After months of hard labour in Auschwitz-Birkenau and 300 miles of death marches in the bitter winter of 1945, Leslie Kleinman, who has died aged 92, was nursed back to health in a monastery on liberation. He joined 700 of “The Boys”, as they were known, both girls and boys who were rescued by the former Central British Fund for German Jewry, now World Jewish Relief, and rehabilitated in Lake Windermere, with the promise of a new life in England.
It was a world away from Kleinman’s religious shtetl upbringing. He was born to a Chasidic family of 10 in the tiny shtetl of Ambud near Satu Mare, Romania, where his father Rabbi Mordechai was a Dayan and clergyman serving a number of local villages. Despite the passing of nearly eight decades, memories of his mother Rochel could still make Kleinman well up with tears. The austere and rigid lifestyle which marked his religious destiny long before the tragedies that ripped 68 members of his family away in Auschwitz lent momentum of their own.
However, during his worst hours he made a private deal with God along the path of his torturous Holocaust. At one point, towards the end, he had been thrown to the ground in the freezing snow with no strength to carry on. He recalled his vow: “God, I’ve got no family and no friends left - You be my friend and if I survive I’ll go study for a year in yeshiva!”
Kleinman survived. His liberators gave him a gun and told him they would turn a blind eye if he should “accidentally” injure his captors. But that did not happen. Despite every atrocity he experienced, there was not an ounce of hate in him. Kleinman joined the programme bringing the young survivors to the UK.
Years later Kleinman kept his word. With time, he established a small leather goods business in East London and began enjoying the post-war life in the capital. One night at Camden Palace he met Evelyn, a young German girl who was working as a nanny in England. On a fateful Sunday afternoon, they were driving down an English country lane, discussing their impossibly disparate backgrounds and upbringing , when suddenly they were in a head-on collision. Evelyn was badly injured. Leslie was unscathed. After tenderly caring for her for many months, they married and had two children, Rosalyn and Steven.
Early retirement due to Evelyn’s ill health took them to Vancouver, Canada. Kleinman would often reflect that he felt she was almost “more Jewish” than he. In fact, on her death- bed, after 48 years of marriage, it was Evelyn who implored him to return to his Jewish roots. He acknowledged that this deeply spiritual lady, with her dying breath, had sent him down a path of rediscovery of his Jewish roots via the Holocaust education organisation, JRoots.
Kleinman returned to the UK where his children helped to set him up in proximity to a Jewish community, Westcliff and Southend, where he met Miriam, the widow of a Holocaust survivor. In 2011 they were married in Israel, and settled together in Westcliff, becoming stalwarts of the synagogue, embraced by Rabbi Binyomin Bar, who had flown out to Israel to marry the couple.
It was then that Kleinman decided to tell his story to the world. He wanted to educate the younger generation about the atrocities by preaching love over hate. He became active with the Holocaust Education Trust and JRoots, under whose auspices he gave talks to schools and mainstream student bodies. He also took groups to Auschwitz. On one such trip, he sat shiva at the camp for each member of his family who perished.
The last decade of Kleinman’s life saw a remarkable personal rapprochement, a coming home of sorts. He re-discovered “the Yiddishkeit of the shtetl” and embraced it with renewed vigour. The tunes of his father’s Shabbat table, the cooking delights of his mother’s primitive and impoverished kitchen — a pure, unspoilt mamaloshen recalled from his lost youth – came to life in him and drove an insatiable desire to share a life’s hard-earned wisdom with the younger generation.
After his first young JRoots group to Poland led by Rabbi Rafi Garson over 10 years ago, he was adopted as honorary zeide (grandpa) by the Garson clan. He felt committed to inspire young Jews in particular with a love of the Judaism he had previously all but lost. Over the years he travelled to Poland several times with thousands of Jewish school students and community members. Kleinman’s charismatic ability to connect on a profound level with everyone, was much praised. He was recently honoured by the Queen with a BEM for his dedication to Holocaust education.
Some years ago one of the Garson boys explained to a group of students the number tattooed on Kleinman’s forearm by the Nazis on his arrival in Auschwitz: A-0832. Suddenly the boy realised that the gematria — numerical value of Leslie’s unique number — was equal to the Hebrew word ahava— love and echad – one. A-0832, A Legacy of Love is the name of the JRoots film that documents his remarkable life journey. His mantra became — “they tried to brand me like a wild animal. They didn’t realise the number embedded into my arm is the number of ahava — love. I love every human being. We must love one another”.
His humility was respected by everyone, rabbis and lay people alike. He was a lion amongst men. Kleinmanloved to share an idea he heard some 80 years ago. “A Jew is a Yid — just like the Hebrew letter yud. You can cut it in half, cut it down further, and do it again, but no matter what, it remains a yud”. When asked how he kept going on the 300-mile death march, he replied: “Just one step at a time”. He is survived by his wife Miriam, his daughter Rosalyn and his son Steven.
Leslie Kleinman: born May 29,1929. Died June 30, 2021
