Overview
- Interview Summary
- 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.
- Interviewee
- Leon Rytz
- Interviewer
- Carolyn Östberg
- Date
-
interview:
2017 April 26
- Geography
-
creation:
Stockholm (Sweden)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection
Physical Details
- Language
- Swedish
- Extent
-
1 digital file : MP4.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Polish. Altruism. Antisemitism--Poland. Concentration camp escapes. Concentration camp inmates. Construction workers. Forced labor. Guerrillas. Holocaust survivors--Marriage. Holocaust survivors--Psychology. Holocaust survivors--Sweden. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland. Human smuggling. Jewish businesspeople--Poland. Jewish ghettos--Poland--Warsaw. Jews--Persecutions--Poland. Jews--Poland--Warsaw. Jews--Sweden--Borås. Quarantine. Refugee camps--Germany--Farsleben. Textile workers--Sweden--Borås. World War, 1939-1945--Participation, Jewish. World War, 1939-1945--Participation, Juvenile. World War, 1939-1945--Psychological aspects. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Borås (Sweden) Farsleben (Germany) Helsingborg (Sweden) Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945. Skarzysko-Kamienna (Poland) Sweden--Emigration and immigration. Warsaw (Poland)
- Personal Name
- Rytz, Leon, 1927-
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- This is a witness interview of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Witnesses: The Jeff and Toby Herr Testimony Initiative, a multi-year project to record the testimonies of non-Jewish witnesses to the Holocaust.
- Funding Note
- The production of this interview was made possible by Jeff and Toby Herr.
The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. - Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:41:30
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn594414
Additional Resources
Summaries (2)
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