Edna Tal Elhasid

Farewell

Proofreading: Amir Elhasid

Cover Design: Omer Tal
Photo on the cover: Yehuda Hollander 1948

English translation: Ilene Bloch Levy

Editing English translation: Gila Green

Printed in the Digital Printing Center at the

Open University of Israel,
October 2013

To my beloved sons Omer and Amit

This book is lovingly dedicated to my father

Yehuda Hollander
In memory of his parents
Yitzhak Yehoshua and Chaya-Esther Hollander
and his brother Meir Hollander
my grandparents and uncle
all of whom perished in the Holocaust
and I did not get to know them

Index
Prologue........................................................................ 1
Childhood in the Village ............................................... 7
Childhood in the Shadow of War................................. 23
Berlin Bolivia ........................................................... 31
The German Invasion .................................................. 35
The Deportation .......................................................... 39
Train to Auschwitz ...................................................... 47
Auschwitz-Birkenau .................................................... 51
Plashov ....................................................................... 65
Gross-Rozen, Bolkenhain ............................................ 75
Buchenwald ................................................................ 97
Dachau, Liberation .................................................... 107
A New Beginning ..................................................... 115
On the Ship to Israel.................................................. 145
Expulsion to Cyprus .................................................. 155
Bnei Brak .................................................................. 167
The Navy and the Columbus Campaign .................... 171
Home in Israel........................................................... 183
Commemorating the Village ..................................... 187
Farewell .................................................................... 191
Sources ..................................................................... 195

Prologue

One day, five years after my father's death, I went, as I

usually do, to visit my mother in Haifa. During this visit
my mother told me that my father had left some
handwritten pages and she handed them to me for
safekeeping. I was surprised. When my father died, I had
longed to find something handwritten that he had left
behind for the family. A letter. A diary. Anything. I
was disappointed that I came up empty-handed. And
now, out of the blue, when I was not expecting anything,
I was holding in my hands a document that my father
had written with his own hand. Line after line, in my
father's familiar handwriting, were now spread out
before me. Some of the sentences were very short;
reminders, hints. Others were somewhat more detailed
descriptions. Here and there were notes in the margins,
as if he had remembered some detail later on. The text
presented facts and events in a chronological fashion,
absent of feelings. This collection of pages was not
addressed to me. Grandchildren's names were recorded
on the last page: Omer, Amit, Gonen, Ohad, Oded, Guy,
Noam and Dafna. The youngest grandchild's name,
Tomer, was missing from the list, which led me to
[1]

believe the pages were written between 1994, when

Dafna was born, and 1999, the year when Tomer was
born. It seemed to me this list was written when my
father was preparing to make a recording as a Shoah
survivor for the Spielberg Eyewitness Testimony
Project, which took place in 1997. These pages were a
treasure trove for me. While reading them I discovered
that I was gaining a clearer understanding of the series of
events in my father's life. Throughout the years, my
father would tell his life story, but never in a
chronological or orderly way. One story after another.
Sometimes stories were told repeatedly, but I remained
uncertain about their chronological connection. Now the
puzzle of my father's life was sorting itself out. I knew
that one day I would do something with these pages. But
not just yet. And so, I put the pages aside. Two years
later, a series of events took place that left me with a
burning desire to start. My Uncle David, my father's
brother, published a book about his life and my Aunt
Sylvia, my father's sister, recorded a very moving
testimony. The same year, I visited my Aunt Sylvia in
her home in New York and we spoke about the family at
length. Watching the film and reading David's book
made me go over my father's handwritten pages and
review my father's own testimony film. The last time I
had viewed it was 15 years ago. Slowly, but surely,
[2]

many things became clearer. I felt that the time had

arrived.
Several days prior to Rosh Hashannah 2012 I sat down
to write. The words flowed and I did not stop until I
finished. I used materials that my father had left: in his
own handwriting, his eyewitness film, and the interview
that I conducted with him in the last year of his life.
After a frantic search through all the drawers in the
house, I found the analog recording that I had made. I
recalled the stories my father told us when we were
children. I filled them in with my Uncle Davids and
Aunt Sylvia's memories. I spoke with family members
and my father's friends from his youth whose stories I
craved. I visited Yad Vashem, the library at Yad
Tabankin, and Atlit's Clandestine Immigration Museum.
I read archived materials and found increasing numbers
of books, eyewitness testimonies, letters, films, pictures
and websites. I wanted to gain a more profound
understanding, and get a broader picture of my father's
life so that I could touch, feel and imagine it. I wanted
to understand what my father meant when he wrote the
words, "it was difficult", "another trauma". I wanted to
be able to add more than the facts that I had gathered
from my research, readings and studies. The more I read
about the time period and the places where he was, the
more complex the story became. I wondered if the
[3]

information that I was supplementing to the stories my

father told in the first person, and the feelings I was
describing in my language coincided with his reality. A
day did not pass when I was not busy with the book, and
when I was not busy writing it, I was reading. And if I
was not reading, then I was pondering. At night I would
dream about my father, and this never happened before. I
woke up in the morning and thought about how my
father spent his nights in the dark block in the
concentration camp. In the shower I would think about
how my father might have showered in ice cold water.
These thoughts completely encompassed my life and I
was unable to stop. I no longer engaged in my usual
pastimes; I lost all peace of mind to draw and sculpt, or
to just read for pleasure. I deliberated about what person
to write in and in what tense. Is my father the story teller
or am I telling the story about him? Perhaps both?
Should I involve the readers in the journey or should I
concentrate solely on my father's story? My father wrote
his notes in the plural; always "we". Why didn't he write
the story in the first person? Was this his coping
mechanism? With each of the following visits to my
mother in Haifa, she surprises me with newfound
materials; letters, documents, photos. Each scrap of
information is valuable, helping me to fit together the
mosaic pieces of my father's life. I discovered new things
[4]

about him that I had not known. I found faded

photographs from his past that I had never seen. I
learned that the past, the Holocaust, preoccupied my
father all his life. I don't recall this from our childhood;
mine, my brother Ami's and my sister Michal's. Perhaps
he hid this from us, so that we could have a normal
childhood. I was surprised to discover an impressive
collection of books, amassed by my father in my
childhood home. Where were they hidden all these
years? How had I not seen them? I saw that his
collection contained the same books that I found,
googled on the internet, and spent hours reading in
libraries. Some of them I had already purchased or
intended to purchase or borrow. And here they were
waiting for me in my parents home. And that is how
Holocaust books, memoirs, Hungarian Jewry books,
illegal immigration books, and picture albums began to
accumulate by my bedside and in my office. I searched
for material that would shed some light on my father's
journey and everything was here, waiting for me in my
parents' home. Perhaps my father was signaling me that I
was in the right direction?

[5]

[6]

Childhood in the Village

I was born on March 30, 1930 in Muzsaj1, a small,

picturesque Czech village located in the Carpathian
Mountains. My official name, the one listed on my
Czech birth certificate is Ludvig, but as a child my
family and Jewish friends called me by my Yiddish
name, Leibi. Because my village and the surrounding
area had previously been in Hungarian hands, I was also
given a Hungarian name, Layion. When I was thirteen, I
was called up to the Torah by my Hebrew name,
Yehuda.

My father, Yitzhak-Yehoshua Hollander, Isaac in Czech,

was born in Muzsaj 1898. My mother, Chaya-Esther nee
Rosenberg, was born in the Czech-named town of
1

Muzsaj in Yiddish, Muzijovo in Czech, Nagymuzsaj in Hungarian,

Muzhijevo in Ukranian
[7]

Lisichova, Lisice in Yiddish, on September 9, 1901. Her

Czech name was Hajnal. My parents were introduced by
a matchmaker (shadchanit), and were married when my
mother turned eighteen.
I was the fifth of six children in the Hollander family.
My older brother, Avraham-Moshe (Avrumoishe),
Mozes in Czech, was born in 1921, nine years prior to
my birth. Two years later, in 1923, my brother
Mordechai-David, in Czech Martin, was born. At the age
of thirteen both of my brothers left home to attend a
yeshiva, and as a result, I never really had a chance to
get to know them well in my childhood. My sister Bluma
(Blimu), in Czech Blanka, was two years younger than
David; she was born in 1925, and my sister Slova-Rikva
(today known as Sylvia), in Czech Sidonia, was born in
1927. I was born in 1930 and my brother Meir was five
years my junior.
Today, the town of Muzsaj is located in the western part
of the Ukraine on the Hungarian border. When I was
born, the Czechoslovakian government controlled the
town, but in the years preceding and following my birth,
the area was conquered many times by different
countries. Up until World War I it was ruled by the
Hungarians, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and
carried the Hungarian name of Nagymuzsaj. After World
War I the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved into a
[8]

number of states, one of which was Czechoslovakia, to

which our village was attached, and as such was given a
Czech name: Muzijovo. In 1938, Hungary was granted
control of the area, and in 1944 it was conquered by the
Germans. The following year, when World War II came
to a close, the village fell under the Russians and
continued to be under the control of the USSR until
1991. Today, the village is part of Ukraine and its
Ukranian name is Muzhijevo. Muzsaj was its Yiddish
name. To the best of my knowledge, there are no Jews
living in the village today.
I remember the village as extremely picturesque,
surrounded on one side by mountains and vineyards, and
on the other side by fields and orchards. Jews settled in
the village in the early 19th century. By the year 1830,
there were 50 Jews living in the village. The number
soon grew to 70 Jewish families, made up of 350
individuals in 1939 and everyone knew everyone. All
Jews were religious, many of them quite orthodox. They
lived pleasantly side-by-side with some 5,000 local nonJewish residents, mostly Hungarian with a sprinkling of
Ukrainians. Throughout the years, by and large there
were good relations and mutual appreciation among the
different groups. Most of the people in the village made
their livelihood as grape growers, wine producers,
farmers and tradesmen. The language of school
[9]

instruction and public discourse was Hungarian,

although the village was under the Czechoslovakian
government. The village belonged to the BerehovoBeregsaz Community, as it was adjacent to Berehovo 2.

Muzsaj village location

The Czech name of the closest city, also known by its Hungarian
name, Beregsaz.
[10]

Berehovo was a relatively large city located seven

kilometers from the village, and village residents would
often travel there for leisure activities, shopping and
trade. I remember that my sister Sylvia would go there
with her girlfriends just to walk around and eat ice
cream. In those days, people mainly used horses and
carriages or walked for transportation. Just prior to the
War, a public bus began to operate in the village. There
was no telephone. Our neighbors, the Gerendasy family,
were more modern than many of the other Jewish
families, and in addition to owning the only telephone,
they had a radio which they used to place on the
windowsill so that people could listen to the news. Still,
during the early 1930s, most residents got the news via a
flyer that was distributed in the village.
My childhood was a happy one. Life was beautiful, quiet
and interesting, and our large, spacious home, located on
the main street in the center of town, was warm and
charming. I remember during the summers, I would
hang out with my friends around the Borzhava River,
which was not far from the village. My home was a
single story, built in the shape of the Hebrew letter daled
"". That is the house in which my paternal
grandparents, Shlomo-Tzvi (Zalman Hirsch) Hollander
and Leah Hollander nee Schwartz, raised their children.
We were ten people living in a four-room house. In one
[11]

room were my four older siblings: Sylvia and Blimu

slept in one bed, and my brothers Avrumoishe and
Mordechai-David in a second bed. This was during the
early 1930s when my brothers were still living at home,
before they went to yeshiva. My parents were in the
second bedroom, and I shared a separate bed with my
brother Meir in my parents bedroom. Our mattresses
were large sacks of straw (struzik in Yiddish). Two or
three times a year we collected straw in the fields and
would replace the old straw with fresh straw. The third
room was a combined kitchen and dining area, also
utilized as a parlor for family gatherings. Once every few
days we would bathe in a wood bath propped up in the
kitchen. Water for cooking and bathing was brought in
daily from the well. Toilets were outside. We would dig
a hole in the ground and every few days a cart would
come to the village to collect the refuse. Then we would
cover up the hole and dig a new one.
My paternal grandparents, Grandfather Shlomo-Tzvi and
Grandmother Leah, lived in the fourth room. My
grandparents were deeply in love and would walk handin-hand like two lovebirds in our large courtyard.
My father Yitzhak Yehoshua was born in the village in
1898. Like all Jews in the village, he too had a beard and
short payes, which he used to wrap behind his ears. His
mother Leah's family had resided in the village over
[12]

several generations. Grandfather Shlomo-Tzvi was born

into a very poor Romanian family. His mother died when
he was only three years old. He had to say Kaddish
every day, for a year in spite of his young age, as was the
custom. There was no local minyan, so he and his father
walked a great distance every morning to the
neighboring village, Sorlisch, in order to say Kaddish in
a synagogue. They walked without proper shoes in the
cold day after day. The rabbi of the synagogue pitied
them, so he suggested that the father leave the little boy
in the synagogue and collect him at night. The years
passed and the boy Shlomo-Tzvi stayed and studied at
the yeshiva in Sorlisch for 13 additional years. He grew
up, turning 16 and the contacts between him and his
father and family were gradually lost. One day DavidTzvi Schwartz, an honorable man came to the yeshiva
from the village of Muzsaj. He turned to the Head of the
Yeshiva and said, "I have two daughters. I would like to
marry off the older of the two. I am a well-to-do man,
with many fields and vineyards. Can you please
recommend the best young man in the yeshiva for a
perfect match for my daughter"? The Rabbi answered:
"We have a very smart and talented young man in our
Yeshiva, Shlomo-Tzvi, who is the ideal match for your
daughter". The two men shook hands and the terms of
the marriage were finalized.
[13]

