Lone English Auschwitz survivor dies | NEWS.com.au LEON Greenman, the only Englishman in the Auschwitz death camp, has died in a London hospital today aged 97. Mr Greenman's Dutch wife Esther and three-year-old son Barney died in the notorious World War Two concentration camp. "He recently broke his leg and was in hospital in North London when he died today," a museum spokeswoman said. Mr Greenman, who survived six concentration camps and a 90 km death march from Auschwitz, swore during his captivity that if he survived he would spend the rest of his life telling the world what had happened to him and millions of other prisoners. It was a promise he kept, writing a book An Englishman in Auschwitz and lecturing widely until very recently. In 1988 he received an honour, the OBE, for his work against racism. Born in London on December 18, 1910, Mr Greenman moved to Rotterdam with his family at the age of five. He met Esther van Dam, who was Dutch but lived in London, in the early 1930s. They married in London in 1935 but returned to Rotterdam to care for her grandmother. Their son Barney was born in 1940. The Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, and in October 1942 the Greenmans were taken from their home with several hundred other Jews and sent first to Westerbork and then Auschwitz, where his wife and son died in the gas chamber. Mr Greenman was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 by the American 3rd Army. He never remarried and grieved for his wife and son for the rest of his life, the museum said.
Have just been reading a book called "Spectator in Hell" about Arthur Dodd a British POW who ended up in Auschwitz, so my question is, where did they ascertain that Leon Greenman was the only Englishman there? Perhaps beCause the Main area of Auschwitz KD was divided into 3 sections, Camp1 for Jews, Communists and other undesirables. Camp 2 (Birkenau) the womens camp where the gas chambers etc were. Camp 3 Monowitz, the smallest where Arthur Dodd and other POW's were interred.
As you say, 51H, Monowitz was a seperate camp. Though it was originally part of the Auschwitz complex, and is usually refered to as Auschwitz III, it was seperated by the Nazis in 1943 and was designated a labour/industrial camp. Though the treatment was just as brutal, it wasn't setup as a killing camp but as camp to house the labour in the Fabar factories.
Auschwitz and the Allies by Martin Gilbert says, in note 1 on p. 338that over 50 British born jews were killed at Auschwitz, mostly people who had emigrated to France, Belgium or the Netherlands. Actual British subjects murdered included Mrs Alice Nathan, Mrs Helen Bulford, Mrs L. Franz & her children & Mr Samuel Richter. Gilbert's source is a Foreign Office paper, 371/51185, WR 1417, note of 27 June 1945. Additionally, Jane Haining, a non Jewish Scotswoman, died in Auschwitz. She was matron of the Church of Scotland Girls Home in Budapest, whose residents included Jewish converts to Christianity. She wasaccused of espionage, which seems to haev consisted of for working amongst Jews & weeping when she had to sew yellow stars on her girls' dresses. She died in Auschwitz on July 17 1944 of cachexia, a wasting disease that can be brought on by starvation, cancer or tuberculosis. One of Arthur Dodd's fellow PoWs was Charles Coward, who was the subject of a biography called The Password is Courage. The British PoWs worked with Jewish inmates but were better fed & received Red Cross parcels. They managed to get some Jews out by bribing guards & gave others food. It claimed that the inappropriately named Coward was informed that a British Jew, a Merchant Navy doctor, was being held in the death camp & got himself smuggled into it in an unsuccessful attempt to contact the doctor. The book was made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde, who was miscast as an NCO. When it was shown on the BBC a few years ago there was no mention of Auschwitz but a section had clearly been cut out as there was a clumsy change of scene & the running time was less than given by the IMDB, albeit by only a few minutes.
Seen that film once or twice and it always gave me the impression that the makers thought the German guards were all idiots. Seemed a bit comedic (if thats a word) to me!!!!!
Looks like the article should have said the only civilian Englishman to survive the Auschwitz death camp or something along those lines. Excellent referencing 51H and Gibbo (welcome!).
To be fair to the original source Dodd, Coward & the other British PoWs weren't in the Birkenau death camp, also known as Auschwitz II, but in the Monowitz slave labour camp, also known as Auschwitz III, which was 5 miles away. Jane Haining was neither English nor a man & as a political prisoner rather than a Jew was presumably in the Auschwitz I concentration camp. The Password is Courage is the only source for the Merchant Navy doctor that I'm aware of & I'd have thought if there was any more evidence for his existence then Gilbert would have mentioned him.
