow star gave him the lowest status in the camp, and a guarantee of more meagre rations with harder work. If he had been discovered altering his badge, his punishment would have likely been the same as attempted escape, which every prisoner knew very well. Leon recounted witnessing such a punishment:

We came from the work back to the camp. We hardly had come out of our barrack, when gong, gong, we were summoned to the Appelplatz, where we would be counted. In front of the camp elder were two prisoners. One about my age, a boy, and one grown up. And already we saw a gallows (had been built), and then came the Lagerführer who told us that these two prisoners had tried to escape and they would be hanged. 

As the Soviet army came closer to Gross-Rosen, Leon was after a death march transferred by train, this time to Flossenbürg. The new camp had been used as a quarry for the SS company “Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke” (German Earth and Stoneworks) to supply stone for the many grand Nazi building projects, particularly for Hitler’s favorite architect, Albert Speer. In 1943, facing the pressures of total war, it was refitted for arms production. Like many prisoners who arrived in 1945, Leon was unprepared for the crowded, inhumane conditions in the camp. He fell ill and so was sent to live in freezing quarantine barracks. 

And then the cold, we didn’t have any winter clothes. And it was 6km from the Czech border, and the cold wind from the hills was terrible. 

On the 22nd of March, Leon was moved again, this time to the Natzweiler-Struthof camp. But this was only a brief stop, and he was soon moved again, deeper into the heart of Nazi Germany. The end of the war was an especially deadly time for prisoners as they were often force marched away from advancing armies. Leon was fortunate to avoid this, as he was instead transported west in yet another a cattle wagon. As they wound their way through the Black Forest of southern Germany, his train came under aircraft attack, after which the guards shed their uniforms and fled. 

Planes flew about our head, then explosions. They damaged the engine, and we were put out of the wagons in the forest... Suddenly, the guards disappeared, and we saw parts of their uniforms, the head with the jacket with the double sign of SS, so we hide in the bushes, and we went in the opposite direction. 

Freedom came suddenly, but it was not without its own danger. Leon was gravely ill with common maladies within the camps, typhus and black fever. He was taken to a French Army hospital in Donaueschingen where he was treated for two months. With his body on the mend, he set out to find any trace of his family. Although much of his family had been lost, he was able to find three of his 4 older sisters: Lola, Franka and Mala who had survived the horrors of Bergen- Belsen. 

Part 4: Life after war 

After the chaos of the war Leon fought for the ability to complete his studies in Lower Saxony. There he met his first wife, Katia Hof, a translator from Polish into German. In 1950 with the beginning of the Korean War, he had to move back to Poland so that he could complete his studies. His wife and their first son Michael, born 1948 joined him in April 1951.

And I finished my studies. My choice for medicine was to become a OB&GYN (Obstetrics and Gynecology), because I wanted to help with delivering life after being so close to death for so many years. 

Leon achieved success as a specialist and went on to become chief of staff in a small hospital in 30km outside of Warsaw. He was content with his wife and their three boys. However, just as discrimination had upended his life in Lodz in 1939, it would do so again in 1969. Disappointment in the communist government had given way to strikes and student actions, which the government cynically blamed on Poland’s Jews. Many Polish Jews were fired from their positions and forced to leave the country. 

One day there was a summit, they told me you are not the chief of staff, leave the hospital. One possibility was to leave for Israel, we could get a visa to Israel in the Dutch embassy, and to decide to resign from Polish citizenship.

Forced to move on, Leon decided to take his family to Stockholm, the neutral country Sweden. Choosing an apartment near the hospital, he settled down to finally raise his family. His first wife died in 1970, and he remarried 6 years later to Evamaria, who he still lives happily with today. After he retired, he dedicated his life to teaching about the Holocaust. 

And I think this is why I have a mission to convince people that Democracy is the right thing. So, I am now in my 99th year of my life, and I’m happy that I’m still able to do this. So that is what I can tell you. And the other things in the book, it will come out in November 2024 in English. (The publisher is Kadmos, Berlin.) The title is Reconciliation with Evil. We shall stop, cut out this evil, and try for reconciliation and peace in the future. 

Interview

CB: Thank you, Leon, I would like to ask just a couple of other questions about your life. Firstly, how do you see Germany today, especially in the light of the recent electoral successes of the far-right? 