Shlomo-Tzvi arrived in Muzsaj, saw the two sisters but

for only a few moments, and soon afterwards a
traditional wedding took place in the village. The next
morning, the elated groom rose and went to pray in the
synagogue. When he got home, Leah, his new bride,
served him breakfast. Shlomo turned to her and asked,
"Why are you taking care of me? Why are you serving
me breakfast"? Leah responded, "I am your wife. We got
married yesterday. This is my duty". Shlomo answered,
"AhhI thought I married your sister".
Grandma Leah would tell the story of how she and
Grandpa met to the grandchildren time and time again. It
always made us laugh, and we never tired of hearing it.
Grandma Leah was very slim. She gradually lost her
eyesight over the years due to illness and became blind.
She had frequent visits in our home from her Jewish and
non-Jewish friends. She would always have candies in
the pockets of her dress, and the grandchildren would
'steal' the candies from her pockets, along with her hugs,
a game loved by all.
Grandpa Shlomo-Tzvi was a devout, religious man, a
great, respected rabbi, and most of his days were devoted
to studying the sources. His modesty and kindness
earned him respect throughout the village. While
walking, he greeted and blessed everyone he met, Jews
and non-Jews alike. When he would come to synagogue
[14]

to pray, people would rise in his presence. Embarrassed

and modest, he did not want to 'bother anyone' so he was
sure to arrive first at the synagogue. He was given the
Hungarian nickname Jo Szivu, which means, The good
hearted.
My father deeply respected his father, Grandfather
Shlomo-Tzvi. He would always stand up when his father
entered the room, and never smoked in his presence. As
children we took turns at polishing the shoes of the other
family members. My father would insist that he polish
his father's shoes; he felt this was a privilege and he was
proud to do it.
Every child had a place at the table. My brother Meir and
I sat by my parents, and the four older siblings sat
opposite. My grandparents never joined us for meals;
they would eat alone in their room even on Friday nights
and holidays, including Rosh Hashanah and Seder night.
They always ate separately from the other family
members, in their room. They believed that children
should receive their education from their parents, and
should be directly influenced by their parents and not by
their grandparents. They were not very successful in this
endeavor because they had an enormous influence on all
of us children. They contributed to the warmth and
pleasantness in the home, and embraced us all with much
love. During all the meals, they insisted on keeping the
[15]

door to their room open and maintained eye contact with

the children. At Seder night, it was customary for the
children to come into their room to recite the Four
Questions, before returning to the family table. My
grandparents set an ideal example for the entire family.
We owned a large plot of land, comprising many acres
of vegetables, fruit orchards and vineyards. We also had
chickens and ducks, which provided food for our table,
and for a period of time we even had a cow. All the
children helped my mother and father with the
substantial amount of work: we planted and harvested
grapes, fed the chickens and ducks, milked the cow,
prepared cheeses from the milk, and collected firewood.
I wistfully remember how we used to stomp on the
grapes to make wine. Summer months were devoted to
collecting and packing fruits and preparing jams and
preservatives for winter consumption. There were no
refrigerators then and everything was stored
underground, so that we would have food for ourselves,
as well as extra food to sell. We had our own shop on the
side of the house facing the main street. Here we sold
our extra jams and preservatives, fruit from our orchard
and on Passover we sold hand-made matzahs. Adjacent
to the store was a tavern, kocsma in Hungarian, where
we sold wine we made from our vineyards' grapes,
alcohol and beer. We even had a special license to sell
[16]

tobacco. Occasionally, my father would travel to the big

city of Berehovo to sell our products: wines, fruits, jams,
matzohs, etc. Thanks to this business, we were one of the
few families in the village with electricity. Alongside the
tavern was a butcher shop that my Uncle Yisrael Perl
ran; he was married to my father's sister Sarah-Friedel.
My mother Chaya Esther, nee Rosenberg, was born on
September 9, 1901 in the town of Lysychova, known in
Yiddish as Lisice, which was then part of
Czechoslovakia. Today it is part of the Ukraine. She was
introduced to my father by a matchmaker when she was
eighteen years old and thus came to the village. She was
a fine woman with a sense of humor; we loved her very
much and felt very close to her. My mother worked very
hard as a homemaker, and she also helped my father in
the store and tavern. Working behind the scenes, she was
the one who pushed the family business. Relative to that
period of time, she was a modern woman. She loved to
dress my sisters in short socks and short-sleeved dresses,
a mode that was not prevalent among the Hassidic Jews
in the village. In fact, her sister-in-law Sarah-Friedel
would often tease her for this. Out of respect for my
father, her head was shaved and she wore a scarf. There
was an aura of happiness in the house, projected by my
mother. Many visitors and guests were hosted in our
home. I remember the wonderful atmosphere on Fridays.
[17]

My mother would rise early in the morning to cook, and

bake challahs and cakes whose aroma would fill every
corner of the house. She would bake seven loaves of
bread, one for each day of the week. During the summer
months we used the oven in the courtyard and during the
winter months the oven in the kitchen. Friday afternoons
we went with my father to the mikveh. Afterwards we
dressed in holiday clothes and went to the synagogue
with my father who wore a shtreimel, which was not
really his custom, but he did so out of respect for his
father-in-law Grandfather Yeshayahu. There were two
synagogues in the village: a small, very Orthodox Beit
Midrash, where my grandfather would pray, and the
modern, large shul with a large courtyard. My mother
and sisters would go to the synagogue only on holidays
and occasionally on Shabbat. When we came home the
table was ready with festive settings, a white tablecloth,
Shabbat candles, challahs and other delicacies. I loved
the whole atmosphere. The meal always began with
singing psalms (zmirot), which would be followed by my
father saying Kiddush and after the meal we would
continue to sing late into the night.
During the Passover holiday we visited my maternal
grandparents, Yeshayahu Rosenberg and Esther-Libby
nee Weiss, in the town of Lisichova some 70 kilometers
from our village. I loved those visits. We rose early in
[18]

the morning, packed food and matzahs and headed out.

The bridled horse and wagon would take us as far as
Berehevo. From there we boarded a small train to
Kishnitza, and continued the journey by horse and
wagon until we arrived in Lisichova. The journey would
take a full day. Today, the journey takes about an hour.
My maternal grandparents were very learned and
respected individuals. During these vacations we would
meet my Uncle Avraham-Moshe Rosenberg, my
mother's brother and his wife Esther-Chanah and their
children. One of their daughters is Lilly Hollander, who
eventually married my brother David.
When I was three, I started attending a cheder. Twenty
children sat around a large table with the Rebbe at the
head. We studied the Hebrew alphabet and religious
sources. At six I also attended a public school. The day
began very early in the synagogue. At 8 AM we returned
home for breakfast. Every day, after morning prayers,
my grandfather would come into the kitchen to greet us.
After breakfast we went to public school and after
classes there we raced home for lunch. Then, a kind of
ritual took place everyday. My grandfather asked after
my mother's health, and then turned to each of the
children individually to ask us about our health before he
would return to his room. After lunch we rushed off to
cheder for our religious studies, which extended into the
[19]

late afternoon. In the evening we returned to the

synagogue. Discipline in public school and cheder was
quite rigorous. During class hours there was complete
silence in the classroom; no one dared open his mouth.
Anyone who disobeyed was physically punished, a slap
in the face, a smash across the tips of the fingers or the
backside with a ruler punishments that were both
painful and humiliating. My father put great emphasis on
both a religious and secular education as well as good
manners (derech eretz). Our education was supreme to
him and he checked that we did our homework. He
would visit the school and speak with the teachers about
the progress of our studies. On Shabbat we had only one
to two hours of free time to play games, and the
remainder of the day was devoted to prayer.
Occasionally, he would test our Jewish knowledge of
religious sources, and during the Shabbat meals a
competition would ensue with each of us giving a Torah
lesson.
My Hollander grandparents lived together for 64 years.
They died peacefully. Grandfather Shlomo-Tzvi died at
the age of 96 in November 1939, and Grandmother Leah
died the following year. Both of them were buried in the
village. It was a blessing that they were spared the
Holocaust. Grandfather Yeshayahu and Grandmother
Esther-Libby Rosenberg perished in Auschwitz.
[20]

Grandparents Yeshayahu and and Esther-Libby Rosenberg

[21]

[22]

Childhood in the Shadow of War

In November 1938 the Hungarians conquered the area

where we lived. Our village, street and house, all of
which had been under Czechoslovakian rule, became
Hungarian within one day.
It was during Succot. My brother David had come home
for a visit from Yeshiva and we were all excited. That
same night we slept in the Succah in our courtyard. It
was early in the morning when we heard a loud
explosion. We could not identify the sound. In the
afternoon David went for a walk in the adjacent forest.
On his way, he encountered a number of young men
dressed in civilian clothes bearing arms and he talked to
them. It turned out they were Hungarian partisans, in
other words fighters who are separate from the regular
Hungarian army. He learned during their conversation
that they blew up the railroad tracks leading to
Berehovo. They despised Jews and they would do
everything in their power to change the country's laws.
In effect, that was the first sign of the Hungarian
invasion. My brother came running home and was quite
emotional when he told us of his encounter. My parents

[23]

listened, but did not really grasp the importance of what

he was saying.
From the very first day the Hungarians entered our
village, life became more difficult and problematic. For
the Hungarians, this was a holiday. In Berehovo the
Hungarian flag was flown over houses, and masses of
people streamed into the streets to welcome the
Hungarian army. From that moment the city's name
changed from Berehovo to the Hungarian, Bergsas.
The government changed from the liberal government of
Czechoslovakian President Thomas Masaryk to an
oppressive, fascist rule under the Hungarian Regent 3
Mikls Horthy, who would carry out German orders.
In the same year, the government conscripted tens of
thousands of Jewish youth eighteen years and older into
the Hungarian army for three months of reserve duty.
My father was conscripted, and released after several
months.
One evening a number of Hungarian soldiers came into
our tavern. They drank without paying, were loud and
rowdy, and broke cups and glasses. That was very
frightening, and that evening we closed the tavern earlier
3

The de facto governor. In a monarchy the regent runs the

government because the king is absent or incapable of ruling for one
reason or another. In Hungary the Prime Minister governed
alongside the regent.

[24]

than usual, locked up our house and went to sleep at my

uncle's house in the village because we were afraid that
the soldiers would return to harm us. Immediately after
this incident they took away my father's permits, and we
were forced to close the store and tavern. My father
earned some livelihood by instructing young boys in our
village for their bar mitzvahs. We did not suffer from
starvation, but we definitely did feel the lack of food.
The children had to help with the family's livelihood and
we worked for ridiculous fees in the orchards and
vineyards of the non-Jews. My mother would prepare a
light meal every day and bring it to us in the fields.
Our economic situation deteriorated daily, until one day
we received notice of a currency exchange. We had to
convert all of the Czech money in our possession to
Hungarian currency. The exchange rate was far less than
the currency's actual value and overnight all Jews in the
village were impoverished. That was the beginning of
hunger. There was not enough bread in the house. We
had to exchange crops from our fields for bread. My
grandmother Leah's brother had a large plot of land and
he would provide us with crops from his fields. There
were no more festive celebrations on Friday evenings.
My mother was unable to bake the breads and cakes that
we so loved. She would use corn to bake bread, which
was far less tasty. I saw the sadness in my parents' eyes.
[25]

We also felt the anti-Semitism in school. Jewish teachers

were fired and replaced by Hungarian teachers who
demanded attendance also on Shabbat. Our non-Jewish
friends badgered and distanced themselves from us.
They would pull on my payes, call me "dirty Jew", and
hit me. Sometimes I would run away and sometimes I
couldn't contain myself and would return what they had
done to me. In time, as the situation worsened, I would
cross the street so as not to meet them on my way to
school. I would see Hungarian soldiers humiliating
children in the street, cutting their payes, and cutting off
the beards of adults. As a child I had no idea why they
hated us so. Just because we are Jews? The villagers
witnessed these attacks but did nothing to stop them.
Perhaps they, too, were afraid. This was very frightening
and frustrating because we had no way of defending
ourselves. I stopped going to school when I was twelve
years old. All Jewish children in the village were forced
to clean the main street and during the winter we had to
shovel snow. It was very cold and rainy and snowy. The
snow would sometimes reach several meters high; and
this was very hard work for children. When I was
thirteen, they prepared us for the army by training us
with wooden guns.

