Born: Samuel Lieberman
Berlin, Germany
March 21, 1921
Died:
April 16, 2007
In 1936, Steve Landon moved from Berlin to Prague, Czechoslovakia to study engineering. Meanwhile, his parents moved to Amsterdam to escape the persecution of Jews in Germany. Landon was visiting Poland when, on September 1, 1939, the country was invaded by the German army. Despite a shrapnel injury and travel restrictions, Landon was able to return to his family in the Netherlands by New Year's Eve 1939. After the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, the family again faced escalating persecution against Jews. Landon fled to Belgium and escaped arrest multiple times before being sent to the Mechelen concentration camp in 1942. With the help of his older siblings living abroad, Landon received falsified Honduran citizenship papers and was released from the camp in late summer 1944. He hid with a Belgian family until the country was liberated by the Allied army about a month later.
After the war, Landon found out that his parents and younger sister had been deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany where both his mother and father perished. In 1946, Landon moved with his new wife Erika to New York where he worked as a watchmaker before finding work as an engineer, eventually becoming president and CEO of the company.
Parents:
Chiel Lieberman, d. Bergen-Belsen, January 1945
Malka Streezover Lieberman, d. three months after liberation, 1945
Siblings:
Jacob Lieberman, survived
Ruth Kahn, survived
Nellie Lieberman, survived