LW: I see people as they are, and judge them for their actions, and not because of their ethnic origin. I am against the Nazis and the people who are AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), because they will try to take us back to the same way of thinking as the Nazis. I had believed that these were poor people who were frustrated, with no work, no income, and disappointed. But now I am sure, and I know they are evil people, and they really think in a totalitarian way. I think they really mean what they are saying. We need to do everything to stop them and their agenda and not allow them to do the bad things that they promise. 

CB: And when did you begin talking about your experiences about the Holocaust, I know you said you did after you retired, but until then? 

LW: Until then, only a few times a year. It began at the German school, when our daughter was 6 years old. I gave a lecture to students in 9th grade, who had been taught history about the Second World War and the period of National Socialism. I told them about the 12 years of the “Thousand-Year Reich.” When I came there I told them that I am the ‘lebendes audiovisuelles Lehrhilfsmittel’ (living audio visual teaching aid). I have done this now for about 40 years in the German school, and then, when I retired, I went into a few other schools in Sweden. When I turned 70 years old, I started to research into the history of my family. I began to give talks and hold lectures about my life during the war more frequently in schools both in Poland and in Germany, to give interviews at Bayerischer Rundfunk and participate in TV-programs like with Markus Lanz on January 30th (2024), in Hamburg, and so I became a “persona publica”. I will add, I never took a cent for my lectures. If they are on TV or the Bayerischer Rundfunk, had a budget to pay, the whole sum always goes uncut, to groups I support: a children choir in Lodz, the Dialogue Centre in Lodz, Zweitzeugen eV. in Germany, Maximilian-Kolbe-Werk in Freiburg and the Museum of Jewish History “Polin” in Warsaw. 

CB: How much would you say your experiences during the Second World War have defined your life and your political views? 

LW: My brain is very rational, so it was a decision that I didn’t allow myself to be a victim of Hitler. I am a victim because I am a survivor, but I will not allow these experiences to be a black cloud hovering over my head taking away the sun. And I know that the Nazis have persecuted me, but they didn’t kill me, I am a survivor. And then, there are people out there that deny that The Holocaust happened, and others who now take up the ideology of National Socialism, so I have to work against this and to explain to people that this way of thinking is pure murder. Because people become übermensch (superman), others untermensch (sub-human), and this somehow gives the right to kill them, because they think differently. And for me, the democratic way of governing and taking care of people is the best way, as other systems didnt work. Not communistic, and not fascistic, a dictatorship can come close to a democratic rule of government. It’s the government’s role to take care of people, and to show the right way for everyone.

CB: And what do you think is the thing that is most misunderstood about The Holocaust and the way that it’s taught?

LW: It’s racism. Now the knowledge about our DNA has shown us that there are no races, only one Homosapien species. So this says that all the theories or racism are unscientific, not true, not proved. We are equal when we are born as human beings. When I do surgery, whatever the colour the skin is, the tissue under the skin is identical. Every person. When a newborn comes into the world, it has no ideas in its brain, this only comes with the time. And there is a paradox: we are a little piece in the cosmos, there are trillions of galaxies like we are, and ours is just a grain of sand. But to refer to people as thousands of groups, who are fighting against one another is idiotic, it’s a paradox. It costs nothing to live in peace and together with other people, but to fight against others, to train soldiers, to create weapons, this costs so much. Just think about what we could create if we put that time and effort into more positive things instead. 

CB: And what do you think that Teachers or Tour Guides should be teaching in this? 

LW: To be a human being is a human being. The three words, liberté, égalité, fraternité, are not empty words to me. They are the precursors of the French Revolution, which ended terribly, with the Guillotine. But it was the first movement towards human rights, to show that we are all equal. And even if you are born into royalty, you are not above others. And this is my philosophy, I try to live this way.

Thank you Leon

Bibliography:

Cesarani, David. Final solution; the fate of the jews. London, UK: PAN Books, 2017. 

Sem-Sandberg, Steve. The emperor of lies. London: Faber, 2012. 

Wachsmann, Nikolaus. KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Macmillan, 2015. 

Licensing Details:

• Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz 1944: Source

• Rumkowski speaking in the Lodz ghetto: Source

• Quarry at Flossenbürg: Source