[26]

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and

World War II broke out. The first seeds of the German
Holocaust were felt in Hungary in 1940, albeit far less
harshly than it was felt by the neighboring countries,
which had been conquered by the Germans. That same
year tens of thousands of Jews, who could not prove
Hungarian citizenship were deported to Poland and
Ukraine. Most of them were killed. In April 1941
Hungary became part of the German Axis 4. The
Hungarian government under Mikls Horthy issued
many decrees against the Jews similar to the Nuremberg5
Laws which were designed to humiliate and impoverish
us. Decree after decree. Every day there was a new
decree, each one more severe than the previous one.
Jewish movement outside of homes was forbidden
except for certain hours of the day, work permits were
revoked, and Jews were deprived of basic civil rights.
It's interesting to note that in spite of all these measures,
Horthy initially rebuffed the German demands for Jews
to wear the yellow stars, a sign of shame, and he also
refused to force them into ghettos and deport them to
4

The first countries to cooperate with Germany were Italy and

Japan, and afterwards Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria joined.
5
Racist laws passed by the Nazi government in September 1935 in a
conference of the Nazi Party which took place in Nuremberg. These
laws revoked German citizenship from all Jews, forbade mixed
marriages, and systematically removed German Jews from all walks
of life.
[27]

camps in Poland. In the year 1942, army service

worsened as the Hungarians started fighting alongside
the Germans against the Russians. The three month
conscription was extended to two years of forced labor.
Among the conscripts were my two brothers,
Avrumoishe and David, who were forced to abandon
their yeshiva studies. Conscripts were undernourished
and forced to do slave labor under the most difficult
conditions. They were managed under strict military
discipline and supervised by Hungarian soldiers, who
were extremely cruel towards them, enforced severe
punishments and even executions. They had to pave
roads, build reinforcements, dig trenches against Red
Army tanks, and worst of all, some of them were forced
to clear out mine fields. They were dispatched by foot to
the mine fields where the mines would explode on them.
The Hungarian soldiers were so cruel to the young
Jewish recruits that even the SS was surprised. During
this period, we would have contact with my brothers via
letters, and they did visit our home a few times. During
these visits, I remember that Avrumoishe would bring
gifts for me and my brother Meir.
By the end of World War II 42,000 young Jewish
soldiers had been killed in these units. Some of the
Jewish soldiers were taken into captivity by the
Russians, including my brother Avrumoishe. The daily
[28]

economic distress, decrees and laws against us and the

many rights that were revoked exacerbated the
threatening atmosphere against the Jews and increased
the anti-Semitism of the local Hungarians. In spite of
this, during the first few War years, there was a
relatively stable feeling because life was not in
immediate danger, and the systematic campaign of
killing the Jews was not yet underway. Our situation was
a good deal better than those of Jews living in Germany
and the countries that had been conquered 6 by the
Germans. Because the village of Muzsaj and the
surrounding areas were still under Hungarian rule, one
could say that we "enjoyed" a kind of grace period of
three years. Information about events around Europe did
filter its way into our lives, but people did not believe
them, or believed that, "here it won't happen." Hungarian
Jews thought that their country's government would
defend its Jewish citizens if the war would spread to
Hungary, and that in any event, life would return to the
way it was before. After all, the war was taking place in
Germany not in Hungary, and this had nothing to do
with the Jews of Hungary. We felt that we had been local
residents of the region for many generations.
6

The first countries invaded and conquered by the Germans were

Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France.

[29]

[30]

Berlin Bolivia

While my father Yehuda and his family were living a

relatively stable existence in the small village in
Hungary, 1000 kilometers away in the city of Berlin,
Germany, the Muskatblit Family was living under the
brutal rule of Nazi regimen: Grandfather Israel,
Grandmother Tema and their children Ann (Chana),
Fella, Max (Meir) and the youngest child, Ester, my
mother, who was born in 1932, one year after Hitler rose
to power.
The German Jews were the first community to suffer
under the Nazi rule and their situation was very
desperate. In October 1938 Jews living in Germany who
bore Polish citizenship were deported to Poland.
Throughout Germany, entire families were deported. In
Berlin only the men were deported. That's how my
Grandfather Israel and Uncle Meir found themselves
among thousands of Jews deported to Poland.
When they arrived at the Polish border in the city of
Zbaszyn, the Polish Government barred their entry, and
they were forced to spend days in the middle of the cold
winter, without food, water or shelter in a desolate area
midway between the two countries. The Germans
[31]

pressured the Polish Government and eventually they

allowed the deportees to enter. Somehow, my
grandfather and uncle managed to travel by train to the
city of Poznen in Poland where they turned to the Jewish
community to ask for their help. A Polish Jewish family
took them in. My grandmother, my mother Ester and her
two sisters Chana and Fella remained alone in Berlin.
Throughout this period they managed to maintain
contact via letters and even occasionally by phone.
Kristallnacht happened a month later, in November
1938. (That pogrom took place across all of Germany).
The events that took place that fateful night shattered
any hope that the situation was but a temporary one and
might pass quickly. My Aunt Chana and her fianc Arno
were resourceful; they organized Bolivian visas for the
entire family and managed to purchase tickets on a ship
sailing to South America. Their only option was to
purchase first class round-trip tickets, a very dear sum of
money in those days. When the long awaited-for visas
arrived, my grandfather and uncle received permission to
return to Berlin to pack up their belongings .
Thus, when she was seven years old, just before entering
first grade, my mother and her closest family was saved
from extermination shortly before the exit gates from
Germany were closed.

[32]

Eighteen years later she was to meet my father Yehuda

in Eretz Israel.

June 1939. The ship on the way to Bolivia, Ester

sits on the Captain's lap lobg

[33]

Berlin May 1939. Ester at six holding candy cone

customary in Germany before entering first grade

[34]

The German Invasion

On Sunday, March 19, 1944 Germany conquered

Hungary; the Germans suspected Hungary might
abrogate their alliance with them and side with the
USSR.
From the day the German Army entered our village with
tanks, marching with great confidence and spreading
terror wherever they went, our situation changed
radically. One year before the end of World War II,
while the Red Army was already close enough to the
Hungarian borders to attack the German Army, the
"Final Solution" also came to Hungarian Jewry.
Hungarians took advantage of the local German presence
and their motivation to harass Jews increased. The
relationships that had developed and been cultivated
over centuries between Hungarians and Jews were
terrifyingly tossed aside. Beards and payes were cut off,
women and children were humiliated and we were
forced to turn over all valuable items to them. These
were our neighbors, the customers in our store.
One day, without warning, German officers invaded
Jewish homes. A few officers burst into our home as
well and took control of most of the rooms. The six of us
[35]

 my father, mother, two sisters, myself and my younger

brother Meir were squashed into one room. This was
very frightening. Our home was no longer a safe haven.
We were living with the enemy. My parents were afraid
the Germans would hurt my older sister Blimu, so they
hid her. As far as I know, they did not harm her or other
members of my family. I even remember that we spoke
with them, and from my childish point of view, I
remember them as fairly decent. Apparently, these were
not SS members, but rather the "standing army." In the
days that followed it became clear this was merely a
well-planned psychological tactic, in order to lull us into
feeling secure and safe, and to prevent any resistance or
revolt later on when they were to deport Jews to ghettos
and transport them to camps.
Up until then, despite what we witnessed, even in our
own homes, we had no idea what was occurring
throughout Germany. We heard nothing about Jewish
annihilation. The world around us already knew they
knew in Washington, London, Israel and in the Vatican.
We, the Jews of Muzsaj and the surrounding area, did
not know. We were aware that the situation was quite
terrible, but we had no idea that they were murdering
Jews and we had no knowledge of concentration camps.
On April 4, 1944 all Jews were ordered to wear the
yellow star on their clothing. Marking the Jews in this
[36]

manner was one of the most humiliating decrees, one

that enabled Germans to immediately identify Jews, and
separate them from the rest of the population. Jews were
required to make their own yellow stars and sew them on
their clothes firmly. As opposed to other countries, the
yellow star in Hungary did not have the word Jude
written in the center. Anyone caught without the yellow
star, or wearing it inexactly, was harshly punished,
preventing any deviation from this rule. My mother and
sisters remained awake all night sewing the yellow star
on our clothes. Wearing the yellow star was
psychologically injurious; being a Jew was a heavy sin.
This period lasted for nearly a month until the Passover
holiday. That Passover, we did not visit my mother's
parents, as was our annual custom. Jews were forbidden
from train travel and we were under strict curfews. Seder
night was on April 8, 1944. Father led our seder in the
one room we were allowed to use. We quietly sang "The
Four Questions" and "Once we were Slaves" lest the
Germans living in the adjacent rooms should hear us. My
two older brothers were absent. They were still in forced
work camps. My parents managed to send them a
package with matzahs. That seder night was a very sad
one, with minimal food and a few matzahs. That was the
last seder that I was to celebrate in my home in the
embrace of my loving family.
[37]

* * *
My father Yehuda's fourteenth birthday was celebrated
one week prior, on March 30, 1944. Not in his wildest
dreams could he possibly imagine that he would
"celebrate" his fifteenth birthday in the Buchenwald
concentration camp in Germany.

[38]

The Deportation

A few days after Passover, the Hungarian army ordered

the expulsion of all Jews from our village. The order
was surprising and swift. From one day to the next all
Jews had to leave their homes and meet in the shul, the
Great Synagogue. We were allowed to take personal
baggage of up to 50 kilos (110 pounds), without any
valuables. What can one take? Clothes? Eating
implements? Mementos? Pictures? Linens? How can
you put an entire household into 50 kilos without any
clear idea of where you are going? For how long? And
if you will ever return home?
My parents tried to salvage whatever they could from
our possessions. They hid valuables and religious books,
among them the mishneh that my grandfather had written
in his own hand, in the ceiling beams in our home.
Years later, after the War, I wondered more than once
whether my grandfather's handwriting was still there, I
dreamt that I would be turning the pages of the mishneh
and the scent of my grandfather would rise from them.
My Uncle Israel Perl, whose butcher shop was adjacent
to our home, hid a box containing his wife's earrings in
my presence in our basement ceiling. Apparently, he
[39]

thought my relatively young age increased my chance of

survival, in spite of the fact that we neither knew nor
could we guess that many would not return after the
War. We packed a few things, mostly winter clothes and
food and wrapped them in blankets and sheets.
Everything else was left in our home, as is.
Evacuating families took two days. Order was
established geographically. Half the villagers who lived
on one side were evacuated on the first day, and the
second half, among them me and my family, were
evacuated on the second day. Families who were
evacuated with us slept in our home the night before. On
the night of the deportation my father shared the jams
that were stored in the attic among all. As a child this
event was both exciting and emotional for me, as if we
were celebrating a holiday. The next day the families
went together to the assembly point. Just before leaving,
one of the neighbors suggested hiding my older sister
Blimu, but she preferred to remain with the family.
That's it. We closed the door of our home. We said
goodbye to our neighbors. What did we do with the key?
Did we lock up the house or leave it open? Perhaps we
gave the key to one of our neighbors? I don't remember.
My mother, my father, me, my brother Meir and my
sisters Sylvia and Blimu. The Jewish families in the
village arrived at the assembly point in the Great
[40]

Synagogue and we remained there for the next day or

two. The Hungarian soldiers, who surprisingly ran an
organized evacuation, called each family by name
according to a list they had in hand. That is how it was
managed, family by family, some on horse driven carts,
and we marched in a long convoy across the village
towards the exit, accompanied by Hungarian policemen
bearing arms.
It was a warm spring day. In the background a
Hungarian orchestra cynically played a Hungarian
march. The deportation was planned as a military action
in every way, and was clothed in secrecy. The entire
process took place without any resistance. Not one
person, Jews or non-Jews, objected or interfered in any
way. While we were marching a few villagers stood on
the side of the road or looked out from their windows to
see what was happening. Some looked sad to me; others
appeared happy. Most villagers chose to stay in their
homes. Perhaps they preferred not to witness this event?
Perhaps they feared meeting our eyes? Or perhaps, they
were just apathetic to what was occurring. Neighbors,
who just the day before were our friends, turned their
backs on us. It seems to me that some were just waiting
with bated breath to grab our abandoned homes and see
what valuables they could find. Even people who were
not anti-Semitic were afraid to show any solidarity with
[41]

us. Since most of the male youth had already been

conscripted into the Hungarian army's forced work
camps, the convoy comprised mostly old people, women
and children, and continued at a slow pace. That is how
tens of Jewish villagers walked in one convoy; everyone
walking in the direction of the closest city of Berehovo,
some 7 kilometers (4 miles) away.
Alongside the train tracks at the edge of Berehovo in an
isolated area there was a brick factory. There the
temporary ghetto was established, in an area that had
been used for drying and storing bricks. It wasn't just
happenstance that the ghetto was established adjacent to
the train tracks. Everything was pre-planned, and this
location enabled, in the near future, a quick deportation.
The facility was built of low sheds, each shed measuring
10 x 100 meters, with tiled roofs, without walls or
divisions, no flooring and no light, and, of course, no
furnishings. A large, empty space. The area was sealed
off with barbed wire and Hungarian gendarmes (police)
guarded us. All families from our village and from
additional villages in the region were housed in this
warehouse. Some of the men organized themselves and
collected bricks strewn about and placed them around
the planks to delineate spaces. Every family was
assigned a few square meters, based on the number of
family members. Each family tried to create an intimate
[42]

