LW: To Auschwitz, after the selection.
Also a new word, selection, a biological term, but we were -- selection was death or life.
Led to a barrack, so the first step was - clothes off and shower.
Then a group of prisoners came with haircutting machines, removed the hair from all body parts.
Not carefully, because it had to be done fast. With scraps of skin.
And then the next phase was a row of prisoners sat on a trough and an oily, smelly phenol or carbo-liquid.
With a mop, like you use to clean a floor, dunked in, head and arms, genitals smeared.
This smelly liquid and it burned horribly because the skin was rubbed off.
Then out and prisoners stood there and threw us clothing.
I was given pants with space for three and I tried to find someone big who had been given small pants.
And we traded.
And then we entered a barrack, were brought inside, there were -- strange, there was a beam on the outer wall with rings, to tie horses too.
in the middle there was an aisle to a brickwall, on both sides of the long barrack, maybe 30, 40 meters, two fireplaces and chimneys for heat.
We were about 30 people
And then a man came into this structure and threatened us, if we had hidden valuables, jewelry, gold in our body orifices
That we were going to be x-rayed if we were caught we would be punished.
If we hand it over voluntarily, there was a bucket there, we would get an extra portion of food.
Perhaps a few minutes passed, in my memory it was hours, we were all so tired and exhausted, then we were assigned to the blocks.
I was put in Block number 10, the youth block.
Roll call in the morning, there were these...the way horses drink, with a few faucets to wash.
The food was brought out in buckets, long lines, we were given one bowl for four people, each had a spoon.
I learned how to eat fast, from the bowl to mouth, to get in as much as possible.
There were seconds if something was left in the pot.
I noticed that the kapo who distributed the food, sometimes reached to the bottom to get out the pototoes and vegetables, and sometimes only took the water from the top.
And when there was something left, the people lined up to get more.
But if the kapo didn't like something, then he hit the person over the head with the ladel instead of giving soup.
I never got in line.
To finish this section on Auschwitz.
I see a redheaded man in front of me, a Dutchman, who said to me -- I learned from him where I was.
And I said "it smells, what is that smell, burning, burning."
He said, yes, that is the crematorium, the smoke, people are burning because...
It permeated everything, the air, breathing, everything I had, the skin, the smell of burned meat.
Around the clock, the whole time and thick smoke from the chimneys of the crematorium.
What happened next, after about two weeks, because we didn't have any work. Because that was Birkenau, the former gypsy camp, where they gassed the gypsies to make room for us peple from Lodz.
Suddenly someone called me, a well-nourished boy my age, with a cap also striped.
tailor-made striped suit.
"Leon, you are alive, come with me, I will speak to my kapo, my block elder, maybe he can take you in too."
I was informed by this time. I knew what that meant and I wasn't very...
I was not yet, I was informed but sexually I had not yet really reached puberty, a little late, you could say.
But this fate of ending up with homosexuals in bed, that was not what I wanted.
I talked my way out of it, said I had to meet someone.
But from this day on, I was filled with panic over seeing him again.
And to be led to this kapo or elder, block elder and have to share his bed.
So in this mental state -- there was real fear.
And when I saw three barracks over from my block, between 16 and 18, a group of naked men.
I dared to ask: What are you doing here?
One of them said: "We have already been registered. We are all ready. We are waiting for clothes, they are going to send us out to work."
And that word "out" was a signal for me.
I looked around, no kapo, no SS, no soldiers, up to the block wall, barrack wall, threw off my two items.
And mixed into the group.
My luck and I was there, they didn't check.
I went with the group in the afternoon to the clothes distribution, got clothes, on to the train, arrived in Oberwüstegiersdorf, Gross-Rosen.
And I can say, I escaped from Auschwitz, illegally.
Because three days later the youth barrack was gassed.
There was the brother of Henryk Kupfermann, Fellah Kupfermann, who with this block, he saw it, with this youth block.
And he saw my sister after the war, in Bergen-Belsen.
He said, "ach, your brother is gone, I saw it myself, he was in that barrack and that barrack was gassed."
He didn't know that I had managed to get away a few days before.
That was the episode in Auschwitz.
I already spoke about the moment of liberation, of becoming free, but it was long before I felt free.
The first period was with this group that I had sought out to go by bike to the train to Constance.
After a few days in Constance, we were accommodated in a hotel. Around the corner were the barriers to Switzerland, to the part of the city that led to Switzerland.
The city of Constance is divided into a Swiss part and a German part.
