{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/057cr5pn0g/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Leon W."]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/005/original/Fortunoff-Logo.png?1549333634","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e1925-1939\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLeon W. was born in Lodz, Poland on January 9th, 1925. His father owned a bakery together with his two brothers. This business was their livelihood as well as the center of life for Leon’s nuclear family. Leon was the middle child between two sisters. He remembers a playful childhood in his family’s one room apartment in the Jewish quarter of Lodz. While not orthodox, his family was observant and he attended a private Hebrew school until the mid 1930’s – at which point he switched to a public school. Until the German invasion Leon was an active teenager; interested in politics and a champion table tennis player. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e1939-1944\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1939 with the German occupation the lives of Leon and his family became confined to the Jewish ghetto where the bakery continued to operate and baked bread for the ghetto. Since schooling stopped, Leon became an apprentice in his family’s business. He also devised several methods of stealing first bread and later flour to improve the meager food rations of his family. It was important to have work to avoid deportation. It is quite obvious from his testimony that Leon W. has researched his past since his personal memories are interwoven with episodes from the history of the Lodz Ghetto. It is quite evident that Leon’s nuclear family remained intact until the very moment of his deportation from Lodz in March 1944. Leaving the Ghetto meant leaving his family behind and marked a radical rupture in his life. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e1944\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1944, Leon was grabbed under the cover of darkness and forced onto a cattle car headed to a work camp in Czestochova, where a factory was being built. From there he was taken to Buchenwald. That is where he felt for the first time that he was degraded to the status of a prisoner and slave. Here he cleaned roads, cleared wooded areas, and eventually, in the Aussenlager Sonnenberg did mechanical work. Food rations were minimal. Leon remembers physical abuse and heavy slave labor. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eToward the end of the war Leon and his fellow laborers were forced on death marches – they were walking the roads for days in the frigid cold with no food, traveling from nowhere to nowhere. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eMay 8th, 1945\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLeon’s liberation came when the marching inmates encountered American GIs on the road. It was May 8th, 1945. Leon saw to it that a sick friend of his was well taken care of in a US military hospital before he started heading back to Poland eager to be reunited with his family. He returned to Lodz, where he found his family’s apartment empty but intact. He founded a bakery together with other survivors, who were coming back. Eventually he learnt from a cousin that his family had been taken to Auschwitz and was sent to the gas-chambers upon arrival. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWhen his friends from the camps arrived, they decided to go to a DP-camp in Germany and to arrange for emigration from there. Many of Leon’s friends left for Palestine but he, himself, could not make up his mind and held on to the hope that some family member could still be traced. In 1947 relatives on his mother’s side located him but it took two more years before Leon could immigrate to the US. He spent a lot of his time playing table tennis and again became a champion among mostly German players. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e1949\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLeon came to New Haven in 1949 and started working right away in a bakery. The beginning was hard. He tried to open his own business but suffered a number of set-backs before he eventually succeeded. He never went back to school but took classes at the Culinary Institute, a professional school. He got married and had three children. Eventually his business thrived and the bread his bakery manufactures feeds millions. Despite this continued connection with his roots and upbringing the loss of his family remains unbearably painful to him. (Gabrielle Emanuel)\u003c/p\u003e (Abstract)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za588"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2005-10-02 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["W., Leon, 1925-01-09 (Interviewee)","Laub, Dori, 1937-06-08 - 2018-06-23 (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["3 videotapes"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za588"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["video tapes (topical)","Forced labor (topical)","Oral histories (document) (genre_form)","Litzmannstadt Ghetto (Person or Corporate Body)","Tschenstochau Forced Labor Camp for Jews under HASAG (Person or Corporate Body)","Buchenwald Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Sonneberg-West Sub-Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Landsberg DP Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Bad Wörishofen DP Camp (Person or Corporate Body)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["New Haven, Conn. (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Relation"]},"value":{"en":["Leon W.. Interview za588. Interview Archive „Forced Labor 1939-1945“. Access at https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za588 (conforms to)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["za588 (Source Identifier)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e1925-1939\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLeon W. was born in Lodz, Poland on January 9th, 1925. His father owned a bakery together with his two brothers. This business was their livelihood as well as the center of life for Leon\u0026rsquo;s nuclear family. Leon was the middle child between two sisters. He remembers a playful childhood in his family\u0026rsquo;s one room apartment in the Jewish quarter of Lodz. While not orthodox, his family was observant and he attended a private Hebrew school until the mid 1930\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ndash; at which point he switched to a public school. Until the German invasion Leon was an active teenager; interested in politics and a champion table tennis player.