space by improvising dividers from blankets which they

tied onto the roof beams and the supporting columns.
The area was very small with every family crowded
together. There were no mattresses; we were forced to
sleep on the floor. My mother improvised beds from the
few blankets that we brought with us from our house.
Conditions in the ghetto were very difficult, and the
building was certainly not worthy of occupation. There
was great crowding, some 12,000 Jews from Berehovo
and the surrounding villages; very few young men,
mostly women, children, the elderly and the
handicapped. Sanitary conditions were poor and there
was no medical care. We lacked food and water. While
there was a well in the area, it was difficult to reach.
People lined up all day to receive measured amounts of
water doled out to each family. There was not enough
water for washing. During the first few days people ate
what they had brought from their homes, and when that
was depleted, a central kitchen was organized for all
families, in which there was a brick oven built from
branches and bricks collected from the area. My sister
Blimu volunteered to work in the kitchen. Once a day
we were supplied with soup, but many refused to eat
because they were afraid the food wasn't kosher.
Every day the Hungarian gendarmes would search us for
valuables. They would torture the rich in order to force
[43]

them to tell them where they might have hidden their

valuables. Many cracked and revealed their hiding
places. The men were forced to shave their beards and
cut their payes. No one imagined that the worse was yet
to come.
We stayed there for six weeks. Most of the day we
would sit on the floor with nothing to do and with no
idea what we were waiting for. There was a kind of
acceptance of the situation and no one tried to resist or
escape. There was also no place to escape to, and in any
event it seemed wiser and safer to stay with everyone in
one place. It took a lot of courage and resourcefulness to
rebel. The thinking was that escaping alone increased
your chances of getting killed, and it was better to stay
together as a group. Surely they would not kill thousands
of people!?
One day we were informed of our transfer to work in the
West. They promised improved conditions, and that each
family would work together until the end of the War
when everyone would return home. We really did
believe that we were leaving temporarily. And, in fact,
we were even a bit happy about this new arrangement,
because life in the ghetto was very difficult. Each family
was permitted to take a small package: blankets, clothes
and some food. We were told to put valuables that we
had still managed to hide in large baskets. They
[44]

threatened us that anyone who refused to do that would

be shot on the spot.
We left the ghetto exactly one week before Shavuot, in
the middle of May 1944. My mother, my father, Blimu,
Sylvia, me and my younger brother Meir. My mother
said to us, "Whatever will be and wherever we will be
sent, after this is all over we will meet in the house".

[45]

[46]

Train to Auschwitz

Twelve thousand Hungarian Jews were taken to

Auschwitz in three transports. All of Muzsaj's Jews,
except for those who were sent to the Hungarian Army's
forced labor camps, were on the train to Auschwitz. It
was only when the train arrived at the Berehovo train
station that we understood that we had not boarded a
passenger train, but rather a freight train for transporting
goods and livestock. They piled us as they would
animals into a long train, about 45 cars. We were
whipped and beaten, cursed and sworn at while the
Hungarian soldiers pointed their rifles and bayonets at
us. The railroad cars were high and stairless, and it was
difficult for people to climb up. The soldiers took
advantage of the situation in order to humiliate and
abuse the people, particularly the elderly. Then in one
instant the doors closed. The crowding was horrendous,
some 80-100 people were stuffed into a single car.
There was no room to sit, and most were forced to stand.
The cars were dark with little circulating air; there was
some light emanating from the aperture of a small
window covered with barbed wire. The congestion was
unbearable and the conditions inhuman. In the center of
[47]

each car were two buckets, one for water and the other,
which was empty, was meant to be the "toilet". The fact
that one's personal needs were publicly taken care of was
humiliating. At first people contained themselves and
would try to relieve themselves at night when it was
darker. It was hard to reach the buckets because people
were standing and sitting everywhere and blocking the
way. On the way, people would fall over one another,
cursing and yelling at each other. After a whole day
people couldn't restrain themselves anymore. If a man
wanted to relieve himself, other men would stand around
him, hiding him from the view of others, and give him a
little dignity, and when women had to use the bucket,
other women would stand around her with their backs to
her in order to give her some privacy in what was a very
embarrassing situation. The doors were not opened
during the entire journey, food and water were not
distributed, and we had but a little food with us that we
had brought from the ghetto. It did not take long for the
water supply to run out. All of our attempts to scream
and ask for water were useless. The crying of the babies
was intolerable and the poor mothers were unable to help
them. The air quickly became stuffy and it was difficult
to breathe. We had no idea where they were taking us.
Sometimes a few people managed to peak out between
the wires, inhale some air and note the direction of the
[48]

train, but they could not discern where the train was
heading. We passed train stations so quickly that we
were unable to see anything. People cried and prayed
silently. The situation was horrible. Those unable to
tolerate the suffering died of suffocation and thirst. Their
bodies remained in the train cars. The stench was
intolerable sweat from people who had not washed in
days, the buckets filled with urine and feces which had
not been emptied since we boarded, and the corpses. All
of this transformed this journey into hell. But beyond
the immediate situation was the uncertainty; where are
we going? When will we arrive there? What will happen
to us?
When we passed the Polish border, SS soldiers boarded
the train, and that was a very bad sign. The train
continued ceaselessly for three days and three nights.
* * *
The Hungarian Government was responsible for the
Hungarian Holocaust on the Jews. Had the Hungarians
not hated the Jews so abysmally, and had they not been
so willing to acquiesce to all the demands of the Nazi
Government, the Hungarian Jews would have been
saved. It took less than three months from the time the
Germans conquered Hungary for 440,000 Jews to be
[49]

sent to their extermination. Budapest was the only

exception from the whole country.
Hungary was the only country in which
Adolf Eichmann himself personally directed the
deportation, and he used all of the knowledge and
experience he had acquired to date towards this
objective. The process was so swift that even before the
German invasion into Hungary could be digested by the
Hungarian Jews, they were already deported to
Auschwitz. Even when it became obvious that the
Germans were losing the War, the Germans and the
Hungarians continued working towards the "Final
Solution". The Hungarian extermination machinery
worked no less efficiently than the German
extermination operation. My father Yehuda would
repeat this over and over again, and in the last year of his
life he told me, "Remember, the Hungarians were as
anti-Semitic and cruel as the Nazis".

[50]

Auschwitz-Birkenau

The train stopped. The cars were opened. After days of

traveling in the dark car, a bright light blinded us.
Before us we saw a sign: "Auschwitz-Birkenau" and
above the entrance to the camp were the words:
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
(Work Makes you Free).
The name Auschwitz held no meaning for us. We had
never heard of this place. We were exhausted, famished
and terrified due to the long ride and the uncertainty as
to what would next happen. Some of us still believed we
have arrived at the temporary labor camp until the end of
the War when we would be returning home. At first, I
was happy to finally breathe fresh air and get out of that
hell and the intolerable stench in the train. In a second
everything changed. Screaming, pushing, hitting, dogs
barking. This is what greeted us when the doors of the
train opened.
"Raus!" (Outside)
"Schnell! Schnell!!" (Quickly, Quickly)
"Move!" "Get moving!"
"Leave your bags in the train!"
"Do not take anything!"
[51]

"You will get your bags later!"

"Schneller!" (Faster)
Moving was difficult because your entire body hurt from
extended sitting on the floor of the train car and from not
being able to flex your muscles for days. SS soldiers clad
in dark uniforms and high boots, armed with bayonets
and rifles as if they were on their way to conquer a
battlefield, were standing around holding leashes of dogs
who were barking ceaselessly. Before them stood
frightened women, children and elderly people.
Suddenly I saw young men aged 16-17 with shaved
heads clad in striped pajamas running among us to get us
off the train quickly, all the while instructing us to leave
our belongings on the train. They were Jewish-Polish
prisoners from the camp. Their job was to evacuate the
Jews from the train and to gather up whatever
belongings they had brought with them from the ghetto.
They were forbidden to talk to us. They fulfilled their
duty quickly and efficiently. Yet, in spite of the danger
to their lives, something that I only learned later on, they
did manage while performing their jobs to whisper to the
mothers in Yiddish:
"Leave the children."
"Give the small children to the grandmother."
They repeated this over and over again.

[52]

We had no idea what they were talking about. Who even

wanted to listen to crazy people dressed in pajamas who
were giving illogical advice?
And all around us the SS soldiers continued to yell
"Schnell! Schnell!"
Indescribable chaos and fear reigned.
Each family gathered together.
Even before we
understood what was happening and where to turn we
were ordered to stand in lines.
"Women and children on the right!"
"Men on the left!"
In the midst of the confusion and yelling, one of the
"crazy" young men running around in his pajamas
whispered in my ear in Yiddish:
"How old are you?"
"14",
"When they ask you how old you are tell them that you
are 16 and stay next to your father".
Before I even had time to turn around towards him, he
disappeared.
That man saved my life.
My mother, of course, refused to abandon my little
brother Meir and stood in the women's line with him.
My sisters Blimu and Sylvia stood with her. The line
moved quickly forward towards the SS officer who stood
at its head. One of them was Dr. Mengele, standing tall,
[53]

with his black, shiny leather boots, armed with a gun.

He apathetically signaled with an easy movement of his
arm this one to the right, this one to the left. To life, to
death. Who knew then the meaning of right or left?
Which way was preferable? Why are they separating us
at all?
I stood in line next to my father.
In front of us was my Uncle Israel Perl, the same uncle
whose butcher shop bordered our home in the village,
and the same uncle who, in my presence, hid his wife's
jewelry.
Israel approached the front of the line.
"What is your profession?" the officer asked.
"I am an expert of vineyards and wines," Israel
responded.
"We need people like you," and he pointed his finger to
the left.
That is the last time I ever saw him.
Elderly to the left.
Mothers and children to the left.
My mother firmly held my brother Meir's hand. In the
blink of an eye I saw them going to the left, going
further away from me and then disappearing from my
sight. Everything was so rapid. No good-bye, no parting
glance. Who even thought that we had to part? I had no
idea that in that moment I was separated from my mother
[54]

and brother forever. My mother was a young 43 year old

woman, and my brother was only nine years old. Did
she have any idea that this was her last day on earth? I
will never know her last terrifying moments while she
tried to shield her youngest child.
Later I understood that we had just undergone the
"selection".
The selection between life and death was done in a cruel
superficial and random manner. Simply by looking at
people. Men who looked young were sent to labor and
the rest were given immediate death sentences. Young
children were taken from their mother's arms and
attached to the older women together with the weak and
the elderly. And there were some transports in which all
of them were just sent to their deaths, without any
selection process.
* * *
I will never be able to envision the face of my father
Yehuda's younger brother Meir. I will never know my
grandmother, what kind of a woman she was: Funny?
Warm? Smart? I can see her face from the one remaining
picture that was left; a picture that her sister Piri kept
when she made aliyah before the War. The picture hangs

[55]

in homes of family members who survived both in Israel

and New York.

Grandmother Chaya-Esther
in a picture that was taken before the War

[56]

A few days before my father passed away, he asked me

to inscribe the names of his parents and brother on his
tombstone. Today, their names are perpetuated on his
tombstone in the Haifa cemetery.
* * *
I reached the head of the line. My heart was beating
with fear. I must look grown up and strong. I must.
They must not suspect that I am fourteen years old. My
instincts tell me to believe what the man whispered to
me. It was a moment of life and death. I managed to
hide some stones in my shoes and I stood on my tiptoes
to appear taller. Thankfully, my health was good and I
was in decent shape.
"How old are you kid?" asked the officer,
"I am 16" go right.
My father right.
We are together. I am not alone. Sheer luck.
Sylvia right.
Blimu right.
Is right or left better? I don't know.
From there we were taken in a convoy to the camp.
Hundreds of people were crowded in one large hall.
There was screaming and pushing and beating and an
immediate order to remove our clothes.
[57]

"Schneller!" "Schnell!"
"Undress!"
"Move!"
The few items people managed to hide in their pockets
and shoes were taken, and we were left with nothing.
On one side people. On the other side clothes. Everyone
sanitized. At once hundreds of people, all standing naked
in a big hall, where the air was laden with the stench of
disinfectants. From there we were forcibly pushed to the
next stage, to the showers hall. The freezing water flow
slams hard on our naked bodies. There were no towels,
of course. From the showers we exited naked through
the other side of the hall. Like animals. Undignified.
Then we were pushed onto another stage the hair
cutting. Not only the hair on our heads, but also the hair
on our bodies. Women and men. Whoever could not
keep pace was beaten. I was lucky that I was a young
boy. I still did not have hair on my body, the hair on my
head was short, and my payes had already been shaved
off by the Hungarians before we arrived here. I passed
the humiliating hair cutting process relatively well. We
fulfilled their orders like robots. There was no time to
think or object. All of our senses were blurred.
Everything was done rapidly, stage after stage, as if
people were part of a manufacturing process in a factory.
For some reason we did not get prisoners' clothing.
[58]

