©Gedenkstätte Buchenwald
Franz Leitner was committed to the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1939 for belonging to a Communist youth association. At the age of twenty-five, he became the senior of Block 8. The camp resistance had set up a kind of protected area there for underage inmates, of whom an increasing number were committed to the camp from 1943 onward. To improve the young inmates’ situation, he obtained additional food, clothing, and medicine and gave them school instruction. After a Gestapo raid, he was put in solitary confinement for several months. More than 370 children and adolescents nevertheless survived until liberation in Block 8 alone. Back in Austria, Franz Leitner continued his political activities. In 1999 he was honoured for his efforts as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations”.
