Holocaust survivor Leon "Henry" Schwarzbaum has died at the age of 101.
Schwarzbaum died in Potsdam, Germany, late on Sunday, the International Auschwitz Committee reported on its German-language website.
"It is with great sadness, respect and gratitude that Holocaust survivors all over the world bid farewell to their friend, fellow sufferer and companion Leon Schwarzbaum, who in the last decades of his life became one of the most important contemporary witnesses of the Shoah," the committee said in its Monday release, using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier paid tribute to Schwarzbaum as a "great person and an important contemporary witness."
According to the committee, he was the only member of his family to survive the concentration camps Auschwitz, Buchenwald and a Sachsenhausen sub-camp. He later reportedly lived as an art and antiques dealer in Berlin.
Schwarzbaum was to be questioned in the ongoing trial in the city of in Brandenburg an der Havel outside Berlin of an alleged former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
However, due to the state of his health, this had not been possible, according to the court.
In 2016, he had testified before the Detmold Regional Court in the trial of a former SS guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Reinhold Hanning.
For decades, Schwarzbaum had reported on his experiences from 1939 to 1945, for example in schools or training centres. For this he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 2019.