After the shower, we received back our civilian clothes;

the same clothes that I had worn since I left my home. I
looked at my father, and I did not recognize him.
Without his beard, payes and a hat on his head, he lost
his Jewish appearance. In a single moment he had aged.
After the "purification" treatment we were taken to a
block. The block was a large barrack, dimly lit, and
inside were rows of huge wooden shelves, one piled on
top of the other. On those "so-called beds" the prisoners
were crowded all together. There were no mattresses or
blankets of course. We laid down on these boards in our
clothes, tired, humiliated, longing for water and a slice of
bread. Finally, we were free to ourselves, for the first
time since we arrived, without being bothered by orders
and shouts.
I positioned myself next to my father.
* * *
Upon entering the camp, the prisoner was stripped of his
identity, body, dignity and soul. His name and identity
were replaced by a number. His body, shorn of its hair
and displayed naked before everyone, was desecrated.
He was left without personal effects. His world
condensed into one small space. His home was now a
block in the camp, his bed was replaced by a wooden
[59]

bunk, shared by strangers who were also prisoners. The

wooden bunk was so narrow that if one person turned
over, everyone else had to turn over. That led to many
arguments and conflicts among the prisoners. The
Germans planned on killing the Jews not only cruelly,
but also by humiliating them to such an extent that no
human being could have comprehended this.
On the first day we arrived my father told me to eat
everything. Not to be fussy about kashrut. That was not
difficult because there was hardly any food. Meat was
not part of the menu anyway. On the first day we
received one-third slice of brown-gray colored bread.
Sticky, tasteless bread. I ate half the bread and hid the
other half in the wooden bunk. In the evening, when I
wanted to eat the other half of bread I discovered that
someone had stolen it. That was the first and last time
that I tried to save food. From that moment on, I finished
whatever food I received.
I thought about my mother, my sisters and my brother.
Where are they? What happened to them? We still did
not understand that we had undergone a selection
process between life and death. From the veteran
inmates we learned that this is not a labor camp, but
rather a death camp where people are murdered. And
yet, in spite of all the humiliations and suffering we had
been through, we still found it hard to believe the stories.
[60]

Or, perhaps, we did not want to believe. We thought that

these people were crazy, that they were lying. This was
completely incomprehensible.
Only later, when we tried to find out what happened to
all of those who were sent to the left, did the real story
become clear.
"You no longer have a mother; you no longer have a
brother,"
"All of them, along with your brother and mother have
been burned to death,"
"Look outside. Look at the red sky,"
"Look at the smoke emanating from the chimneys day
and night; smell the odor."
My father and I were at Auschwitz "all together" one
week. But that one week was eternity, and turned me
into a different kind of man. I became an adult. During
the week, we managed to see my two sisters. There
were fences in the camp that separated the women's
camp from the men's camp. We saw them from afar,
their heads shaven. It was difficult to recognize them.
All women, with their prisoners' clothing and shaven
heads, looked alike. We waved to each other. That was
the last time that my sisters saw our father.
In the transport of the Hungarian Jews in May 1944 not
all were sent to the gas chambers and cremation. The
[61]

youth and the strong ones were lucky and they were
considered fit for work; Auschwitz for them was a
transfer point. From there they were sent to labor camps,
where they provided cheap labor for private factories and
the German Army. These prisoners spent few days in
Auschwitz in separated blocks from the other prisoners.
Some of them were not registered as camp prisoners;
they neither received prisoner's clothing nor did they
have a prisoner's number imprinted on them.
I was one of those "lucky prisoners".
* * *
Between 1930-1945 the Germans established hundreds
of concentration camps to house enemies of the Nazi
State, the Third Reich. The first ones were labor camps
and concentration camps in Germany, in which people of
different nationalities, including Germans, for different
reasons were housed criminals, those who objected to
the Nazi Regime, Communists, Socialists and
homosexuals. The Jews were incarcerated in the camps
at a later date, following the outbreak of the War in
1939.
The concentration-camp, Auschwitz was established in
1940 in southern Poland, and was the largest of all the
camps. It included three central camps and 40 secondary
[62]

work camps; the most famous of which was the

Birkenau Camp where some 1.5 million men, women
and children were gassed to death, most of them upon
arrival at the camp. There are those who say that
Auschwitz-Birkenau is the largest cemetery in the
history of mankind.
While black smoke emerged from the crematorium
chimneys and the stench of death sated the air, the
residents of Oswiecim, the adjacent Polish city,
conducted their everyday normal lives, conveniently
ignoring what was going on right near their homes.

[63]

[64]

Plashov

Once again we were crowded onto a train to an unknown

destination. The not-knowing was unbearable no less
than the overcrowding and hunger. I was on the same
train car as my father, my father's brother Uncle Alter
Hollander and his son, Shmillo, one-year older than me.
After a full day's journey, filled with many fears, we
arrived in Plashov. It was a labor camp in the city of
Krakow Poland, about 100 kilometers from Auschwitz.
No one knew whether we had arrived at a better or worse
destination. Since I had already lost my innocence, I had
no doubt that this was not a "summer camp". Exiting the
train followed the "regular procedure", we were
surrounded on all sides by armed German soldiers,
mercilessly hitting us and screaming:
"Raus, Raus!" (out, out)
"Schnell! Schnell!" (fast, fast)
We were ordered to organize ourselves in lines of five
people each, and were marched into the camp.
After the selection to determine who was fit for work
and who wasn't, we were taken to the barrack, which
very much resembled the one in Auschwitz.

[65]

Plashov, established in 1942 on a Jewish cemetery, was

a forced labor camp for the neighboring Jews of Krakow,
who had been deported from the ghetto. In January 1944
it was converted into a concentration camp and
Hungarian Jews were transported there as well. It was
not considered a camp, but due to the excessively harsh
rule there, many died of typhus, hunger and torture or
were condemned to death.
The camp commander, Amon Goeth, was known as a
particularly cruel sadist. He was responsible for the
establishment of the camp and was quickly promoted up
the military ladder until he was appointed the SS officer
responsible for the camp. Amon Goeth would appear,
armed, astride his white and black-spotted horse every
morning, accompanied by his dog of similar colors. At
times he would sic his dog on prisoners who had
committed some small infraction, or just for his own
entertainment. When he would wander around the camp,
an atmosphere of indescribable fear prevailed among all
the prisoners, knowing full well that the end of his
"excursion" would end with victims.
His home was situated atop a hill on the camp site. From
his porch he would take daily pot shots at prisoners
walking around the camp. It would give him great
satisfaction to randomly shoot at prisoners for no reason.
He would demand that we stand in ruler-like lines during
[66]

morning roll calls. Then he would stand at the head of

the line, and shoot anyone who protruded even a few
centimeters from the line. He derived great pleasure from
this hobby. For prisoners Goeth was the Angel of Death.
* * *
Years after, Goeths character became famous in Steven
Spielberg's "Schindler's List", which tells the story of the
labor camp and its notorious commander. When my
father Yehuda watched the movie it sparked many
details about Goeth's cruelty in his memory.
* * *
In this camp I still wore the civilian clothes I had on
when I left my home. The back of our shirts were
marked with a yellow line. The hair on our heads was
shaved in a special manner: the head was entirely shaved
except for a two centimeter narrow line of hair in the
center of the scalp that ran from the forehead to the back
of the head. This "line" marked us as prisoners, and
would make us stand out if we escaped. We called this
"the lice line". Lice were a terrible curse that were
impossible to get rid of. They stuck to the little hair that
was left on our heads and greatly irritated us.
[67]

For a period of time I worked in construction (maurer, in

German). Occasionally they would take us outside of the
camp to work at the SS residence. This work was always
accompanied by cursing and hitting on the part of the
Germans and the Kapos alike. Kapo was a nickname
given to prisoners selected to serve over a group of
prisoners or a particular barrack. Most were Jews, but
there were also Kapos of other nationalities who were
political prisoners or criminals. They performed their
jobs with great exuberance to impress the SS or to save
their own lives and earn a few favors. They were
particularly despised as some of them were as cruel as
the Nazis.
The command to immediately obey orders was
accompanied by screaming, pushing and barking dogs; a
tactic designed to prevent us from thinking, and to stop
us from understanding what was going on, so that we
wouldn't object, would be disoriented and therefore
would obey and act like robots. This same tactic was
executed in every camp that I was in to prevent people
from stopping for even a moment, because thinking
might enable people to act against orders. And they did
manage to achieve this. We completely lost our senses.
We acted like machines. We did not think and nothing
interested us. Therefore, for someone who wasn't there,
it is very difficult for them to understand, that while we
[68]

greatly outnumbered the Germans, they made us obey

and prevented rebellion.
Hunger was so great and so prevalent among prisoners
that we fantasized about food all day long, even in our
sleep. Countless conversations revolved around hunger
and ways to forget it. When I would leave the camp to
work outside, at the SS complex, I would steal food
along with other children. We would search after every
bread crumb; we would look for leftover potato peels;
we would rummage through garbage piles just to find
food scraps. Everything I found was a treasure.
Whatever I did find, I brought back in the evening to
share with my father.
The overcrowding and hunger sparked fights about
living space among the prisoners, who were only able to
survive at the expense of others. Prisoners who lacked
character and the ability to adapt to camp conditions,
died of fatigue and starvation. Prisoners were forced to
create new norms for themselves selfishness,
stubbornness, ignoring others all of those qualities that,
in a normal world were considered unacceptable.
However, here and there, people helped each other
which lifted the prisoners spirits and helped retain a
spark of humanity. This was often expressed by someone
sharing his minuscule piece of bread with another person
[69]

who was hungrier than him. I remember one day I was

particularly hungry. Totally desperate I approached the
SS kitchen. I held a small bowl. I asked in German for
some food. Just a little. That's all I want. Please. I am
begging you. Just a little. One of the Germans called out
to me, "Come here kid." Here, I thought to myself, they
do have a little heart. Fearfully and slowly I approached
when suddenly I was sprayed with a bucket of cold
water. The ignominy and helplessness outweighed the
pain and hunger.
I was lucky and after a few days I was transferred to
work in the kennels. The dogs were well taken care of;
they were fed and given water. We were treated inferior
to dogs. Working in the kennel was a dramatic
improvement in my conditions, relatively speaking of
course. I was able to steal food, which tasted like a
delicacy when compared to what we were given. This
was forbidden, and I knew that I was endangering my
life, but the deprivation and hunger were so great, that I
was unable to stop myself.
Over time many prisoners became what were called
"muselmann". They were usually the ones who lived
solely on the food distributed in the camp. Others
succeeded in stealing, or bartering for food, or in
receiving a small supplement when working outside the
[70]

camp. The "muselmann" became thinner and thinner,

their muscles laxer and their movements weaker; they
had absolutely no resources and were barely able to
move and respond to their environment. Their bodies
became skeletons covered with yellow dry skin. They
stared with hollow, lifeless eyes and walked around the
camp slowly, apathetic to the angry screams heaped
upon them or the blows that battered their bodies. They
completely lost all human spirit. They were dying
slowly until death saved them. Out of fear they would
become like them, the other prisoners kept themselves at
a distance.
One day, it was already summer time, I suddenly heard
from afar an ice cream vendor passing by the camp
crying "Ice cream, ice cream!" My heart filled with
memories of the past, freedom, the days before the War,
the taste of ice cream. The voice, together with my
memories, filled me with hope and the desire to survive
and live. Those who lost hope and did not believe that
one day the War would finish, lost all strength to battle
for their lives and most died.
My father and I were in Plashov for two months. The
Germans started to slowly evacuate prisoners to
Germany for fear of the Russian Army approaching the
Eastern border. Some prisoners were evacuated to labor
[71]

camps in Germany and some to their deaths in

Auschwitz.
One morning in July or the beginning of August 1944,
we woke to the usual screams and whistles calling for
the morning appell. As always, we stood in lines of five
men. During this appell, a selection took place whereby
my father and I were separated from my uncle Alter and
his son Shmilo. We had been together since the day we
left our home and became very close. It was a
profoundly sad and difficult moment. They were taken
by transport to an unknown place. I never saw them
again. I assume they were taken to Auschwitz. My father
and I were taken together on a transport to Gross-Rozen
Camp in Germany. Obviously we did not know then
where we were being taken. There were those who
preferred to stay in the hellish camp rather than board the
train to an unknown destination. For many prisoners
transferring from one camp to another was traumatic,
upsetting their relative stability. There was great fear
surrounding the selection, and transportation by rail was
difficult and for many resulted in death. The transfer
from Plashov to Gross-Rozen was extremely arduous
and took two days, some of it by train and some by foot.
Many died along the way from fatigue and starvation. I
have almost no memory of the road.

[72]

* * *
In January 1945 the last prisoners in Plashov were
evacuated and forced on a death march to Auschwitz,
many were killed along the way and many of those who
survived the death march were killed on arrival in
Auschwitz. On January 20, 1945, the Red Army
liberated the camp, which was empty of people by then,
with no evidence of the murder that had taken place
there. After the War, the Supreme Court of Poland found
Amon Goeth, the cruel commander of the camp, guilty
of murdering tens of thousands of people. He was
hanged on September 1946 at the age of 37. The place
where he was hanged was not far from the Plashov
Camp.

