Leon Weintraub was born on January 1, 1926 in Łódź, to Szula-Szloma and Natalia. Leon Weintraub's father died in 1927. In order to provide for the large family (a son and four daughters), his mother opened a small laundry at 2 Kamienna Street in Łódź. By the outbreak of the war, Leon Weintraub had completed 6 grades of primary school. In 1939, Weintraub's family moved to the Łódź ghetto, where he completed one more grade of primary school. He worked in a galvanizing workshop, then in a sheet metal workshop, and then as an electrician. In August 1944, the Weintrau family was taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where Leon was separated from the rest of the family. After a few weeks, Leon Weintraub escaped from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, got on a transport to Głuszyce and ended up in the camp in Dörnhau (Kolce), where he was assigned to work in the Todt organization. He stayed in Dörnhau until the end of February 1945, from where he was deported to other labor camps. On April 23, 1945, Leon Weintraub was liberated by French troops and was convalescing in a hospital in Donaueschingen, later in a French military sanatorium on the Reichenau Peninsula. During his stay in the sanatorium, he learned that his three sisters had survived the Bergen-Belsen camp. In the autumn of 1946, he began his studies at the medical faculty in Göttingen. In 1947, he married Katia Ketitehuff from Berlin - later a translator of Polish literature into German (including prose by Janusz Korczak and Czesław Miłosz). In November 1959, Leon Weintraub came to Poland, where he completed his medical studies, specializing in gynecology and obstetrics, and began his professional practice in Warsaw. In 1966 he received his doctorate and was appointed head of the obstetrics and gynecology department in Otwock. In 1969, on a wave of anti-Semitic sentiments, Leon Weintraub was unjustly accused of exceeding his authority and mismanagement. He lost his position as head of the department and the opportunity to work as a scientist in the Polish People's Republic. In 1969 he emigrated to Sweden, where he married again and lives to this day. In 2008, on Leon Weintraub's initiative, the cemetery was tidied up and the Jewish community of Dobra near Turek - his mother's hometown - was commemorated. INTERVIEWER'S NAME: Leon Weintraub INTERVIEWED BY: Joanna Król-Komła RECORDING: Joanna Król-Komła DATE OF RECORDING: September 8, 2015 COPYRIGHT TO RECORDING: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews Discover the POLIN Museum's oral history collection: https://sztetl.org.pl/pl/historia-mow... Subscribe to our channel: / @historiamowionapolin Watch POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews channels: POLIN (announcements and reports from events at the Museum): / mhzp2013 Virtual Shtetl (history and culture of Polish Jews): / virtualshtetl Polish Righteous (stories of help provided to Jews during the Holocaust): / polscysprawiedliwi Contact for interview sharing: [email protected] #PolinMuseum #SpokenHistory #marzec68