Leonid Rozenberg
Leonid Rozenberg was born in 1921 in Ukraine. After graduating from high school in 1939, he entered the 1st Kiev School of Artillery, which he finished as the commander of an artillery platoon with the rank of lieutenant.
Lieutenant Rozenberg was in combat from the first day of the war, June 22, 1941. He was wounded three days later but, after three weeks, he returned to his unit, Artillery Regiment 339, with which he participated in battles near Novorossiisk, in the Kursk operation of 1943, the forcing of the Dnieper River in October-November of the same year, and the liberation of Kiev and Belorussia. In 1944, in Białystok, Poland, Leonid Rozenberg met his father, who was a captain in a bomber unit and learned that his mother, brother, and sister had been killed by the Nazis in September 1941. Leonid was in Berlin when the war ended.
Rozenberg was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, several Orders of the Patriotic War, and other military orders and medals.
After the war, Rozenberg served with the Soviet military (occupation) contingent in Germany. In the 1950s, he returned to the Soviet Union and served as an artillery officer in various military districts. Rozenberg retired in 1968, but continued to serve in a civil defense capacity.
In 1991, Rozenberg left the USSR and immigrated to the USA, where he soon became an active member of U.S. veterans' associations. Since 1995 he served as the president of the American Association of the Invalids & Veterans of World War Two; in 1996 he became an active member of the Jewish War Veterans organization. He is now (2016) 95 years old and living in Brooklyn.
