Leopold Engleitner
| Leopold Engleitner | |
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Leopold Engleitner being interviewed during "Unbroken Will"
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| Born |
23 July 1905 Aigen-Voglhub, Austria |
| Died | 21 April 2013 (aged 107) St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut, Austria |
| Occupation | Farmhand, Roadman, Holocaust lecturer |
| Known for | World's oldest known male concentration camp survivor (Buchenwald, Niederhagen and Ravensbrück) |
Leopold Engleitner (23 July 1905 – 21 April 2013) was an Austrian conscientious objector and Holocaust survivor who spoke publicly and with students about his experiences. He was the subject of the documentary Unbroken Will. Before his death Engleitner was the world's oldest known male concentration camp survivor (held in Buchenwald, Niederhagen and Ravensbrück), and the oldest male Austrian.
Born in Aigen-Voglhub, Austria, Engleiter grew up in the imperial city of Bad Ischl. He studied the Bible intensively in the 1930s and was baptised as a Jehovah's Witness in 1932. In the period up to World War II he faced religious intolerance, even persecution, from his immediate neighbourhood and the Austrian authorities, first by the fascist regime of Dollfuss and then under Nazi Germany.
When Adolf Hitler occupied Austria in 1938, Leopold Engleitner's religion, ideologies and conscientious objection to serving in the Army brought him into conflict with the Nazis.
On 4 April 1939 he was arrested in Bad Ischl by the Gestapo and detained in Linz and Wels. From 9 October 1939 to 15 July 1943 he was held in the concentration camps Buchenwald, Niederhagen and Ravensbrueck. In Niederhagen he rejected a proposal to renounce his beliefs io return for his release. Despite brutal and inhumane treatment, his will – to stand for fair principles and to refuse military service – was unbroken.
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