and described Leon as ‘stateless’. He’d lost his Polish nationality – as suddenly as it was obtained in 1919 – a consequence of the Polish foreign minister Józef Beck’s September 1934 speech to the Assembly of the League of Nations, renouncing the 1919 Polish Minorities Treaty. The loss of status would have one unintended benefit: as a stateless individual, Leon could only be issued a foreigner’s passport (a Fremdenpass), which was not required to be stamped with a big red J, the mark of a Jew. Leon’s passport, as well as that of his daughter, was not stamped with a red J.
