One Montreal man who’s marking is marking his 100th birthday says the milestone is special, not just because he survived the Holocaust, but because of how he did.
Roman Lesniak is one of six remaining people who were on the so-called Schindler’s List, a group of Jews who were saved by German businessman, Oskar Schindler during the second world war.
“He saved my life, my brother’s life and 1,200 others,” Lesniak told Global News from his penthouse apartment in Côte Saint-Luc.
Lesniak still remembers growing up in Kraków, Poland in the 1930’s and says life was good, even as a member of the Jewish community.
Then at 17 years old, in 1939, Nazi Germany invaded.
“The whole thing exploded,” he said of his good life in Poland. “It came to and end on September 1st.
According to him the Jewish community was suddenly targeted, their synagogues were looted, people were forced into the streets and thousands were rounded up.
“They bring them to concentration camps and then to gas chambers,” he recalled.
Lesniak said he and his brother Stephan escaped the gas chambers out of luck, because both their names ended up on a list of Jews at concentration camps, requested by Schindler.
“My number 545 and my brother 548,” he said adding that they and others were sent to work at a munitions factory Schindler owned.
For that Lesniak insists that he’s grateful, even if Schindler was a Nazi, saying he believes Schindler was more of an opportunist, a profiteer, rather than a true Nazi.
“He wasn’t a Nazi in the heart, he stressed. “He was a Nazi in the pocket.”
According to his grandson Michael Lesniak, the Schindler’s list survivor never spoke about these stories at first.
“When the Schinler’s List movie came out that’s when he first slowly started talking about it,” said the grandson at a party held for his grandfather at the Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation in Côte Saint-Luc. “One thing that really impacted him is that you never know what can happen in life.”
Family and friends at the party believe it’s why the Holocaust survivor lived the way he did, because he realized as a young man that he might not live to see another day.
After the war Lesniak went to Israel where he fought in the first Arab-Israeli war, known to people in Israel as the War of Independence.
He subsequently moved to Montreal where he built a successful construction business.
People at the party note he’s always the life of any social gathering, despite his age.
“In his 70’s he was involved with tennis, at 80’s he started golf,” laughed his son Irwin Lesniak, his only surviving child.
Susan Lesniak Irwin’s wife agrees explaining that her father-in-law has a rule.
“That you have to work hard, play hard, and he really plays hard,” she laughed.
Lesniak still honours Schindler for what he did, saying the former German businessman give him back his name, and his honour.