During the first examination they found a spot on my lung and sent me to the sanatorium of the French Army.
On the Reichenau peninsula, for recuperation.
That was a good time.
Waking up in the morning with a pack of Gauloises on the night table, cigarettes, a pitcher of red wine, no milk, no tea.
That was the first breakfast.
We were three in this room.
One was a pipel and was constantly whining about whether he would ever be able to get close with a woman.
After this experience.
And the weeks passed and I got better. Until July 14, the Day of the Bastille.
Everyone was in the large hall for a festive meal.
After the course, with white bread on the table, the plate wiped clean, the next course.
And always with two nurses at my side, refilling my glass with wine.
And I wasn't used to it and I had a blackout, a collapse, alcohol poisoning you might say.
I started swinging my arms around. .
And I see myself waking up from this comatose state, a large behind, I punched it, it was the French army doctor.
And all of the sudden, I was so ashamed when I woke up and came to myself again, I prayed to be transferred to another recovery home.
And reading all day long...there was a nice library, large, with German books.
And from the Yiddish I could understand the content, I knew how to read.
And in this way I began to acquire passive understanding of the German language.
One day I drove to Constance to visit my friends in the hotel.
There were two girls, we introduced ourselves, she said "Weintraub? We came from Bergen-Belsen.
And we met three girls there from the Lodz Ghetto, Lola, Franka und Mala."
I said, "those are my sisters."
Again no documents, no money.
But somehow, hitchhiking, by train, spending a night in Ulm, with a girl who had also heard that her brother was there.
After traveling five days we reached Celle, and I asked how to get to Belsen.
They said there was a shuttle there.
Autos and trucks traveling back and forth.
And then I arrived there, someone helped me get on, said "You're alive?" A distant cousin.
He recognized me, said "your sisters are sitting" -- mourning in Hebrew is called Schiv'a, one mourns seven days.
You mark your skirt, ashes on your head and you don't cook, people come, relatives and friends, bring food to comfort the mourners.
And they had been sitting, mourning for four days because Fellah Kupfermann had said he saw my barrack go to the gas chambers.
The joy was immense and he said he will go ahead, prepare them so that they don't get a heart attack.
That death had reappeared.
It was wonderful, great joy.
And I was registered there.
With a small dissonance with the English officer, it was the British occupation zone.
Repeating so many times "Jewish?" "yes" "so mosaic?" I said "not mosaic" "Not mosaic, so not Jewish?" I say, "yes, Jewish, but not mosaic."
He couldn't believe that one could be Jewish but not practicing the faith.
I said "I am not religious. I don't have a god, my god stayed in Auschwitz."
If there is one, then he stayed there.
In the end he got it, even on our marriage certificate, from 1947 with my first wife Käthe Hof, it says "without religion."
They emphasized it. She was baptized Lutheran/Protestant, I was without religion.
Back then they accepted us boys, organized a kind of school, with classes.
That went very well until I started thinking about my existence in spring '46, I wanted to study, become a doctor.
I knew I had only had six years of grammar school.
I received a letter from the culture attaché of the English Army in Berger-Belsen.
They had ordered a meeting with teh dean of the medical faculty, Prof. Hermann Rein, physiologist.
And I was accepted and after a short but very one-sided conversation "young man, it is useless."
And me: "let me try."
I had taught myself these three words.
He finally gave in, not me.
I received a letter, from the deanship.
To study for one semester and when I completed this semester, all the exams, I could continue.
That went well until the fourth semester. the preliminary medical examination, I was summoned to the deanship: "We can't find your abitur [high school exam] certificate."
I explained to them that I don't have one.
what to do? Discontinue. One cannot take the preliminary medical exam without the certificate.
I said, "But is there no way? theoretically?"
"Yes, when you write a petition to the culture minister and he allows you to take an external abitur exam, but that is purely theoretical.
I said: "for me it isn't theoretical."
So I did it, I took the written exam in the upper school, Humboldt School Hannover in October 1948.
After that was accepted, I passed, after a week after a week, I was examined in eight courses on a single day.
And I received my certificate, I was a normal student.
Then took the preliminary medical exam,. I have to say here that unfortunately, due to my marriage to a Berliner woman, that this didn't please the Jewish community.
That had supported me until then.
I had a little help from my oldest sister, the supervisor of a Jewish orphanage in Ochtmissen, near Lüneburg.
As of November 1945.
Sometimes I went there, once a week, on the weekend and ate till I was full.
