Tag #146735 - Interview #83417 (Genrikh Len )

My grandfather’s brother continued to live in Poland; he was a merchant, quite a prominent businessman. His name was Genokh, the Russian equivalent would be Genrikh. Therefore I was named, as I heard from my relatives, in his honor. Genrikh was a trader, an owner of extensive property. He had a stone house, a big courtyard. He got stuck in Poland during the German occupation, almost got through it, but in 1945 was killed by the Germans or by local inhabitants, presumably in Lodz [today Poland]. During the Holocaust he was a worker, at the disposal of the local commandant. Probably, being rich, he regularly paid off the Germans, for them to leave him alive, and they, as the Russians say, gradually ‘milked’ him, until they picked up all he had, and then they did away with him. No one of his family survived in Poland, and all the property was lost.