Leon Weintraub

Early life

Leon Weintraub is the fifth child of a Jewish family from Łódź. His father died in 1927. Therefore, his mother had to raise him and the four sisters in poverty and under difficult conditions. At the age of 13 Leon witnessed the invasion of the German Wehrmacht and the Nazi occupation of Poland. In 1940 the whole family was detained and forced to live in the Łódź Ghetto.

Life in the Second World War

In order to survive the boy had to work in a galvanization factory which produced for the German Reich. After the invaders were defeated at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943, liquidations and deportations began in the ghetto. First the family tried to hide themselves, but they were detected and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. Leon was separated from his mother and his sisters and ought to be killed in the gas chambers. Only by chance he escaped by joining an outgoing transport of inmates to Gross-Rosen concentration camp where he was forced to work as an electrician. In February 1944 he was transferred to Flossenbürg, in March to Natzweiler-Struthof. When the French army came closer, the SS guards decided to deport the inmates once again. As the train was bombed near Hintschingen, Weintraub succeeded to escape — together with other inmates. After an all night walk the group reached Donaueschingen on April 23, 1945, two days after the French had occupied the city. At that point his weight was down to 35 kilos and he suffered from typhus. Three of his sisters barely survived their last stay at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Post war life

After the Nazi regime ceased to exist and after his recovery, Weintraub began to study medicine at the University of Göttingen. There he became acquainted with Katja Hof, a German slavist. Soon they married and in 1948 their son was born. In 1950 he started to work in a clinic for gynecology in Warsaw, in 1951 his spouse and their son relocated to Poland. Weintraub completed his doctorate in 1966, but in 1969 he lost his post as a senior physician at a clinic in Otwock due to rising anti-Semitism in Poland. Thereafter the family emigrated to Sweden. The following year his wife, who had become a renowned author and translator, died in Stockholm.

Weintraub serves as a witness and oral historian of The Holocaust, giving lectures in Germany and Poland, mainly to scholars and students, as well as appearing in television documentaries and discussions.

Quote

Two words, so he says, have been canceled from his vocabularies: In his presence none of his family members will ever pronounce the word ″hated", because this term has caused so much damage. The same applies to the word ″revenge″. You simply cannot give back as you were given.

Decoration