Leonard Zăicescu. Photo source: Facebook – Israel Embassy in Romania
Leonard Zăicescu, a survivor of the Pogrom in Iași and the trains of death in the summer of 1941, died on Friday, at the age of 98, according to Agerpres.
Representatives of the National Institute for Holocaust Study in Romania “Elie Wiesel” confirmed that Leonard Zăicescu was the last survivor in Romania of the Pogrom in Iași.
Leonard Zăicescu, born on March 27, 1927, won at the European Court of Human Rights an open trial against a decision by which the Romanian justice paid two war criminals.
Zăicescu, who worked until the end of life for combating those who deny or minimize the Holocaust, wrote about the horrors he lived during the pogrom in the book “With the Express Train to death”.
He said in April to Agerpres that not only the pogrom was a terrible period.
“In communism, I lived a second Holocaust,” he said, mentioning that the young generations need to know the horrors of the darkest periods of mankind and not to repeat the mistakes made then.
Leonard Zăicescu will be buried with military honors on Tuesday, at 11:00, in the Jewish cemetery in Bucharest, according to the specifications made by his family members on Friday.
The Israel Embassy in Romania sent a message of condolence.
“He worked as a journalist after the Second World War and his whole life tirelessly advocated for the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, to combat the Holocaust denying in Romania and anti-Semitism. His book,” with the express train to death “remains an earthquake testimony of the Holocaust horrors in Romania,” Friday, on Friday night.
