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Leon Schwarzbaum in October 2021 at the start of the trial against Josef S. in Brandeburg an der Havel
Photo: ANNEGRET HILSE / REUTERS
When the trial against an alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp began in October last year, the greatest attention in the improvised courtroom in Brandenburg an der Havel was not focused on the accused Josef S., who, as a member of an SS unit, was an accessory to murder in at least 3,518 cases should have done.
An elegant gentleman on the edge of the auditorium attracted more attention in this procedure of international scope: Leon Schwarzbaum, a 100-year-old man in a dark suit with a striped tie and a framed picture of his parents on his lap.
Leon Schwarzbaum patiently answered questions from the journalists kneeling in front of his wheelchair.
It was something of an audience.
At the time, he told SPIEGEL that it was important to him to be here on the first day of the trial and that it was just as important to him to be able to testify as a witness in this trial.
The man who survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen was due to be heard by the Neuruppin district court next Friday.
But now Leon Schwarzbaum has died at the age of 101.
Leon Schwarzbaum and Josef F. probably never met in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Because a few weeks before Schwarzbaum was taken there, F. is said to have been transferred to the front.
Because of these processes, Schwarzbaum was not admitted as a joint plaintiff in the process.
It was all the more important for him to be heard as a survivor and to confront a man who was apparently in the same place more than 75 years ago and now, so many decades later, had to deal with it.
more on the subject
Survivor in the trial against SS man: "My life in hell that you guarded" Julia Jüttner reports from Brandenburg an der Havel
Trial against 100-year-old concentration camp guard: mass murder "with the help of the accused" Julia Jüttner reports from Brandenburg an der Havel
Survivors in the trial of a concentration camp guard: "For me, Mr. S. was an accomplice of this death machine" by Julia Jüttner, Brandenburg an der Havel
"They missed each other again," says lawyer Thomas Walther, who wanted to accompany Leon Schwarzbaum on Friday as a witness and read out his testimony.
It should read: »Your head will be full of images and experiences from that time.
Neither of us met in Sachsenhausen and only missed each other by a few days.
We are both 101 years old - and soon we will both be before the highest judge.
I would like to challenge you to tell us the historical truth.
Speak here in this place about what you have experienced - as I have done for my side.«
»Charmer and Gentleman«
Leon Schwarzbaum, born in Hamburg, grew up in Poland and called Henry by many, was the only one of his Jewish family to survive the Holocaust.
His relatives were murdered in Auschwitz.
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Leon Schwarzbaum in his Berlin apartment in 2019
Photo: ODD ANDERSEN / AFP
"He was like we would have liked to be ourselves," says attorney Walther.
"An incredible charmer and gentleman." If not in a dark suit, then in a blue blazer with gold buttons and a handkerchief.
Leon Schwarzbaum was one of those people who showed not only with words but with their whole personality who the victors were after the Holocaust: "Personalities who, like a contradiction, created something out of the terribly indescribable that is stronger than anything else .
Leon Schwarzbaum was the anti-victim in his life.«
Hans-Erich Viet stayed in close contact with Leon Schwarzbaum to the end.
The director shot the film The Last Jolly Boy with him, a documentary road movie about the Holocaust survivor.
"The king is dead," Viet typed into his cell phone on this Monday morning after learning of Schwarzbaum's death.
The message went to Thomas Walther.
Why a king?
He doesn't know anyone, says Viet, who has had as much to do with death in his life as Leon Schwarzbaum and yet has retained human dignity.
For the film, he accompanied his protagonist to Bedzin, where Leon Schwarzbaum lived in the ghetto, to Auschwitz, to trials of SS criminals and to talk shows.
He remembers how naturally Leon Schwarzbaum dealt with the press, how he conversed in English and what "inner wisdom" he radiated.
»Bow to Leon Schwarzbaum«
After the war, Leon Schwarzbaum and four or five other survivors roamed through Berlin's basement bars, says Viet, and ended up being the only one to stay in what is now the capital.
After the death of Leon Schwarzbaum's wife, with whom he had no children, Viet and his team moved in with him.
"We were his clique now, a kind of family substitute."
The 101-year-old started every conversation with three questions, Viet recalls: »How are your cats?
What's up?
What do we have to do next?' His appearance in court, which was planned for Friday, was important to him, it would also have driven his will to live.
He spent two months preparing for his appearance last October alone.
Attorney Walther says he was very keen to describe what he had experienced in Sachsenhausen.
"Sometimes we thought he was still alive because of that statement."
The fact that Udo Lechtermann, presiding judge in the proceedings, wanted to give the Holocaust survivors the opportunity to do so is seen by the friends of the deceased as a »bow to Leon Schwarzbaum«.
"We would have liked to have given him the space to report back on his experiences during the criminal process," says court spokeswoman Iris le Claire.
His Auschwitz number: 132624
Leon Schwarzbaum remained silent for many decades.
He needed time to be able to talk about the unimaginable that he had experienced.
But then he did it sustainably, undaunted.
About the number tattooed on his left forearm in Auschwitz, he said: "I didn't have a name anymore, just this number: 132624."
Anyone who met Leon Schwarzbaum will not forget the encounter.
"His way of remembering never gave rise to the thought of revenge," recalls lawyer Hans-Jürgen Förster, former federal prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice and head of the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
“He wanted to pave the way for justice.
His voice is missing in the current Sachsenhausen trial.«
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Leon Schwarzbaum in his home in 2019
Photo: ODD ANDERSEN / AFP
Co-plaintiff attorney Rajmund Niwinski also speaks of a great loss, because in the trials of Nazi crimes, the descriptions of the survivors in particular filled the historical truth with life and made it more tangible for the court and those involved in the trial.
“The fewer contemporary witnesses and survivors can still report about the camps, the more closely we have to listen, and the greater the pressure on law enforcement (there are still ongoing proceedings).
And the pressure on the accused should be all the greater to finally open up.”
The accused Josef S. has so far denied the allegations.
Leon Schwarzbaum wanted to address him directly: "Mr. Josef S., I appeal to you - to give up your denials and repressions here in Brandenburg, the process is not over yet."
Companions with different images of an extraordinary person remain behind.
His lawyer Thomas Walther remembers how Leon Schwarzbaum sat on the edge of the auditorium on the first day of the trial last October: "With this unbridled pride of an old gentleman in his beloved parents." When he bent down to Leon Schwarzbaum, the latter said glad to see him.
"He giggled like a teenager."