Leonard Vis was born September 16, 1930 in Amsterdam. His family had decided to remain in Holland in 1939, and Leonard attended a Jewish school after the German invasion in 1940. At that time he lost touch with his friends and went into hiding with his siblings at a neighbor’s home in 1942. He then moved to Huizen to live with another family from 1942 to 1943, where he was caught in 1943 and detained in a Jewish Theater in Amsterdam and imprisoned in Haarlem. Leonard was fortunate and resourceful and he escaped a train headed to Westerbork concentration camp in 1943 and went into hiding until 1945. He was reunited with his family after liberation, immigrating to the United States in 1954, where he joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Germany and Austria from 1955 to 1956. In 1967, Leonard came to Canada for a job posting, and he first came to visit us at Crestwood early in 2016, returning on multiple occasions to share his story and message of tolerance and survival.
Videos
- 1. Leonard Vis - Judaism and the Holocaust.mp4
- 2. Casualties.mp4
- 3. Taken; Family Separation; Father and Son.mp4
- 4. Going into Hiding.mp4
- 5. Isaac's New Girlfriend.mp4
- 6. The Collection Point.mp4
- 7. Escape.mp4
- 8. Escape, Part 2.mp4
- 9. Walking to Amsterdam; The Wartime Family.mp4
- 10. May 1944; Life Advice.mp4
- 11. Liberation.mp4
- 12. Liberation and Rehabilitation.mp4
- 13. The Canadian Soldiers; Leonard's Father.mp4
- 14. Postwar Reunification with Family.mp4
- 15. Thoughts on his Lost Youth and War Family.mp4
- 16. Postwar Religious Belief.mp4
- 17. The Massacre of the Dutch Jews; In Hiding.mp4
- 18. Survival Skills.mp4
- 19. Emigration to the United States.mp4
- 20. An Immigrant in Advertising; Going to Canada.mp4
- 21. Lost Youth; Where Was G-d?.mp4
- 22. Memories Left by the Shoah.mp4
- 23. Anti-Semitism.mp4
- 24. The Three Xs; Is Another Holocaust Possible?.mp4
- 25. Memory and Denial.mp4
