EJP | Culture | Prince Charles meets Holocaust survivor in London

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Prince Charles meets Holocaust survivor in London

Updated: 23/Jun/2006 16:49

Prince Charles with Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman

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LONDON (EJP)--- Britain’s Prince Charles met with Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman, aged 95, at the Jewish Museum in Finchley, north London on Thursday.

The Museum’s Holocaust Education Gallery has as its focus the experiences of Leon Greenman, a survivor of several concentration camps, and tells his story in the context of the rise of Nazism and demonstrates his continuing determination to combat racism and fascism.

The exhibition contains many of his personal items, including mementos of his wife, Else, and newly born son, Barney, both killed in Auschwitz.

The thought-provoking exhibition tells his story in his own words and shows many of his own photographs and personal possessions, including his concentration camp uniform, his wife’s wedding dress and a sailor-suit and toy belonging to his son.

Testimonies

Leon showed Prince Charles his wife’s wedding dress, which was died brown so she could wear it later, and shared testimonies about his survival of the Nazi extermination camps.

Leon Greenman was born in 1910 in London’s East End, but was living with his wife and son in Rotterdam, Holland, at the time of the Nazi occupation.

He returned to London to set up a bookstore with his wife’s father and travelled back and forth between the two cities. In 1938, with war imminent, he returned to Rotterdam.

In 1942 he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The last he saw of his wife and son was them standing between other women and children in an open truck.

Of the 750 Dutch Jews in his transport to Auschwitz, Leon was one of only two to survive.

Leon survived Auschwitz, and a 90 kilometres death march, and was liberated by the American army on11 April 1945.

Leon returned to London where he worked as a market trader. He saw how information about the horrors of the extermination camps was little known by people in the UK and he began giving talks about his experiences the year after he returned from the camps.

He has dedicated his life to educating people about the Holocaust and he spends every Sunday showing people around the museum.

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