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Leon lived in this camp and he had heard about a partisan group living in the nearby forest, so he decided to escape and join them and fight back against the germans. By stealing guns and ammunition. Sometimes they had to fight too.

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The prisoners had 1 treacherous advantage. The germans would use the railroad karts to bring the guns in. This would make it easier to stash the guns in the ground

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When they got to the forest they joined the  Bielski Brigade which was a group who was against the nazis. And their camp got attacked over night one night and they escaped through a nearby swamp, Leon said that he remembers the bullets whizzing past him and landing in the water right next to him.

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Leon lived in this camp and he had heard about a partisan group living in the nearby forest so he decided to escape and join them and fight back against the germans. By stealing guns and ammunition. They stole rifles before going into the woods and it made sure the group was fed on the way to the group. Sometimes they had to fight too. Leon said that they sometimes got into gun fights with germans which always resulted in them winning

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Leon Bakst was a 15 year-old wholesale merchant in Ivie in a small polish town. That year In 1941 his town was put into a ghetto because they were a jewish town then months later Leon and his brothers, along with 200 other young men were deported into a labor camp in Lida. He was lucky that he departed from his family and this camp because not much later the Germans had destroyed the ghetto. The camp was located in a railroad yard and he and the rest of the prisoners slept in boxcars. Having heard about partisan groups living in the nearby forests the 200 young men decided to risk their lives and join them.

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This was Leon bakst at the time of the Holocaust 

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He was 15 years old born in a small town in poland

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Leon Bakst was born in Ivia, Poland, in May, 1923, to Marsha and Schleme Bakst. He had one older brother and two younger sisters. When the Germans occupied Ivia in 1941, Leon and his family, along with the rest of the town's Jews, were forced into a ghetto. Several months later, Leon and his brother Jason were sent to a labor camp near Lida. While they were away, the ghetto was liquidated and Leon's parents and sisters were killed.

At the labor camp, Leon worked loading weapons and ammunition onto trains. After hearing about partisan groups living in the nearby forests, Leon, Jason, and several other young people, began slowly stealing rifles and ammunition, hiding them in holes in the ground. After stockpiling enough guns for the entire group, they escaped into the Naliboki Forest and joined the Bielski Brigade partisans, a group of Jewish resistance fighters.

Leon spent the war resisting the Nazis however he could - from sabotaging rail lines to gathering food to feed the partisans. He had many close calls, once barely escaping with his life as the Germans bombed the partisan camp. At the end of the war, Leon and Jason left Poland for Berlin, along with Leon's future wife Libby, who had been part of another partisan group. They made their way to a displaced persons camp in Munich, where Leon and Libby were married and had their first child.

In 1949, they came to the United States, where they created a rich and beautiful life. Leon will be sorely missed. We extend our condolences to his beloved daughters, Marsha Gaswirth, a Lifetime Director on the Board of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, and Paulette (Pepe) Bakst, and their families.

Pictured left: Leon Bakst and his wife Libby Abramowitz Bakst on their wedding day at the Neu Freimann Siedlung Displaced Persons Camp in Munich, Germany, November 1945.

Pictured right: Leon Bakst.

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Celebrate the life of Leon Bakst, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of Sparkman/Hillcrest Funeral Home & Hillcrest Mausoleum & Memorial Park.

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This was Leon in 2011 at the reunion of the survivors 

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He passed in 2021

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Leon and the prisoners were transported by train, Also they were getting put in a former railroad yard that is also how the young men got the ammunation from.

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After the war was over it wasn't until 75 years later that the partisan group met again for a reunion

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this is where leon talks about his past and during the holocaust and what happened when he was in the camps

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Summer Survivor Speaker Series - Marsha Gaswirth