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Names Not Numbers
Annie Leiser Kleinhaus
Annie Leiser Kleinhaus
Anna was born in December 1936 in Antwerp, Belgium, to Natan Leiser from Zagorz, Poland (29 years old), and Myriam Blitz from Radomysl, Poland (26 years old). She grew up in a comfortable home with her parents and her maternal grandfather, Pinhas Forzctenzer, who also came from Poland. Anna has sweet memories of being very close to her father and grandfather. The family shared their house with another family,
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Jonas and Celli Schumer, who had two children, Leo and Regine—Anna’s inseparable friends.
In May 1940, Belgium capitulated to Nazi Germany, and rumors began to spread that men were being taken to "work camps." Both the Leiser and Schumer families fled to La Panne, crossed into France, and moved into an abandoned house with 10 other Jewish Belgian families. However, the Germans eventually arrived and chased them
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back to Belgium, where they returned by train.
Around mid-1941, men were being rounded up for work camps. Anna’s father, Natan, and Mr. Schumer fled but were caught and interned in Châteauneuf-du-Pape in France. Meanwhile, Anna, her mother, Mrs. Schumer, and the children remained in Antwerp, where they began wearing the yellow star in an attempt to stay inconspicuous. A frightening pseudo-Gestapo home invasion
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occurred, during which theoccupants were beaten, and their house was trashed in search of money.
With the help of a smuggler,Mrs. Schumer, Anna’s mother, the children, and Anna fled in an attempt to meetwith their husbands and cross into Switzerland. Unfortunately, they werebetrayed and rounded up in Annemasse, near the Swiss border, by French police.They were interned in Rivesaltes along with other
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Jewish Belgian families. Anna and two friends were separated from their parents and sent to Vendines, an orphanage under the auspices of Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse.
Anna’s parents were transferred to the Camp of Gurs, a transient camp before deportation, but they bribed French guards to let them leave for a few hours and escaped to Nice. Anna and her friends, Leon and Regine, were eventually notified
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and given money by an adult to join their parents in Nice, where they stayed for about 10 months.
In September 1943, following Italy’s surrender to Nazi Germany, Nazi troops arrived in Nice. The women and children, including Mrs. Schumer, Anna, her mother, and the Schumer children, took a train to Aix-les-Bains, where it was rumored to be safer for women and children to travel without men.
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Anna’s father planned to join them, traveling by ambulance, but he was caught by the Nazis and deported to Drancy, then to Auschwitz in October 1943.
The Schumer family managed to escape to Switzerland with the help of a smuggler, reuniting with their family in Lucerne. Meanwhile, Anna and her mother acquired fake papers, posing as French Catholics under the names Marie and Charlotte Tenret. They found refuge in the
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attic of a French family, living alongside two other Jewish families with false identities. Anna’s mother became active in the French Resistance, helping to hide fighters and smuggle others into Switzerland. She also supported them by smuggling watches between Switzerland and France for survival.
During this time, Anna, around 8½ years old, was unschooled, angry, frightened, and confused. She participated in Catholic
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rituals, including attending church, but struggled with the terror of night bombardments and air raids. She did not attend school, spent time with local thugs, and taught herself to read whatever materials she could find, though she understood very little of what she read.
In May 1945, following the Liberation, Anna and her mother returned to Belgium to search for survivors. They discovered that Anna’s grandfather had
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been murdered. A list of potential returnees at Antwerp Central Train Station included her father. Anna’s mother returned to Aix-les-Bains, and they soon reunited with her father, who had been greatly changed by his ordeal, weighing only 80 pounds, with no hair, loose teeth, and trembling constantly. They spent a month in the Ardennes at a full-service inn while her father recovered.
Upon their return to Antwerp,
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the family moved into a house that had belonged to one of the families they met in France, whose owner had been deported and killed, though the woman and her two children survived. In May 1946, Anna’s brother, Pinhas, was born. That September, Anna started 5th grade at a Jewish day school, which was her age-appropriate grade. However, she found it difficult as the teachers were not equipped to handle traumatized
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children, and many survivors in her class spoke different languages, making communication almost impossible.
Anna’s father learned about surviving relatives, and he paid a smuggler to bring his father, two brothers, and a sister to live with them in their small, crowded apartment. Despite the primitive living conditions, Anna’s mother helped the extended family find jobs and housing. Eventually, Anna’s parents moved
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to a better home with her grandfather, Jakob Leiser.
After two years in elementary school, Anna was accepted into a public high school for girls, where instruction was in Flemish. She finished high school at 17½, earning a degree in classics, which included Latin and Greek. Following high school, Anna went on to study biology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
In 1960, Anna married Sylvain Kleinhaus,
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a medical student in Geneva. In 1963, they moved to New York, where Anna began graduate school. She earned a PhD in pharmacology in 1968. Anna and Sylvain had three children: Jean Pierre, born in 1964; Karine Rebecca, born in 1967; and Brian Wolf Kleinhaus, born in 1971.
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The End
Annie Leiser Kleinhaus interview at Hebrew Academy of Nassau County - 2023-2024
Hebrew Academy of Nassau County
