Leslie Kleinman plans to attend an unusual reunion in Germany.
Kleinman, a Holocaust survivor who is originally from Romania, will be the sole Canadian at the gathering, which is scheduled to take place in Kloster Indersdorf from July 27 to Aug. 2.
Jewish girls in Kloster Indersdorf in 1946. If you recognize yourself or anybody you know, please contact Anna Andlauer at [email protected]
A retired dress manufacturer from Sauble Beach, Ont., he will meet 13 other survivors (and their relatives) from Israel, Britain, Brazil and the United States at the planned reunion.
Kloster Indersdorf, near Munich, was a displaced children’s centre established by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration after the end of World War II.
For a brief period, Kloster Indersdorf catered to former forced labourers from Poland, but from July 1946 onward, it housed only Jewish survivors like Kleinman.
Born and raised in Satu Mare (Satmar) on May 29, 1929, he is the sole survivor of a large family that was wiped out during the Holocaust.
His father, a rabbi, died in the Soviet Union while digging trenches for the Romanian army. He was sent to the Russian war front by the Romanian government, an ally of Nazi Germany.
In April 1944, following his death, Kleinman, his mother and seven siblings – three brothers and four sisters – were deported to Auschwitz.
Separated from them after their arrival in that concentration camp, Kleinman never saw them again. Against all odds, he survived the rigours of Auschwitz for about a year.
He was liberated by the American army on April 23, 1945 after a “death march” from Flossenburg to Dachau.
“A Jewish sergeant found me and took me to a U.S. military hospital,” Kleinman said in an interview last week.
Several months later, having recovered from his ordeal, he was placed in Kloster Indersdorf – then the site of a Bavarian monastery – where child survivors from Poland, Romania and Hungary found a refuge.
Within about six months, Kleinman was dispatched to a youth hostel in London, England.
He lived in England for 35 years, raising a family and earning a living in what he describes as the “shmatte trade.”
He and his wife immigrated to Canada in 1980, settling in Sauble Beach, a resort close to Owen Sound.
He looks forward to the reunion, which is being organized by a German citizen, Anna Andlauer, a 57-year-old retired grammar school teacher.
“It will be a unique chance for the survivors to see each other again,” she said from her home in the town of Indersdorf.
Andlauer has a keen interest in the Holocaust, having worked as a guide at the former Dachau concentration camp for 20 years now.
She has also written newspaper articles and a book about survivors.
Not until recently did she learn that child survivors were cared for in Kloster Indersdorf.
Galvanized by her discovery, Andlauer began to research the topic, finding photographs and lists of survivors at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and the United Nations archives.
She then wrote hundreds of letters and e-mails in an attempt to track down former residents of Kloster Indersdorf. So far, Andlauer has turned up the names of 30 such survivors.
“Anna found me through two boys, now living in San Francisco, who had studied with my father,” said Kleinman, who belatedly plans to celebrate his bar mitzvah on May 31 in Owen Sound.
“He missed his bar mitzvah during his time of persecution,” Andlauer explained.