Leopold was a teacher in Krakow, Poland, when World War II began in 1939. While serving in the Polish army, he was captured by Germans. Leopold escaped from a prisoner-of-war transport. Soon after, he met the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. The two became friends. Leopold was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto. He later worked in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz. He and the other Jews who worked there were treated relatively well and protected from the Nazis. After the war, Leopold moved to the United States.
He entered the, our apartment. My mother was very scared. She ask him what he wish, and he said, "Don't worry, I'm not here to arrest anybody. I am here to make business with you because I took apartment, a Jewish apartment, from, and I pay money for the apartment, I received it free, but I pay money to this Jewish fellow, and he said that you were in interior decorating, and you were decorating this apartment." This moment I came forwards. I knew that he is not a Gestapo officer. He was about 6 foot 2 and I was only 5 foot 8, so I looked to this guy, handsome face, young-looking, and in his early thirties or uh, late thirties. It's hard to describe his age. He look very mature, he was about 35 years old, or 34 years old, in this time. And he looks [at] me and I felt right away a closeness between him and me, and we start talking. And we became a friend right away from the first day we met. And he asked me to do some certain things to him on the market, in city, to give him, get him some goods to the, his new apartment. I delivered, he pay for it. And we became a very, very close associate together.
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