- Interview Summary
- Leon Braun, born in Metz, France on August 14, 1934, describes his father, Jacques, and his mother, Hanna (née Wagman); his parents’ beauty shop, where his father was a barber and his mother was a beautician; his brother, Bernard, who was born in 1927; his happy early childhood; his memory of being five years old and seeing his father becoming very anxious as he listened to the news on the radio; hearing a lot of public speeches with his father; seeing numerous German soldiers on motorcycles pass by one day and his mother’s panicked response; moving to the southern part of the country (Vichy France); living on a farm and his father helping with the wheat harvest; his parents being arrested one night in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz while he and his brother escaped through a window; living in various homes for the two following years; experiencing some maltreatment; reuniting with his brother in one of the homes and being separated again when Bernard decided to travel to Paris and attend a technical school; his brother’s deportation to Auschwitz; living in a children's home called La Marc in Paris towards the end of the war; his memories of the day the German soldiers came and took all the Polish kids away from the home; living in Moissac in Southern France at the end of the war; attending school in Moissac; immigrating to the United States in 1947; living with his father's sister and her family in Rochester, NY; moving with his aunt’s family to Los Angeles, CA; being badly treated by his family and being sent to live at Vista Del Mar Child Care Services in Los Angeles; meeting his wife in child care services; and his three children and four grandchildren.
- Interviewee
- Leo Braun
- Interviewer
- Saramina Berman
- Date
-
interview:
2014 October 17
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Saramina Berman
