Leslie Blau (known in Hungarian language as Blau László) was a noted author, historian, and survivor of the Holocaust.
[1]
Blau was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1921. He studied in the Jewish High School of Budapest. As a youngster, he spent his summer months in the town of Bonyhád. He survived the horrors committed on the Jews during World War II by a stroke of luck, and after the war, he settled in the town on Bonyhad, where he married a local girl, Sara Kuttner. In 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he and his family fled communist Hungary for a safer haven: USA. He arrived in Boro Park, Brooklyn, New York where he has lived for over fifty years.[2]
After five years of extensive investigation and research, Mr. Blau finally published his work, "Bonyhad: A Destroyed Community" in 1994. . In 2008, a Hungarian translation of the book was published with the amended title, "Bonyhad: A Destroyed Jewish Community", in Hungarian, "Bonyhád: egy elpusztított zsidó közösség". The author visited Bonyhad with his wife, daughter and nephew for a presentation of the book at Bonyhad's City Hall, where he was presented a Distinguished Citizen of Bonyhad award by Mayor Potapi Arpad. Just prior to his trip to Hungary he was the subject of a profile, "A Brooklyn Gentleman", by Reuters correspondent, Mirjam Donath.[3]
Mr. Blau's research has been cited by such prestigious scholars as Sir Martin Gilbert.[4]
As an active member of the Jewish community in Boro Park, Mr. Blau sat on the executive committee of B'nai Israel of Linden Heights.[5] He also hosted there a yearly event to recount tales of the Holocaust for the benefit of the next generation.[6]