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e1939-1944\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1939 with the German occupation the lives of Leon and his family became confined to the Jewish ghetto where the bakery continued to operate and baked bread for the ghetto. Since schooling stopped, Leon became an apprentice in his family\u0026rsquo;s business. He also devised several methods of stealing first bread and later flour to improve the meager food rations of his family. It was important to have work to avoid deportation. It is quite obvious from his testimony that Leon W. has researched his past since his personal memories are interwoven with episodes from the history of the Lodz Ghetto. It is quite evident that Leon\u0026rsquo;s nuclear family remained intact until the very moment of his deportation from Lodz in March 1944. Leaving the Ghetto meant leaving his family behind and marked a radical rupture in his life.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e1944\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1944, Leon was grabbed under the cover of darkness and forced onto a cattle car headed to a work camp in Czestochova, where a factory was being built. From there he was taken to Buchenwald. That is where he felt for the first time that he was degraded to the status of a prisoner and slave. Here he cleaned roads, cleared wooded areas, and eventually, in the Aussenlager Sonnenberg did mechanical work. Food rations were minimal. Leon remembers physical abuse and heavy slave labor.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eToward the end of the war Leon and his fellow laborers were forced on death marches \u0026ndash; they were walking the roads for days in the frigid cold with no food, traveling from nowhere to nowhere.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eMay 8th, 1945\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLeon\u0026rsquo;s liberation came when the marching inmates encountered American GIs on the road. It was May 8th, 1945. Leon saw to it that a sick friend of his was well taken care of in a US military hospital before he started heading back to Poland eager to be reunited with his family. He returned to Lodz, where he found his family\u0026rsquo;s apartment empty but intact. He founded a bakery together with other survivors, who were coming back. Eventually he learnt from a cousin that his family had been taken to Auschwitz and was sent to the gas-chambers upon arrival.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWhen his friends from the camps arrived, they decided to go to a DP-camp in Germany and to arrange for emigration from there. Many of Leon\u0026rsquo;s friends left for Palestine but he, himself, could not make up his mind and held on to the hope that some family member could still be traced. In 1947 relatives on his mother\u0026rsquo;s side located him but it took two more years before Leon could immigrate to the US. He spent a lot of his time playing table tennis and again became a champion among mostly German players.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e1949\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLeon came to New Haven in 1949 and started working right away in a bakery. The beginning was hard. He tried to open his own business but suffered a number of set-backs before he eventually succeeded. He never went back to school but took classes at the Culinary Institute, a professional school. He got married and had three children. Eventually his business thrived and the bread his bakery manufactures feeds millions. Despite this continued connection with his roots and upbringing the loss of his family remains unbearably painful to him. (Gabrielle Emanuel)\u003c/p\u003e"]},"provider":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/005/original/Fortunoff-Logo.png?1549333634","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/041/small/ZA588_03_01_sd720p.mp4_1695125465.jpg?1695125467","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208041","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 3 - ZA588_03_01_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3669.72,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/041/small/ZA588_03_01_sd720p.mp4_1695125465.jpg?1695125467","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208041/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208041/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/208/041/original/ZA588_03_01_sd720p.mp4?1695125460","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3669.72,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208041","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]},{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208101","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 2 of 3 - ZA588_03_02_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3713.32,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/101/small/ZA588_03_02_sd720p.mp4_1695136619.jpg?1695136620","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208101/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208101/content/2/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/208/101/original/ZA588_03_02_sd720p.mp4?1695136613","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3713.32,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208101","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]},{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208107","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 3 of 3 - ZA588_03_03_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":2476.96,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/107/small/ZA588_03_03_sd720p.mp4_1695137763.jpg?1695137764","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208107/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208107/content/3/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/208/107/original/ZA588_03_03_sd720p.mp4?1695137759","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":2476.96,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107165/file/208107","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]}]}