Personal documents once belonging to Leo Grünewald were offered for sale over the Internet at the end of 2018. Among these were birth certificates, job references, tickets from his emigration to Uruguay, a marriage certificate, photographs, etc., of which a selection is shown here. His family purchased the documents and conveyed them to the Forst-Mayer Centre in Laufersweiler in 2019, thus allowing some important stations of his life to be retraced.
Leo Grünewald was born in 1922 as the youngest of three sons to a Jewish family in Rheinböllen. His parents were Simon Grünewald and Ida, née Lazarus. He attended the evangelical “Volksschule” primary school in Rheinböllen until 1937, then began his apprenticeship as a carpenter in Cologne.
In December 1939, he travelled from Hamburg to Genoa together with his nine year old cousin, Inge Grünewald from Frankfurt. On the 28th of December 1939, they departed on-board the steamer „Conte Grande“, sailing via Barcelona to Uruguay. Leo Grünewald survived the Second World War alone in Montevideo, while both of his brothers, Ernst and Herbert, lived in Cape Town, South Africa. Simon and Ida Grünewald were deported to Sobibor in 1942 and did not survive the Holocaust.
After the war ended, he decided to leave Uruguay, departing on board the “Genova” in August 1950 from Montevideo to Genoa, and later from there on to Israel. Leo Grünewald’s last job in Uruguay was for an interior decorator, who gave him an excellent job referral prior to his departure and wished for him that he would „find what he eagerly anticipated in his new homeland“. He also praised him as a „really nice guy that you enjoyed having around“.
Leo and Rosa married in Tel Aviv on the 26th of May 1959. He met his brother, Ernst, there once again, who had also chosen to make a new life for himself in Israel. Their brother, Herbert, initially stayed in South Africa, but later emigrated to Australia.
Leo Grünewald had already begun his efforts to obtain „reparations“ while living in Uruguay, but only after 20 years of protracted legal proceedings did he finally receive a compensatory damage settlement for the Grünewald family property and their possessions lost.
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