Warsaw, Poland - Legal Action Over Holocaust Personal Belonging

Warsaw, Poland - A Holocaust survivor is taking the Holocaust Museum at Auschwitz to court over a suitcase that he claims belonged to his father who was murdered by the Nazis.
Michel Leleu Levi, who now lives in Paris, managed to hide from Hitler’s troops together with his mum and siblings, but says his father Pierre Levi was not so lucky and perished in the concentration camp where he had been deported in 1943.

During a visit of an exhibition in Paris at the Holocaust Memorial in February 2005, Leleu Levi spotted his father’s suitcase. He said he recognised the piece of luggage from the last time he saw his father shortly before he was deported to Auschwitz.
He now wants his dad’s suitcase that is currently exhibited in the Polish museum back as a last reminder of his father.
But the museum has refused to hand the suitcase over despite the name of Leleu Levi’s dad being printed on it, saying it is an important part of a historical collection. "We wanted to find an amicable arrangement with him but he didn’t take contact with us. I understand his emotions and I am sharing his sadness. But we have to preserve the memory of the Holocaust," Piotr Cywinski, secretary of the International Auschwitz Council, which is managing all questions related to the former Nazi death camp, said.

Leleu-Levi has now taken the matter to court in Paris, France.