But then after the marriage and in January 1948 our son was born, the oldest, Michael.
I didn't have any money, I went to the Polish consulate and said "I want to travel to my native country, land of my birth, back to Poland."
They said, "Dear friend, we need doctors in Poland, stay here, complete our studies and then go."
I received a fellowship of 250 DM a month.
That was enough to support ourselves and our friends from the FDJ group.
I was organizational head of the FDJ in Göttingen, the medical faculty.
Back then in Lüneberg I met the secretary of the German Communist Party, which was illegal at the time, and the utopia appealed to me - equality and all these lovely words in theory.
So that went well until 1950.
In 1950 the consulate was closed because of the Korean War. I went back to Poland in November 1950.
IV: Can I interrupt briefly for a question?
LW: Yes.
IV: Before we continue.
LW: Smell -- the hay.
IV: Yes, they must have just mowed to lawn or something.
LW: Thank you.
CM: Running.
LW: I arrived in Warsaw.
IV: I wanted to ask, you found your sisters again, which was very nice. What happened to your mother?
LW: My sisters said that when they arrived, in front to Mengele or some other -
I still have the image, my mother looked very young, dark blue outfit, white blouse.
Had a little rouge on her cheeks.
But my aunt was ten years older, past 60.
And at the selection, when they sent Aunt Ewa to the right, to those condemned to death, she held on to my mother's hand desperately and dragged her along.
My sister said she asked how old she is, and even said "madam", a deception.
She told me she said "forty-five."
But he had already sent my aunt to the right and didn't call her back.
All three of my sisters were sent to the labor camp, to Mühlhausen, and survived.
It was terrible for them in Bergen-Belsen, everyone was so close to death.
IV: And when you were reunited, did you not think to go back to Lodz, or to your home?
How did you come to decide to stay in Germany, suddenly "I am staying in Germany, I am going to study here."
You married a German woman?
LW: Simply because my older sister was already anchored in Lüneburg.
Had taken over the management of a Jewish orphanage and my other two sisters were with her, worked there too.
So why should I leave them?
We were here, I stayed here.
And then I had the idea, since I am here I want to do something with my life.
Black market, trade, that wasn't my thing.
I wanted to study, to learn.
And then I contacted this cultural attaché and then I went to Göttingen to study. I didn't want to waste the time.
And since I had a connection in Germany, through my sisters, who were working in Lüneberg, I didn't want to leave.
IV: For all four of you, wasn't it - Germany was the country of the perpetrators, the ones who had caused you all this suffering.
Didn't that bother you?
LW: We were living in the now {clears throat}. In the present.
My sisters did immigrate, all three of them, to Israel.
And two of them went from there to America and one is in the kibbuz because of her social views, and stayed in the kibbuz.
Until her death six years ago.
I went to Warsaw, was repatriated, repatriacja, homeland.
Continued my studies, acquired my medical diploma in 1953, first worked in the women's clinic in Warsaw as an assistant.
Then my dissertation in 1966, defended it and applied the same year.
Senior physician in a women's clinic, women's ward, maternity ward, more than 60 beds, in a small town, Otwock, in a spa town for pulmonary patients, just 17 km from Warsaw.
The three happiest years of my life.
where I could continue my research and avoid all the mistakes of my supervisors.
Treat my staff as real colleagues, co-workers, not as subordinates, I was never a boss in the real sense.
And had a lot of success in work, was at a convention in Lodz in 1968, in summer, in June.
Endocrinology convention, where the health minister congratulated me that I had succeeded in conducting so much research in a small hospital.
And promised to give me more assistants, more people, because they were doing so much work, so that they can work more effectively.
Returned home from the convention, to the hospital, after a few days.
A truck pulled up, a man came to me with a piece of paper from the war health office.
It is forbidden, forbidden, forbiden to conduct research.
X-ray examinations of the women's abdominal area, a routine examination. To find tuberculosis.
And no research and to hand over all the patient histories in my division since I took over.
They took them all.
Then I had my file at home, "my struggle."
I wrote protest letters to the ministry for months, but it didn't help.
In February 1969, a meeting of the Party, the district and I was removed from my position, dismissed.
Someone had denounced me, that I was doing experiments on Polish women.
That was the pretext, it was 1968, ordered from above, didn't come from the people, wave of antisemitism.
And that is when the last surviving Jews left Poland.
That was a new exodus.
Since I had three sons with my first wife.
And I thought I had paid my blood toll for many generations to come, so I didn't go to Israel, which was the basic condition.
