In May, a very special and dear friend visited our office – we had an honor of meeting Leon Weintraub, a Holocaust Survivor and a staunch supporter of our School of Dialogue program.
He was born in 1926 in Łódź. In 1939, his family was forced to relocate to ghetto there and in 1944, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was separated from his mother and sisters. He managed to escape by joining a transport to a forced labor camp. Liberated in 1945, he learned by accident that 3 of 4 his sisters also survived the war. He returned to Poland and finished medical studies, but left the country in 1969 during the antisemitic campaign waged by communist authorities and emigrated to Sweden, where he lives to this day.
Since 1991, he has worked towards bringing back the memory of the Jewish community of Dobra, his mother’s hometown. Those activities have reconnected him with School of Dialogue students and teachers from Henryk Sienkiewicz School Complex in Dobra, and now they cooperate to restore the town’s past. In 2021, he was a special guest of our School of Dialogue online Gala and delivered a powerful message of hope to participating students.
