An Englishman in Auschwitz (Library of Holocaust Testimonies)

Leon Greenman was born in London in 1910. His paternal grandparents were Dutch, and at an early age, after the death of his mother, his family moved to Holland, where Leon eventually settled with his wife, Esther, in Rotterdam. Leon was an antiquarian bookseller, and as such travelled to and from London on a regular basis. In 1938, during one such trip, he noticed people digging trenches in the streets and queuing up for gas masks. He hurried back to Holland with the intention of collecting his wife and return with her to England. The whispers of war were growing louder and louder. In May 1940, Holland was overrun by the Nazis, by which time Leon and his family had been effectively abandoned by the British Consulate and stranded with neither passports nor money. Eventually, they were deported to Birkenau where Esther and their small son, Barney, were gassed on arrival. Leon was chosen with 49 others for slave labor. This book tells the story of Leon's remarkable survival, of the horrors he saw and endured at Auschwitz, Monowitz and during the Death March to Gleiwitz and Buchenwald camp, where he was eventually liberated.