Leon Holocaust Survivor Testimony
Leon Schagrin was born in 1926 in Grybów, Poland. During the liquidation of his community and the Tarnów ghetto, he was forced to work for the killers—driving them from site to site—and witnessed countless shootings, including the murder of his own cousin holding her two children.
In 1941, Leon was captured and sent through a series of ghettos and camps. In 1942, his parents, four sisters, and brother were murdered at the Bełżec extermination camp—a fate he narrowly escaped.
Deported to Auschwitz, he survived the first selection by claiming he worked with horses. Inside the camp, he was stripped, shaved, uniformed, and tattooed with the number 161744—a mark that would follow him long after liberation. Later, he was transferred to Auschwitz III (Buna) for industrial labor, where he remained through the brutal winter evacuations until liberation.
After the war, Leon’s struggle continued. The weight of Auschwitz never left him. He chose not to have children—the pain, he said, ran too deep. Years later, unable to bear looking at the number on his arm, he covered it with a panther —a symbol of strength, defiance, and survival. A way to reclaim his name, his identity, and his story.
