Leon Weintraub

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Leon Weintraub (born January 1, 1926 in Łódź ) is a Polish-born survivor of the Holocaust and contemporary witness . He lives in Sweden .

Life

Leon Weintraub is the fifth child of a Jewish family in Łódź. His father died in 1927, so that the mother had to raise him and his four sisters alone in poverty under difficult circumstances. At the age of 13, Leon experienced the invasion of the Wehrmacht in the course of the German attack on Poland . In 1940 he was relocated to the Litzmannstadt ghetto with his mother and siblings . To survive, he worked in the galvanization of a factory that produced for the German Reich . After the defeat of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad in February 1943, liquidations and deportations began in the Litzmannstadt ghetto . The Weintraub family initially went into hiding, but were discovered and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in August 1944 . Leon was separated from his family, he was intended for "death by gassing" , which he escaped only by chance by joining a prisoner transport unobserved. So he ended up in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp , where he carried out electrical work. In February 1945 he was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp and in March to the Natzweiler-Struthof / Offenburg concentration camp . As the French army drew closer, the SS men were forced to transport the prisoners further inland. On the journey towards Lake Constance, Leon Weintraub and other prisoners managed to escape after the train near Hintschingen was shot at by a fighter-bomber. After walking at night, they arrived on April 23, 1945 in Donaueschingen , which had been occupied by the French two days earlier. He weighed only 35 kilograms and suffered from typhus . Of his family, three of his older sisters survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

After the war ended, Weintraub began studying medicine in Göttingen in 1946 , where he also married his German wife Katja Hof . The couple had a son in 1948. From 1950 he worked in a women's clinic in Warsaw . In 1966 the doctorate followed . He lost his position as senior physician at the gynecological clinic in Otwock in March 1969 as a result of increasing anti-Semitism in Poland. In the same year he emigrated to Sweden with his family. His wife Katja Weintraub , a Slavist who translated works by Janusz Korczak from Polish into German, died in Stockholm in 1970 .

As a contemporary witness of the Holocaust, Leon Weintraub gives lectures in Germany and Poland.

Awards

In 2004 Leon Weintraub was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon .

literature

  • Jonas Seufert: "I am a winner" . Chrismon , January 2018, p. 34–38 ( chrismon.de [accessed January 23, 2018]).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leon Weintraub talks about the removal transport to different camps and his liberation (video), 3sat online
  2. ↑ a b Lecture by Dr. Weintraub, website of the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Altdorf. Text: Thao My Lê ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.leibniz-gymnasium-altdorf.de
  3. ↑ In Donaueschingen he feels the feeling of freedom , Südkurier, May 5, 2010
  4. ^ USC Shoah Foundation Institute testimony of Leon Weintraub. In: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  5. ↑ Holocaust: The End of Trust. The long way of becoming human again (videos with contemporary witness reports by Leon Weintraub). In: 3sat, February 2011
  6. ^ The Night of Contemporary Witnesses , Bayerisches Fernsehen, November 23, 2014
  7. ^ A b Leon Weintraub, Project Riese
  8. ↑ For example: Münchner Volkstheater: “Young people in the Holocaust. Spring Day - Night of Contemporary Witnesses ”, November 6, 2014 ; City of Nuremberg: Interview with Leon Weintraub ( memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ); The preservation of life made a profession. Holocaust survivor tells. Badische Zeitung, May 19, 2010 ; Opening ceremony of the Place of Remembrance in Dobra, Poland, Tuesday, August 19, 2008. Speech by Leon Weintraub
personal data
SURNAME Weintraub, Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Holocaust survivor and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź