us-005578-irn503619
type: RecordSet
archival history: Leonard T. Zawacki
biographical history: Leonard Zawacki was born on Jan. 20, 1916, in Grudziadz, Poland, which was under German occupation at the time. He joined the Polish Army and, when Poland surrendered to Germany in 1939, became a non-Jewish prisoner of war. He and his cousin escaped from a German prison and worked in Warsaw, Poland, with the underground until being arrested by the Gestapo in 1940. On Apr. 4, 1941, he was transported to Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland, with 1,000 other prisoners. He posed as a carpenter and later, because he could speak German, worked making deliveries and as a clerk. He was active in the underground in Auschwitz and escaped with five other prisoners on Sept. 28, 1944. After his escape, Leonard spent the remainder of World War II as a partisan until liberated by the Soviet Red Army. Immediately after the war, Leonard returned to Auschwitz and recovered some blueprints of Birkenau, also a concentration camp in Poland, in the workshop where he had worked which he turned over to a Holocaust museum in northern Poland in 1958. Leonard traveled to Poland, Italy, and England before immigrating to the United States in 1951.
date: circa 1992
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 2
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: eng
has or had subject: 2
has or had subject: 0
has or had subject: 650
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has or had subject: 501
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has or had subject: 686
has or had subject: 000187
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn503619
record resource extent: folder 1
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Contains information about Leonard Zawaki's experiences during the German invasion and occupation of Poland, his incarceration at Pawiak prison and Auschwitz concentration camp, his escape from Auschwitz, and his activities with a resistance movement.
title: Leonard T. Zawacki, Auschwitz prisoner no. 13390