Meet Holocaust survivor Leon Green z”l. Born in Poland in 1920, Leon moved with his family to Germany when he was just two years old. During World War II, he and his family were rounded up and sent to the Kraków ghetto before being deported to Płaszów. From there, Leon was transported to the St. Valentin, Mauthausen, and Ebensee concentration camps in Austria where he was beaten, starved and forced into slave labor.
In 2018, at the age of 97, Leon returned to Mauthausen for the first time since he was a prisoner there, and gave testimony surrounded by friends and family. Throughout that trip, he spoke of the unimaginable horrors he endured, yet somehow kept a sense of a humor and always a smile on his face.
When asked how he could laugh, he answered, “Because I’m here.”
Leon stood in the very place where the Nazis had tried to eradicate him. He survived and he returned – as a living testament to the Jewish people’s resilience.
Leon passed away 4 months later, but his legacy lives on.
Leon is pictured here holding up a photograph of himself and other survivors after being liberated from Ebensee by the 80th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army on May 6, 1945.
Source: Jill Goltzer
