Leon Rytz (M / Poland, 1927), Holocaust survivor
Leon Rytz (M / Poland, 1927), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Poland> <Warsaw Ghetto> <Majdanek> <Bergen-Belsen> -- <Sweden>
Biography
Leon Rytz (15 Mar 1927) was born in Warka or Warsaw, Poland. From the Warsaw Ghetto was deported to Majdanek. Escaped and joined the partisans. Recaptured was sent to several labor camps, including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. Liberated near Hamburg. Displaced person in Sweden.
USHMM Oral Interview
Leon Rytz, born in 1927 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his mother and aunt who imported tea and sold it to local businesses; living in the Warsaw ghetto with his family during the war; being taken by the Nazis one day in 1942 and never seeing his family again; being taken to "Umschlagplatz" and then Majdanek; building barracks for a few months; being transported to Treblinka and escaping during the journey; joining a partisan group in the forest; participating in several raids; escaping the partisans because they began killing the Jewish members; going to Warsaw in 1943 and seeing the city in flames; being captured by the Nazis and sent to the labor camp Skarzysko-Kamienna, where he produced war materials; being sentenced to execution after a failed escape attempt and being saved by a lady unknown to him who said that she had a diamond in her shoes that they would have if they let her brother live; the evacuation of the camp to Czestochowa; being sent to Buchenwald then Dora-Nordhausen, where he remained until February or March 1945; the evacuation of the camp and being sent to Bergen-Belsen; escaping from Bergen-Belsen with Russian prisoners; being picked up by American troops and taken to a camp in Farsleben, Germany; being relocated to a settlement between Hamburg and Lübeck; meeting a Swedish nurse who smuggled him on a boat to Sweden; being quarantined in Helsingborg for three weeks; living on a kibbutz with other young Jewish refugees; going to Borås, Sweden, where he lived for most of his life after the war; studying at the textile institute; getting a job at the Oscar Jacobson factory; starting his own company, producing children's clothing; how the majority of Jewish survivors living in Borås worked in the textile industry following the war; the importance of meeting with other survivors of the Holocaust; the effects of the war on the maturity levels of the youths who survived it; meeting his wife, Edit, when he was 20 years old; the life they built together; the psychological remainders of the war; the importance of tending to democracy and maintaining Jewish traditions; and contributing to the building of a synagogue in Borås.