OCTOBER 2018
Artifact of the Month for October 2018
Diary from Theresienstadt
Elias Leimann (1893 – 1975)
Elias Leimann was born in Kristiania on April 9, 1893, the eldest of five children to Isak and Anna (nee Meszansky) Leimann. Elias moved to Copenhagen around 1916 where he married Rakel Lea Isaksen. The couple had two children; Ida (born 1919) and Finn (born 1921). Elias worked in the footwear industry. He was prosperous and established in the mid 1920s a large footwear factory just outside Copenhagen.
In October 1943 the Leimann family were fleeing from the Nazis. On their way to Sweden they were informed upon by a local hotel-owner, arrested and transported to Theresienstadt. Here they remained in captivity for one and a half years before they were brought to Sweden by the white buses on April 15, 1945. Elias father, Isak, and two of his siblings, Bernhard and Dina Leimann were deported from Oslo with the transport ship Donau on November 26, 1942 and killed in Auschwitz. Elias Leimann died in Copenhagen in 1975.
The diary is written by Elias Leimann and deals with the captivity in the concentration camp Theresienstadt from October 1943 to April 1945. It is written in Sweden immediately after the liberation. The diary has been lent to the Jewish Museum in Oslo from Anne-Rita Midttun, Elias Leimann's niece.
Photo: The diary is written by Elias Leimann and deals with the captivity in the concentration camp Theresienstadt from October 1943 to April 1945. It is written in Sweden immediately after the liberation. The diary has been lent to the Jewish Museum in Oslo from Anne-Rita Midttun, Elias Leimann's niece.
Photo: Elias Leimann on vacation in Norway, the summer of 1938.