[73]

[74]

Gross-Rozen, Bolkenhain

Gross-Rozen was a large death camp. From the spring of

1944 it served as a mother camp to some 100 sub forced
labor camps populated by prisoners of different
nationalities in addition to Jews. The Germans lacked
workers; these labor camps were established to solve this
problem. Private factory owners, as well as the SS,
wanted to profit and believed that they could do so by
using cheap prisoner labor, particularly the Jewish
laborers.
We arrived on August 1944 at Gross-Rozen. My prison
number was 13385 and my father's number was 13384.
As the rest of the Jews we were defined as political
prisoners. For the first time I received a striped Haftling 7
uniform and wood shoes that were difficult to walk in.
The shoes gave me sores on the bottom of my feet and
caused me great pain. My father and I were in GrossRozen for several days. I don't remember exactly what
we did during those days. I just remember that the
conditions there were very difficult.

The name given to concentration camp prisoners.

[75]

The arrival of the Hungarian Jews to Gross-Rozen at the

end of the War caused tremendous overcrowding in this
camp, as well as the other sub-camps. The overcrowding
led to reduced living space for the veteran prisoners and
less food meted out. The veteran prisoners observed the
Hungarian Jews arriving at the camp in their civilian
clothes, looking well fed and healthy, and could not
tolerate that they were spared from the horror of the
camps during the early War years. This created a barrier
between the veteran Polish Jews and the Hungarian
Jews. In general, prisoners from different countries
spoke different languages resulting in communication
problems. There were those who did not understand
German and could not understand the orders that were
given. Although everyone was Jewish, Hungarian Jews
could not speak Polish and the Polish Jews could not
speak Dutch, and so on. Sometimes Yiddish connected
the Jews, but that was primarily among the Orthodox
Jews. In addition, there were background, cultural and
faith differences among the Jewish prisoners. This
resulted in a situation in which each group insulated
itself and avoided the other groups. It took some time,
but the differences blurred as each group understood that
they shared a common fate.

[76]

From Gross-Rozen some 350 of us were transported in a

train under heavy guard to a small labor camp known as
Bolkenhain, which was a sub-camp of Gross-Rozen,
located some 20 kilometers away, located near the city
Bolkw in south-western Poland.
I particularly remember the Bolkenhain Camp, as I spent
my longest war time period there. It was a relatively
small camp, housing about 800 prisoners. It was situated
atop a hill, surrounded by electrical barbed wire fences
and four guard houses. Prisoners were housed in three
or four barracks, similar to those in other camps. The SS
housing compound was outside of the camp, adjacent to
the front gate. There were also non-Jewish prisoners in
this camp. Each prisoner had a symbol on his clothing
indicating what type of prisoner he was. Political
prisoners were called "reds" because they had a red
triangle on their garb, the criminal prisoners were called
"greens," the homosexuals had a pink triangle on their
clothing, and the Jewish prisoners wore a yellow triangle
marked by a Star of David.
Between 1940-1944 Bolkenhain was a labor camp for
women who worked in textile weaving. During those
years the policy was not to use prisoners to labor for the
German Army. But, since 1944, due to the increased
Allied bombings, the quick progress of the Russians
[77]

towards the West, and the shortage of arms and

ammunition, Germany started to use Jews in the
armaments factories as well.
In August 1944, Bolkenhain was converted into a work
camp for men as a secondary factory of the VDM
(Vereinigte Deutsche Metallwerke), which manufactured
airplane parts for the German Air Force. After its
conversion, transports of Polish and Hungarian Jews
began to arrive, some from Plashov and some were
transferred directly from Auschwitz.
In Bolkenhain, as in all the sub-camps of Gross-Rozen,
there were two administrative authorities. The external
one was the Camp Commander, comprised of SS troops,
and the internal one was managed by selected prisoners
under the supervision of the German Commander. The
SS troops assigned to the camp did not enter the
prisoners' complex often, and supervision of the
prisoners was handled by a selected prisoner a kapo.
Aside from the SS disgust at the idea of proximity with
the prisoners, there was also a desire to increase the
intensity of pain and humiliation by placing the
execution of punishments in the hands of another
prisoner. The selected prisoners had a good deal of
authority, making them "Masters of Life and Death."
The select prisoner was usually one of the veterans

[78]

(lagerlteste in German) and, to a great degree, he could

determine camp life.
The Bolkenhain Camp commander was an SS officer
named Fritz Woolf. The lagerlteste and the Chief Kapo
was a German criminal (bandit) named Hans Henschel.
Hans gleefully performed all the SS commands against
the Jews, adding his own generous amount of
maliciousness. He enjoyed somewhat better living
conditions. He had a bed, mattress, sufficient food, and
was even given a servant.
I was Hans Henschel's servant.
Hans wore striped clothes like all the other prisoners, but
they were tailored to his measurements and were made
of a better quality and warmer material than ours. I
remember he had a tattoo of a woman's head with the
letters LA beneath it on one arm. As he was a criminal
prisoner, he had a green triangle on his clothing. As part
of my job, I had to clean his room, shine his shoes as
well as the other officers' shoes, and immediately
respond to every one of his caprices. This was
considered "good work" and granted me a number of
privileges unavailable to other prisoners.
This job saved my life.
Camp conditions were very difficult. While this was a
labor camp, which did not engage in systematic
extermination, the Jewish prisoners were living on
[79]

borrowed time. Some 20% of the prisoners died of

starvation, weakness and torture. Many tried to commit
suicide by throwing themselves against the electrical
barbed wire fence, and those who did not die
immediately from electrocution were shot by the guards.
The dead bodies were thrown into the cement ditch at the
entrance to the camp and from there were regularly taken
for cremation at the main camp, Gross-Rozen.
* * *
A day in the life of a prisoner was divided into a lengthy
routine of orders and commands that had to be fulfilled
quickly and accurately from morning till night. Every
deviation, even the tiniest one, led to punishments.
Rising at the break of dawn, arranging one's "bed",
morning appell, marching to work, hours of
backbreaking work, waiting in line for the paltry meal,
marching back to camp, barrack inspection and evening
appell. And, so it went day in and day out. Every
morning a prisoner had to gather up his strength to
survive. Some of the demands were dictated by the camp
commander, others were unpredictable, a result of
violent outbreak or an officers or kapos arbitrariness.
The notorious appells were among the most difficult
experiences in all the camps. Appells took place twice a
[80]

day, at dawn and at night after returning from work.

Sometimes there would be an additional appell in the
dead of night. After morning appell the prisoners would
go out to work, most in the armament factories outside
of the camp. There the prisoners would work twelve
hour days manufacturing plane parts, a day shift and a
night shift. Going out to work was always accompanied
by German marching music, which was played by
orchestras constituted of camp prisoners. It was there
that I learned many of the popular marches. Evening
appells would include individual and group punishments
as a result of minor infractions.
Should one prisoner fail to appear for appell, the other
prisoners would greatly suffer. They would have to stand
at attention for hours, until the missing prisoner or the
reason for his disappearance was brought to light. They
would stand for hours, forbidden to move, without any
covering, in all weather conditions, exposed to cold and
wind, rain and snow. Whoever tripped or stumbled was
executed. After evening appell, the prisoners were
permitted to return to their barracks and eat a watery
soup of rotten vegetables and unidentifiable floating
bones, and a slice of bread that could not possibly have
nourished a human being. From lights out the prisoners
were confined to their cold, gloomy barracks until dawn

[81]

at 4:30 in the morning and the deafening siren and

screams of "Raus!" "Schnell!"
* * *
As servant for Hans, the kapo who ran the camp, I didn't
go out to work with the other prisoners. I lived apart
from them, at the edge of the camp in Hans' room. I
received more food than the others. I had a special dish,
and I could even get supplementary food. Occasionally, I
succeeded in stealing food. My father lived in the
barracks with the other prisoners and he would go out
with them to work outside the camp. At night, when the
prisoners would return from work, they would be
confined to the barracks until the next day. If someone
left the barrack at night, the guards would shoot him
from the guard towers. In spite of this danger, at night I
would sneak to my father's barrack. I would bring him
food, sit by his wooden bunk and we would talk. We
would talk about my mother, the family, the village, and
together we would wonder what happened to them. That
is how we managed to survive from one day to the next
together. This togetherness fortified us and gave us a
common hope. I would look into his eyes and see how
hard it was for him and how much he had aged. After
all, he was only 46. In today's terms, that is a relatively
[82]

young age. His hands were full of sores and scars, his
body was weak, his face became wrinkled. It was painful
for me to look at him.
It was very hard to survive if you did not have someone
close by your side. A prisoner's condition was eminently
better if there was someone that he could rely upon, take
care of him, share his slice of bread, and crowd together
on the bunk and share a blanket. The proximity and the
concern enabled us to retain our humanity. Without any
kind of human closeness, people lost all of their
humanity and their feelings for others. A person who
lived for someone else, survived longer. My father had
me, and I had my father and we lived for each other.
My father did not feel well. For several days, his
situation had been deteriorating due to the severe
pneumonia and hacking cough that was plaguing him.
He was sent to the infirmary (revir in German), which
was located at the entrance to the camp. There was very
little medical equipment there. There were some
bandages, a few gauze pads, liquid for cleaning wounds,
aspirin and that's it. A plain table served as an operating
table, and surgical equipment consisted of scissors and
an old scalpel. There were a few beds, more accurately
bunks, and sometimes two or three patients were forced
to crowd together on one bunk. Most patients who
[83]

arrived in the revir were put to death by an injection of

phenol poison, and their bodies were sent for cremation
at Gross-Rozen. The prisoners had no hope in the revir;
for them it was a corridor to cremation.
Thanks to my "job", I was able to arrange, from time to
time, for my father to get to the revir for a few days of
rest. When he had recuperated a bit, he would return to
the barracks and to work. That was rare in the camp, and
was only possible thanks to my privileges.
Hans Henschel was a sadist who got pleasure from
torturing prisoners. Punishments for the slightest
infractions were severe and influenced by his own
brutality. I particularly remember a number of cruel
tortures. Because I had to stay close to Hans, I was a
close-up witness to a number of punishments and
sometimes I even had to clear out the victims body. I
cannot forget many of these sights until today. There
were two large containers, like large cement baths in the
showers. One was filled with hot water and the other
with cold water. During the cold, snowy winter months
he would force prisoners to walk from the hot water to
the cold water and the other way round. That is how so
many fell ill with pneumonia. Of course, anyone who did
get sick was then sent to the revir, where he met his
death. I remember another torture from which Hans

[84]

derived great pleasure. He would stick a water hose in

the mouths of prisoners until they choked to death.
I also remember the public whippings that prisoners had
to endure. One of the barracks had a small wooden table
which was built with two wood planks below, with
enough space for sticking in one's legs. The prisoner
would have to bend his stomach over the table, stick his
legs between the two planks of wood underneath, and
they would be locked in so that he couldn't move. While
in this position, he would be cruelly whipped on his rear.
I was told that the whip was made of a bull's penis,
which had been stretched by weights. This whip was
elastic, and each lash caused terrible pain. I remember
once a prisoner wet his pants on the bunk in the barrack
and as a punishment he was forced to drink his urine in
public at the appell. Another instance was of a prisoner
who had diarrhea and he was forced to eat his feces in
front of everyone.
I remember one day I stood at the appell. I was caught
committing some infraction; I don't remember what it
was. The camp commander, an SS officer, demanded
that I take a step forward and stand before everyone. He
put gloves on his hands saying that he didn't want to
dirty his own hands on the pig Jew (zoy Jude) and then
he smashed me hard.

[85]

I witnessed Hans killing a prisoner. Officially, there

were no executions in Bolkenhain; those prisoners
condemned to death were sent to Gross-Rozen. But Hans
was his own master. People were dying all around me,
but because I was an eye witness to this particular death,
it is deeply etched in my memory. This one prisoner was
caught stealing potatoes. Vegetables were stored in a
hole in the ground that was covered with straw, to
prevent them from freezing. Prisoners would
occasionally steal from the food hole. This prisoner was
caught in the act and dragged into Hans' room. There
Hans killed him by beating him with a hammer. Because
I was responsible for cleanliness, I had to place a
dustpan under his head so that he wouldn't bleed onto the
floor. When the poor prisoner took his last breath I had
to remove him and clean the room from the blood that
still managed to leave a trail. The camp shoemaker and
the tailor were co-witnesses with me to this murder.
* * *
On March 12, 1969 my father Yehuda gave testimony to
the police in Israel regarding his life during the War. The
interview was conducted at the behest of the German
Judicial Office in Ludwigsburg and the office
responsible for Nazi war crimes. During his testimony he
[86]

described the great cruelty of the kapo commander of the

camp Hans Henschel. On November 2, 1970 my father
was asked to return and identify key figures from the
Bolkenhain Camp. From twelve photographs presented
to him, he identified those of Hans Henschel and Fritz
Woolf, who was the commander of the camp.
* * *
In January 1945 the Russians opened up a broad scale
campaign on the Eastern front against the Germans. The
prisoners became an annoying burden; the Germans
wanted to dispose of them so they would not be able to
testify as to what went on in the camp, and they wanted
to complete the 'Final Solution' before the Red Army's
invasion. The Germans continued the annihilation of
Jews at an accelerated pace but changed their methods.
They began to evacuate the camp prisoners with "death
marches" moving them from east towards the west and
Germany.
Bolkenhain Camp was destroyed on February 15, 1945.
During our last days in the camp we heard the sounds of
bombs and planes coming from the east, and we saw
smoke ascending to the skies. On the one hand, there
was a kind of happiness because the Russians were
advancing towards the camp and freedom was close at
[87]

hand. On the other hand, there was a great fear that the
Germans wanted to dispose of us before the Russians
would arrive so as to destroy any evidence of what went
on here. The atmosphere was hectic. The SS officers
began to pack up and burn documents. Two days prior
to the evacuation, tens of prisoners were put to death
with injections, most of them were ill. My father and I
were among the 500 remaining prisoners, all of whom
were sent on a death march. On that day we were
ordered to line up during morning appell, and march
towards the camp gate, where the SS troops were
waiting. Prior to departure all of the prisoners received a
slice of bread, a small pat of margarine and a little jelly.
That is how we commenced walking in bitter cold and
snowy weather. The SS troops walked on either side of
the prisoners, with their guns and dogs. Their packed
satchels and suitcases were given to the poor prisoners to
carry. The difficult trek took place over several days, and
very few survived. We walked without a break for many
hours; we had only the single slice of bread we had been
given when we left the camp and we were not given any
other food or drink. When I finished my bread I ate the
snow. We had to walk quickly. The guards cursed at us
and hit us with the butts of their rifles to force us to
move more quickly, as they were afraid of the advancing
Russians. We could hear the artillery in the background.
[88]

