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 | Leon's brother Morris (Moniek). |
In the months and years that followed, Leon and Morris were moved from one work camp/detention centre to another. The following list of camps is taken from an affidavit Leon swore in Chicago in 1969, as part of an application to be compensated by Germany: “From January 1940 to July 1941, I was in Skarzysko-Kamienna Hasag. From July 1941 to June 1943, I was in Skarzysko-Kamienna Zork. From June 1943 to June 1944, I was in Blizyn Concentration Camp. From June 1944 to August 1944, I was in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp where the number B-1377, was tattooed on my arm. From August 1944 to October 1944, I was in the Sacksenhaus Concentration Camp. From October 1944 to April 1945, I was in the Lanzberg Concentration Camp. In April 1945 I was in Dachau Concentration Camp where my prison number was 127567. I was in the Dachau Concentration Camp only a few weeks when I was liberated by the U.S. Army. After my liberation, I was in Buchberg Germany for about one month and then went to the Feldafing DP Camp where I remained until October 1945.”
 | Left: Leon's younger brothers, Josek and Haskiel. No photos of his younger sister, Bluma, remain but the girl in the photo to the right, I'm told, bears a striking resemblance to her. Leon's parents and his three youngest siblings all died in the Holocaust. |
While in the Feldafing Camp, Leon learned through a Jewish agency that his brother Morris, whom he had last seen in Auschwitz in 1944, had also survived and was in the Theresienstadt Camp in Czechoslovakia. He wrote to him and they arranged to meet in Skarzysko, their home town. There they learned that their mother, father and two younger brothers and sister had been taken to the railroad station in Skarzysko in 1942 and from there to their deaths in Treblinka.
Morris decided to return to Germany to a DP camp, where he could learn a trade — radio and television repair. Leon went to Jelenia Góra because he’d met a family friend named Kuzdub who was helping Poles take over businesses that had been confiscated from Germans. The only business that was left was a small glass business that made windows for cars, beveled glass, and other things. That’s how Leon acquired a business and a trade in Jelenia Góra.
 | Our wedding invitation. |
Leon and I dated for over a year. We were very much in love. We married on January 18, 1948, two people with almost nothing. We had the wedding in my apartment. I worked for a couple of weeks, cooking and preparing kosher things. (Although some members of Leon’s family were religious, he himself had become a non-believer during the war.) Some of my friends and Leon’s cousin, Dora, helped me prepare the food. I went to the mikvah, the ritual bath, in a nearby town since the rabbi wouldn’t marry us unless I produced a document proving I’d gone. Dora came with me.
I’d never been to the mikvah before; it was my first and only time. The people at the mikvah wanted to cut my fingernails but I had nice nails and had always treated them carefully; I gave them a few zlotys and they let me keep them. I had to dunk my head three times. While I was dunking, Dora was swimming in the mikvah — something I don’t think you are supposed to do. But there was no one else in the water.
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