Warning! The text retains the original spelling of surnames and place names by an Israeli researcher; in many cases it may not be correct. Fragments that could contain current personal data have been removed from the interview.

Name of the Interviewee: Leon Hecht;

Interview Subject: Family of Leon Hecht.

Leon Hecht was born on 5.2.1939 in Stanisławów.

Family:

Leon's parents: Zygmunt Dawid was born in 1901 in Buczacz (or in nearby Monasterzyska) and Chana (nee Glanc), was born in 1908 in Buczacz (or in nearby Monasterzyska).

Leon's siblings: Boleslaw (Bolek), was born in 1929; Roza, was born on 11.6.1931; Max, was born on 2.5.1941. All were born in Stanisławów.

Paternal family

Father Zygmunt's parents: Baruch-Szaps Hecht and Sara.

Maternal family

Mother Channa's parents: Lejzer Meir Glanc and Nechama.

Mother Channa's brothers: Michal and Henryk.

Zygmunt's family was religious and poor. He attended a Heder till age 14 when his father passed away and he was forced to go out to work. He traveled to Stanisławów and began working as a shoemaker. It was then that Zygmunt abandoned religion.

Chana's family was well established. Her father owned a soap plant while her mother engaged in putting seams in skirts. Both parents expressed their objection to her marriage with father and told her to leave their home when she insisted on marrying him. They cut off their relations with her. Instead of her parents, mother's brother, Michal, used to assist the young family. In the following years, Zygmunt was absent from home for weeks, working as a traveling salesman. He used to send money home.

World War 2

The situation till spring 1941 was stable, but Zygmunt ceased from leaving home for long periods. With the invasion of the Germans, Zygmunt as a communist, volunteered to the Red Army. Leon, his mother with his siblings, including Max the baby, were sent to Aktiubinsk in North Kazakhstan.

Mother Chana had to go out to work at hard labor. The climate and famine conditions were so bad in the region that she decided to leave that place. She managed to meet with a functionary Jew, who helped the family to travel to Kaszkilent [Kaskelen?], in the region of Alma Ata, Kazakhstan. However, the conditions there were not much better. The elder brother Bolek was employed in a shoe plant and Chana was employed by a local resident, who eventually not only did not pay her what he had promised, but set his dog on her. Bolek took vengeance by beating the Kazakh and his two sons. He then had to run away and was absent from home for several months. Chana went to work as an aid worker at a local hospital.

The harsh conditions affected the children: Leon was ill for a year due to the closure of his eyelids and when he recovered, he had a hunchback; Max was hospitalized due to malnutrition and Roza was housed in an orphanage, where Leon went after his stay in hospital. One day Max was taken from the hospital by a Soviet officer. Mother Chana ran around looking for him until she found him hundreds of kilometers away. They refused to give her child back unless she could prove to be his mother. Fortunately, Max remembered the name of the dog Bolek had once kept at home.

Post World War 2

At the beginning of 1946 the family moved to Szczecin. Uncle Michal came over and took them to Kłodzko where he and uncle Henryk already lived. Bolek began to work as a salesperson in a mall. Later he worked as a bookkeeper at the Spółdzielnia Spożywców, he studied economics as an external student at the Wroclaw University and was promoted to the assistant manager of that cooperative. He got married, fathered four sons and passed away at the age of 53 from heart disease.

In 1946 Leon and sister Roza were brought together with Briha (Heb. escape) emissaries. They were housed in a camp for those planning to immigrate to Palestine. Leon insisted on going back home and mother decided not to let Roza travel alone.

Because of the hard economic conditions, mother again sent her children – this time Leon and Max - to an orphanage in Legnica. They remained there till 1948 when mother decided to move to Dzierżoniów. The family moved into a house on Miodowa

Street and later on Daszynskiego Street. Chana got a job as a seamstress at Spółdzielnia Inwalidów. Roza also worked as a seamstress. Leon graduated in 1954 from the Jewish No.5 School and began to work at the metal plant Spółdzielnia Mechanik, where he learned to be an etcher. He helped to support his family. At the same time he attended the Liceum Hanki Sawickiej for only one year. 

In 1956 the family got a letter from father Zygmunt who was living in Stanisławów. Bolek traveled to meet him. He learned that Zygmunt had been injured in combat, then retreated to the border with China, where he stayed till 1947. Then he returned to Stanisławów and worked as shoemaker. He wanted his family to come over there, but realized that the family reunion would be possible only in Poland. On his arrival, the family decided to resettle in Kłodzko. Mother got a job as a cook at a felczer (pre-medics) school. Leon worked in a paper production plant, but after his hand was injured, he went back to Dzierżoniów, where he studied and worked at an ORT plant in engine coiling. Max was sent to study at the ORT school in Wrocław, which coincided with Chana's request that Leon to go there to take care on his brother. In Wroclaw, Leon and Max used to go to school three days a week and three days they worked at the Spółdzielna Neon. They graduated as certified electricians. In their free time they both took part in a Jewish choir in Wrocław.

Leon got married and enlisted into the army in 1960. On his release two years later, he first got employment as a stage electrician at the Ida Kaminska Jewish Theater in Wroclaw. Later he was employed at the Spółdzielna Neon and in a food production firm Państwowe Przedsiębiorstwo Produktów Spożywczych. He was dismissed in the aftermath of the 1967 war in the Middle East since he was a Jew. He returned to work at the Neon cooperative. But because of the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, Leon got divorced and decided to immigrate to Israel in September that year. Max was to come later. Their sister Roza had been living in Israel since 1956. Their parents stayed behind.

Israel

A year after him, his divorcee came to Israel together with their daughter. Both tried to restore their relationship but failed. In 1974 they finally got divorced and she emigrated with their daughter to Germany.

Leon's first decade here was characterized by unstable professional occupations as well as unsuccessful private undertakings. In the years 1978 through 2004 Leon worked as an electrician and electrician manager at the largest Israeli hospital, Sheba. 

His brother Max also worked for a long time in his profession as an electrician. Over the last years he has worked for a security company.

Leon is married and father of two […].