We marched in the morning, in the snow and rain, in

wooden shoes totally inappropriate for walking and our
legs were in great pain. People tried to help the weaker
ones, supporting them so that they would not fall.
Whoever tallied or dared to step outside of the march
formation was immediately shot and tossed over to the
ditch on the side of the road. Throughout the march we
saw the dead lying on the sides of the road and the snow
around turned red. Starvation and cold were unbearable.
We had no idea where we were going. At night we
would take a break and they would put us in a barn in
one of the neighboring villages. The overcrowding was
so great that you could not even lie down. However,
being next to each other enabled us to warm up a bit,
otherwise we would have frozen to death. We were
woken early the next morning by the sounds of guards
screaming and forced to continue our march. Some did
not survive the night. We continued the march for
several days, from first light till evening. When the
guards became tired, they were replaced by others. At a
certain point, the young guards were replaced by older
ones, they were probably sent to the Russian front. The
older guards marched at a slower pace, which was some
relief. But the murdering of prisoners continued as
before.

[89]

This agonizing march finished at Hirschburg Camp. It

was also a sub-camp of Gross-Rozen. When we got to
Hirschburg, the SS troops and Hans Henschel
disappeared.
On February 22, there was a selection where the healthy
were separated from the ill. It was then that I was
separated from my father who was very ill with
pneumonia. He was taken onto a truck and that was the
last time that I saw him.
We had managed to survive and stay together camp after
camp for such a long time. We were attached to one
another during this whole period making it easier for
both of us to survive the difficult days. And here, just as
we were nearing the end of the War, we were separated.
That was the hardest day since the beginning of the War
for me. That was the only time since we left our home
that I cried. Such sadness and tears I had never
experienced before or afterwards. It was unlike my
separation from my mother, during the selection in
Auschwitz when I did not know that it would be the last
time I would see her. This time I knew that we would
probably never see each other again. I was completely
alone. It is difficult to be alone. It is more difficult to be
alone when you have no home and obviously when you
are in a foreign country. And in this hell, it was
[90]

exceptionally more difficult when you have no one to

talk to and no one you can lean upon. And in spite of all
of this, I wanted to stay alive. I had hopes of meeting
some one from my family. And perhaps, I thought, I will
see my father again after the War?
I stayed in Hirschburg for several days. There were few
left after the selection. With those few who were left,
combined with the prisoners from Hirschburg we were
evacuated in total chaos to a camp called Reichenau,
located in the Sudetes in Germany, fleeing from the
oncoming Russian army. The evacuation took place on a
roofless car train. During six nights and days of snow
storms, we proceeded without water and without food.
We ate the falling snow. I remember that the train
traveled slowly and stopped very often because of the
bombing. I recall passing through a town, I believe it
was Czech, and while under the bridges, the villagers
threw us sausage and bread. I have no idea how I
survived this terrible journey.
* * *
Bella Gutterman8 wrote that after the selection at
Hirschburg, the sick prisoners were loaded on trucks and
many of them were shot on the way. Those who survived
8

"Narrow Bridge to Life", page 375

[91]

arrived in Bad-Warmbrunn Camp, where typhus was

rampant. All these years we didn't know whether my
grandfather Yitzhak-Yehoshua Hollander killed on the
way or did he perhaps survive and arrive at BadWarmbrunn? After liberation, my father Yehuda would
meet a man who claimed that my grandfather was
liberated and died a few days later. The source and
credibility of this information is unknown.
Sixty-eight years after my grandfather's death, eight
years after my father's death and six month after the first
Hebrew edition of this book was published, I got a letter
from the ITS (International Tracing Service) in Bad
Arolsen Germany. According to their records my
grandfather Yitzhak-Yehoshua Hollander died on May
6th 1945 in Dornhau, one of Gross-Rozen's sub-camps.
Cause of death: Cardiac insufficiency with general
weakness of the body. The camp was liberated by the
Russian army two days after his death.
On the following pages are documents received from
ITS - (International Tracing Service).

[92]

[93]

[94]

[95]

[96]

Buchenwald

In 7th March 1945, in the middle of the night we arrived

in Buchenwald Germany. I didn't know anyone in the
camp. I was very lonely. My prisoner number was
133701. According to their records I was two years older
(born 30/3/1928) , due to the statement I gave when I
arrived to Auschwitz, which in retrospect saved my life.

Very few survived the 500 kilometer transfer from

Bolkenhain to Buchenwald. The SS marched us in
formations of five in a row from the train station to the
[97]

center of the camp and ordered us immediately to the

showers for disinfection. There was a large clock atop
the main entrance. On the day of our liberation from the
camp, it was hit by a bullet; its hands stopped at 3:15.
To this day, the clock's hands are on the hour 3:15.
Buchenwald was a very large concentration camp, one of
the largest in Germany, with crematoriums and some
130 sub-camps. It housed prisoners of many different
nationalities. There was a camp for Russian and Polish
prisoners of war, and there was also a camp for children.
Generally, the regime here was less strict than other
camps, and there was a feeling that the War would soon
end. I was housed with non-Jewish adult prisoners. I do
not remember why. The conditions in the barracks of the
non-Jewish prisoners were a bit better, but I was a young
boy among adults. Younger prisoners often suffered
more cruelty than adults. Detached from their parents
and home, children adapted the behavioral patterns of
much older adults, as they had no one to care for them.
They had to learn to manage in a cruel adult world on
their own. Several days later, I managed to visit the
children's barrack.
Buchenwald was established in 1937 and during its
initial years there were few prisoners below the age of
20. But as the Germans increasingly needed forced
[98]

laborers for their armaments factories, and with the

evacuation of prisoners from the camps in the East, age
was no longer a consideration, and younger inmates
arrived in the camp. When the Jewish children began to
arrive in Buchenwald after January 1945, "the children's
barracks" were built, which housed some 600 children
and youth.
One day, while wandering in the children's camp I
suddenly came upon my cousin Tzvi Schwartz9. Tzvi
and I had grown up together in Muzsaj and he was one
year older than me. The meeting between us was very
emotional. Since parting from my father, I had felt very
alone. My meeting with Tzvi warmed my heart and
allowed some light in my very dark existence. I was very
surprised and happy when I learned that Tzvi's father,
Nisan Schwartz, my father's first cousin, was in the
camp. We met a number of times while I was in
Buchenwald, we spoke a bit and I remember his stories
about Palestine. His father-in-law and family lived there,
and he planned to go to Palestine when the War was
over. That was the beginning of my dream to go to
Israel at the end of the War.
9

Zvi survived, made aliyah, married and lives with his wife Bruriah
and their children Moshe and Chani in Tel Aviv. We remained
friends after the War.

[99]

I discovered a cultural life in the children's camp. I

remember seeing a Yiddish performance called: Es Brent
Yiddelach Es Brant (Fire Brothers Fire). Conditions in
the children's camp were better than those in the adult
camp and I longed to be there, after all I was the same
age as the children there. Unfortunately, I did not
succeed as my age, according to the records, was two
years older than my real age.
No one knows the real reason behind the "better
treatment" the children of Buchenwald received.
With the Russians approaching, the Germans accelerated
their killing of Jews. Since the camp also housed nonJewish prisoners, the SS tried to locate all of the Jewish
prisoners there. One day during the appell of hundreds of
prisoners, the SS ordered "Jden raus!" (Jews out).
There were many Jews in that appell and most stepped
outside of the rows. I did not. My instinct told me to
remain in place. The many Jews who did step outside the
rows were marched outside of the camp. Two Poles,
Jew-haters, were in the rows adjacent to me, and when
they saw that I had remained in place they began to
shout and point at me: "There is a Jewish kid here!"
Luckily, the SS officers were already too far away and
did not hear their shouts. And that is how I was saved.
All of those poor Jews, among them my cousin Tzvi
[100]

Schwartz's father, were executed shortly after. And so it

went every day. At every appell they would take out
groups of people, all of whom were taken to an unknown
location where they were apparently executed. In spite
of the fact that we were completely disconnected from
any news and we had no idea what was really going on,
there was a feeling that something was happening. We
could hear tanks firing in the distance, and planes
bombing targets while flying over the camp where
disorder reigned. And not just in this camp. Chaos was
rampant in all levels of the Third Reich, and convoys of
prisoners on death marches were evacuated amidst the
chaos.
We did not work during those last days. In fact, we didn't
do anything. Dead bodies were scattered all over, in the
barracks and throughout the camp, no one could control
it, due to the overall mess. Thanks to the rampant chaos
and the fact that officers were receiving contradictory
orders, I succeeded in avoiding some of the appells and
remained hidden in the barrack. That is how I managed
to survive, day after day, all with anticipation and hope
that this would be over soon. Every day that passed
without being caught was a miracle.
But one day it all came to an end. That day I went to eat
in the "dining room". At the end of the meal SS were
waiting at the door and everyone who exited was caught
[101]

and taken directly to a transport. That is how I was

caught, a few weeks after arriving at the camp. During
the ten "hunting days" the Germans caught tens of
thousands of Jews in the camp and only a few survived.
On April 11, 1945, a few days after I was caught, the
Americans liberated the camp.
We were marched to the city of Weimar, known for
being home of playwright and poet Goethe, and
populated by German citizens. While it was only eight
kilometers away, this forced march was as difficult as
the others. It was under heavy SS guard, trained and
skilled, armed with guns and bayonets. Their attack dogs
were standing beside them, just waiting for any
movement from the prisoners. We were half-human,
pitiful, thin and exhausted; we could barely walk. On
the side of the road lay hundreds of exhausted prisoners
who had no strength at all to continue walking. Anyone
who stepped out of line for a single moment, willfully or
not, or anyone who sat on the side of the road and
apathetically awaited his fate was shot in the head.
* * *
Holocaust researchers claim that there is no clear reason
for the death marches. Did the Germans fear the
surviving prisoners would reveal their cruelty? Did they
[102]

want to continue to use the prisoners for forced labor in

Germany? Did they intend to continue the extermination
process by marching them to death? Or was the rapid
evacuation a result of anarchy that spread throughout
Germany and the contradictory orders that were being
handed down? The general opinion is that the reasons for
the rapid evacuations and death marches were a
combination of all these.
When we arrived in Weimar we were loaded on a freight
train. No one had any idea where we were headed. In the
middle of the car was a wooden beam which served as a
divider, separating the prisoners area from the guards
who sat by the doors of the train. These were no longer
SS, but rather older soldiers, 50 years and above,
wearing German Army uniforms. Apparently, they
replaced the younger soldiers who were fighting on the
front or who had fled from the threat of military
occupation. That was a sign that the German Army was
falling apart. The level of cruelty that they exhibited was
no less than that of the SS. We received no food
throughout the trip. The train would occasionally stop
for us to take care of our personal needs in the local
fields. Every time we would stop we would pick and eat
grass. In the train, the German guards would peel
potatoes, and we would fight among ourselves over the
peels. I had a small box with a wood cap in which I kept
[103]

salt and I was able to "enjoy the slightly spiced meal".

We could hear planes flying above us and the sound of
bombs. Every time we were bombarded, the train
stopped, and the German guards would run and hide in
the fields, returning after the planes had passed. We
would take advantage of that and run into the fields then
to search for food. The torture, suffering and freezing
cold temperatures on the train were indescribable and
unbearable. In addition, there was terrible lice
infestation. My clothes were intolerably full of lice.
Despite the bitter cold, I discarded a warm wool lice
infested scarf. I suffered more from the lice than the
cold. Many died from starvation and thirst, exhaustion
and despair. Their bodies were tossed off the train.
Every morning the ill would be shot and thrown off the
train. Despair and helplessness often turned into desire to
fight and survive. My desire to live was very strong and I
knew that my life was dependent first and foremost on
myself. I believed that the end of the War was near.
There were many non-Jewish prisoners on the train with
me, but I found two other Jews on the train car. One of
the prisoners had a swollen hand. The guards laid him
down in the middle of the car and pointed a gun at his
head. He screamed and begged to live and tried to move
to the side of the gun that was pointing at his head. But
nothing he did helped; he was shot. It was horrible. I sat
[104]

in the corner of the car. Two Polish lads sat on either

side of me; one on my right and one of my left. They
were the same Poles who informed on me in
Buchenwald, shouting out that I was a Jew, and wanting
to turn me in when we were told to step outside of the
appell. During the night one of them rose. It was
forbidden to get up, because they were afraid that we
would jump from the train. The minute he rose he was
shot. I felt his blood dripping on me, but because of the
total darkness I did not know if they had shot me or him.
In the morning, it turned out that the bullet had
penetrated him and also killed his friend on my other
side, who had also risen. I, who had been sitting in the
middle between them, was unhurt. That was my sweet
revenge.
We were on the road for two weeks which seemed like
an eternity. Very few survived the journey. We arrived
at Dachau in Germany "half humans".