We were only allowed to immigrate to Israel.
Received papers that we were only allowed to cross the border in one direction.
No passport, just a permit that the holder of the permit was allowed to cross the border to the west.
And I picked out the country in advance, Sweden, a neutral country.
And everything was arranged with the embassy, with a residence permit, work permit.
And I was a fully-trained specialist doctor with a Ph.D. title Dr. med.
I was very desirable for them, they needed doctors at this time.
Even took all my documents with me, could send them with a courier, because we were stuck in the train station in Warsaw for three days.
They took every book, all the literature, "my struggle", Jewish literature, took everything away, didn't let it through.
All the substandard films that I had made, 8 mm film of my family, family visits. looked at everything.
That took hours, checked everything, until I sent the container with our furniture, a few things, clothing to Sweden.
And then we departed, through Germany, I first paid a visit to our in-laws in Weidenhausen, district of Biedekopf for a few days.
We traveled by car, I even had my own car by then, a Volvo.
Drove by car, took our hand luggage with us.
One son stayed there, because he had married in June 1969, the father-in-law of my son was seriously ill and the daughter-in-law, Katarina, didn't want to leave her father.
They joined us two years later, 1971.
So I arrived in Sweden and during the time in Poland, it had been 16 years after all, or 19 years, my wife came later with Michael, in April 1951.
She was a very talented translator.
Her translations of Janusz Korczak, the doctor in the Warsaw Ghetto, who went with the children to Treblinka.
He ran an orphanage, a pediatrician.
She translated his books and these translations were the basis for giving Janusz Korczak the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade posthumously in 1972.
On the basis of Katja Weintraub's translations.
I resumed my work as a gynecologist in Stockholm.
The first year in the unfamiliar north, in Luleå.
On the same level as the Polar Circle, terrible time.
I arrived on January 1, it was dark, a bit gray, around 11 and a little gray, then it turned dark.
In May it got light, the sun didn't set, but then I got a position in Stockholm and went back.
And my wife died tragically. in an accident, in 1970.
On the second day of Christmas, December 27.
Six years later I married Eva-Maria. She is also from Germany, a German woman.
And our family is also an example of the 20th century, one could say.
My oldest son left Sweden for Germany and was a champion of the Polish language in Germany.
Helped organize various groups of Polish immigrants in Germany.
Data established an Intranet, was elected secretary, the Parapluie, umbrella organization for Poles in Germany.
Then a few reactionaries in Poland started looking at his fly.
That he was a Jew, Jewish from my side.
Although it isn't true.
And he told them to go sit on a tack.
But he was nonetheless very active during this time.
Eva-Maria had been working in peace research SIPRI, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute since 1981.
Until last year, when she withdrew.
Had a lot of positive accomplishments.
Our daughter attended the German school in Stockholm from Kindergarden through high school.
And for my activities in building bridges, as the ambassodor called it, I received the German Federal Cross of Merit, in July 2004..
For my activities in German schools and my lectures about the Holocaust, I received the Federal Cross of Merit.
And this is the pin, the menora from the Jewish Community of Stockholm, for meritorial service for the Jewish population in Sweden.
Even though I am not a member of the congregation.
I am not really a member in any organization, I help many, but I don't want a number, no more membership numbers.
I was already a number once in my life. That is enough.
I do a lot voluntarily, but I choose who I want to help and how.
Not through a membership and certain obligations or duties.
I reached the age of 83 and can consider myself lucky.
I have maintained so much health and strength that I am able to be here today and tell you all of this.
I have maintained a few interests.
Ever since September 1945 when my sisters told me "too bad youi didn't come in July, we had a visit from London, Benjamin Britten and Yehudi Menuhin."
A seed was planted in my brain, for music.
I put it on the internet three years ago, a homage to the composition and its creator, Beethoven's violin concert D major, Opus 61.
I have had this passion, a deep love, all my life.
I have 87 copies played by different virtuosos at home and that gives me a lot of satisfaction.
And a year ago, in August 2008, I dedicated a memorial site for my relatives on my mother's side.
in the small town in Poland, it took me five years of work and effort.
But I am as proud of that as I am of my dissertation.
And when our daughter got married I advised her:
She has a natural talent. Don't keep it for yourself. Share it.
Because my mother advised me, not that I should become rich, but to always have enough to give.
IV: That is good advice. A good conclusion. I would like to ask one more thing.
CM: Wait. We need a new cassette.
IV: Okay.