Leon Unger's student card

This is the student card of my son Leon Unger. It was issued in the 1960s in Szczecin. In 1948 I gave birth to a son named Leon. He completed a musical school and is a pianist, and my daughter Frania graduated from a business college. My children went to the Public School No. 5, the communists' children all went there. There was a period when religion started to be taught at schools, it was under Gomulka, I guess, and all the kids enrolled, communist or non-communist, but Leon didn't. The priest came, told him to stay, said God would bless him if he did, stroked his head, and Leon said that there was no God at all. The priest got angry, grabbed him, opened the door and hurled him so the poor Leon landed under the opposite corridor wall, all bruised. But that wasn't all, because after classes, in front of the school, the kids attacked Leon and started beating him. There's a police station opposite and one of the policemen came up and he couldn't tear the boy off because he sat on my son's face and didn't want to let go. When Leon came home, I called my neighbor, a doctor, and she told me to put him in bed and give him nothing to eat except cottage cheese. He got jaundice then. My children knew from the very beginning about their Jewish roots. My son left Poland during the martial law and went to America because he couldn't get a job here because he was a Jew. And today he understands a lot because he lived among Jews in America. And they wanted to give him a job, only the rabbi told him to get circumcised. And he didn't want to. Today he lives in Kiel, Germany, and remains a man at the crossroads. My son didn't want to get married, he had an ambition to have a high living standard, and today he's old.

Centropa Collection acquired by USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. 

USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

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