[105]

[106]

Dachau, Liberation

The Dachau concentration camp is adjacent to the

German city of Dachau, near Munich. Established in
1933 by the Nazi Party fifty days after Hitler's rise to
power, it was the first camp and served as a prototype for
other camps. The Nazis initially built Dachau to separate
communists and those who opposed their rule and were
deemed security threats, from 'regular prisoners'
incarcerated in German prisons. Although Dachau was
defined as a "first class" concentration camp, meaning
the conditions were more reasonable compared to other
camps, many prisoners met their deaths. There were gas
chambers in the camp, but they were unused. The camp
was surrounded by a high stone wall and appeared like a
regular army camp. It is unclear if Dachaus residents
knew what was happening behind the stone walls. It is
probable that many of them preferred to ignore it and
deny the horrors that took place there.
In early 1945, as the Allied armies advanced towards
Germany, the extermination and concentration camps
were quickly evacuated from areas that were close to the
Allied troops. And so transports of prisoners from those
camps arrived to Dachau. Most prisoners arrived close to
[107]

dying of exhaustion and looking like walking skeletons.

Conditions became increasingly worse and the
environment became drastically more crowded. During
the last months of the War, prisoners lived in
horrifyingly sub-human circumstances. The typhus
plague that spread through the camp was completely out
of control; some 200 prisoners were dying on a daily
basis as a result.
I arrived in Dachau on my fifteenth birthday. On arrival I
presented myself as Dutch and used my original name
"Ludvig Hollander" as printed on my birth certificate. It
took fortitude and courage to present myself as a nonJew. I had taken a great risk that could have cost me my
life. My story was surprisingly believed. Probably
because most of those with me on my transport were
non-Jews and there was general chaos and confusion
during the last days of the War.
I was sent to the non Jewish barrack #30, where
conditions were relatively "better." There were bunk
beds instead of planks of wood. That was an incredible
improvement. It had been a year since I had slept in a
bed. A special area in the barrack was reserved for
important prisoners and political prisoners who had held
high positions in the French Government. Because they
thought I was Dutch, I even received a package from the
[108]

Red Cross. Unfortunately, I didn't even get a chance to

enjoy it because it was stolen while I was standing in
appell. I was saddened and disappointed; to receive a
package in the middle of hell was like receiving a
treasure.
I didn't know anyone in the camp, but I do remember a
conversation I had with one of the important French
prisoners who shared my barrack. He told me that
because I was young it was important for me to stay
alive to tell the story after the War. He repeated this to
me over and over again.
* * *
On April 29, 1945 at 7:30 AM a brigade of American
army tanks entered the Dachau Camp. The soldiers were
not ready for the appalling sights that unfolded before
their eyes. Before entering the camp, adjacent to the
gate was a freight train of thirty cars. Each car was
packed with the gaunt bodies of male and female
prisoners who were sent to Dachau from other camps
just a few days before. There was not a sign of life in any
of the thirty cars. At first they thought the prisoners were
sleeping, until slowly but surely they grasped the
enormity of the tragedy. The soldiers who related these
stories even years later testified that this was an
[109]

unforgettable trauma that affected their lives. But that

was only the beginning. After a short gun battle with the
SS guards who manned the guard towers at the entrance,
the Americans burst inside the camp. The soldiers were
in shock from the horrors. They had no idea what a
concentration camp was. The sight was incredibly
difficult. Thousands of walking skeletons were
apathetically wandering around the camp complex, in the
most horrendous physical and psychological states. The
survivors were far closer to the "walking dead" in
appearance than they were to human beings. The
Americans found 1,600 prisoners crushed together in
barracks intended to house 200 people; many were dead
or dying. Some of the bodies were decaying and
everyone could smell the stench of death in the air.
Most of the SS soldiers either fled or surrendered. Those
who remained were executed. The Americans allowed
survivors who sought vengeance to hit and even shoot
them. Their bodies were tossed in the ditch outside the
camp, where they lay for three days for the prisoners to
see. Photographs from the camp were broadcast by the
Western media, adding to the horror discovered in other
concentration camps. American soldiers forcibly dragged
in the citizens of Dachau who were living nearby and
compelled them to look at the horrors around them; so

[110]

they should see up close what was going on throughout

the War just across the street from them.
Slowly, prisoners came out of the barracks and
approached the soldiers, looking at them, but not really
believing in their presence. In addition to the shock of
liberation, prisoners were shocked to see Afro-American
soldiers, as many had never seen a black person before.
The soldiers began supplying food, mostly canned
goods, in an unsupervised fashion. The starving
prisoners ate uncontrollably, and because they could not
properly digest the food many dropped dead "like flies."
Rampant typhus claimed additional victims. Thousands
of people who had just barely survived the War, but
somehow managed to stay alive, died on liberation day.
I had no strength to go outside the camp. I was
completely exhausted. I stayed within the camp
compound and every place I walked, inside and outside
the barracks, I came upon dead and half-dead people.
Everywhere. It was indescribable. That is how I
wandered around for a few days. I remember meeting a
guy from my village, Moskowitz, who was a bit older
than me. He sat near the barracks door. For a moment I
felt a tinge of new hope and happiness, that I wasnt
alone. But, sadness and loneliness soon took over; he
was very sick and could not even move. I never saw him
again and I do not know what became of him.
[111]

Soon after the doors to the German Army warehouses

were open and clothing was distributed to us. I threw
away my lice-infested clothing and took a Hitlerjugend
(The Nazi Party's Youth Movement) green uniform,
which more or less fit me. I had no idea then that the
uniform could possibly endanger my life.
American Army medical staff moved among the
survivors to examine them and thoroughly disinfect them
to prevent further victims. When I was examined, they
discovered that all of my teeth were unstable and I could
lose them. A female army doctor gave me Vitamin C,
and saved my teeth. Daily I gained strength. The food
and vitamins revived my body.
After a few days of trying to organize the camp complex,
the Americans decided it was time to evacuate us. They
asked us to sort ourselves by country. Dutch, Belgians,
Czechs, French, Hungarians, and so on, to transport
every group of people to their country of origin. For the
non-Jewish prisoners organizing into groups was very
obvious, as they had homes to return to. Among Jews the
situation was vastly different. There was no place to
return to. It was obvious to Jewish survivors that most of
their families had been murdered, and that their houses
had been either razed or taken over by strangers. I had a
real problem. I had no idea which country to go to. To
Czechoslovakia? To Hungary? I didn't want to go to
[112]

either of them. I felt like I did not belong anywhere. For

the first time it hit me: I had no house to return to. The
Jews have no country. I was very alone. I had no one to
talk to or consult with and share my fears and doubts. I
knew that my mother and brother had been killed in
Auschwitz. The last time I had seen my two sisters was
when I left Auschwitz and I had no idea if they survived.
I did not know my father's fate after we separated. After
a good deal of deliberation, I finally decided to join the
Czech group. I had good memories of the Czechs from
my childhood in the village. I had no desire whatsoever
to return to Hungary, I had only bad memories from the
occupation and the expulsion to the Ghetto.
Each group was put in American army trucks, and that is
how we arrived in Bratislavia. There they disinfected our
bodies and clothes. It was a particularly unpleasant
process. I felt ashamed to stand nude in front of female
nurses and doctors. After the disinfection, they left us at
the train station which was to take us to Prague. Each
one was free to go as he pleased.
* * *
May 1945. A 15-year old boy. Alone in the world. In the
middle of a train station. In a city he has never visited. In
a strange country. No one will be waiting for him.
[113]

War was over for my father Yehuda in Dachau on April

29, 1945. He had arrived in Auschwitz on Shavuot and
was liberated exactly one year later on Shavuot. He was
very weak and could barely walk. Although, technically
he was a teenager, he felt like an old man. My father
survived the horrors of the War for one year. "In total"
one year out of his 75 years of life. A fateful year that
impacted on the rest of his life. He would never return
to being Leibi, he would never returned to his home in
the village that he so loved. He would never see his
parents or younger brother again. He lost his faith and
had to begin his life anew, alone. April 29, 1945 is his
second birthday. One week after his liberation on May 8,
1945, the world celebrated the end of the War.

[114]

A New Beginning

What to do? Where to begin? Where to go? How to get

there? The liberation did not resemble the dream I had
envisioned for so long. This was not "a happy ending",
but the beginning of emptiness, loneliness, despair, many
questions and many doubts. True the nightmare of the
camps was over, but now I had entered a period of
wandering with no home to return to. I missed my home
and was deeply worried about my family. Did my father
survive? What happened to my brothers and sisters? I
decided to go home. To look for my family. I had a
feeling that no one would look for me because I was
young and considered unlikely to survive. I remembered
my mother's request before we left the ghetto: "When
this is all over we will meet at home."
My journey in Europe began in Prague.
How could I feed myself? Find clothes? Put a roof over
my head? No one was sure where it would be safe to
travel. How could I travel in a Hitler Youth uniform?
How will the locals the Germans, Czechs, Hungarians
treat the survivors? Perhaps SS soldiers are still
around, ready to ambush liberated Jews?

[115]

I traveled by train, one of the only forms of

transportation at the time. Hundreds of thousands of
refugees traveled the length and breadth of Europe; most
of them had nothing. That was more or less the
atmosphere during the days after the War. I also had no
money and no identification, but somehow I managed.
The roads were packed with soldiers from different
armies who were returning home, refugees from the
camps were everywhere, mostly Jews who were
wandering from one place to another searching for
remnants of their families. It seemed as if everyone was
constantly in motion; everyone was lost, everyone was
confused. The trains were packed with refugees, and
when there was no place to sit or stand inside, they sat
on the roofs. Sometimes they were permitted free train
travel. Red Cross representatives and other organizations
distributed hot food at train stations. That is how I
stumbled from one day to the next on my way to Muzsaj
via Budapest. At night I slept on a train or on a bench at
the train station. I looked for anyone familiar; perhaps I
will bump into someone from my village. I asked
everyone I came in contact with if they knew any
information, recognized anyone, saw anything that might
help me trace if not my family then its history.
And then one day I did meet a guy my age who I
recognized from the Bolkenhain Camp. We remembered
[116]

each other. He also remembered my father, remembered

that we had been together. "What happened to my
father?" I asked him. "Do you remember? Do you
know?" That boy recalled that my father had survived
the War and had arrived in a city by the name of Brno in
Czechoslovakia. But from what he knew my father had
arrived there very ill. He didn't tell me explicitly what
had become of him, but hinted at, and led me to
understand that he did not survive.
* * *
In 1996, my parents Yehuda and Ester, traveled to
Hungary with my Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Bernie, who
live in New York. My father wanted to look for his
father's grave in Brno and his dream was to bring his
father for burial in Israel. When the group arrived in
Hungary, my father could no longer hide his excitement
and shared his intentions with the others. Together they
all traveled to the cemetery in Brno and with the help of
the person who was in charge of the cemetery, they
fruitlessly searched among the books and tombstones.
My father Yehuda didn't live to see the day when we
finally got the evidence that his father, my grandfather
Yitzhak-Yehoshua Hollander, died on May 6th 1945 in
Dornhau, which was one of Gross - Rosen's sub- camps.
[117]

* * *
I crossed the Danube on foot until I arrived in Budapest.
I wandered through the streets. I heard about a local
Jewish organization providing food and housing for
refugees and I went there. I believe they even distributed
some money. Throughout the city were lists of survivors,
and people would stand for hours in front of these lists,
hoping to find surviving family members.
While in Budapest, for the first time in my life I went to
the cinema to see a movie. The protagonist was a naval
captain. My love of the sea was born there, as was my
dream, which I fulfilled a few years later serving in the
Israeli Navy. Eventually, I would also make a living as a
naval appraiser and that is how I stayed close to boats
and the sea.
My next goal was to return to Muzsaj, my childhood
village. I traveled from place to place by train until I
arrived at the train station in Berehovo and from there I
walked to the village. I discovered the village was now
under Russian rule and life was going on as usual; as if
nothing had changed since we were expelled. I walked to
my house. I knocked on the door and strangers opened
it. They were Russian citizens who had arrived from
Siberia within the framework of a population exchange
organized by the Russians Russians who lived in the
[118]

village were sent to Russia and Russian citizens were

sent to live in the village. I desperately wanted to see the
house. The residents refused. They did not let me go into
my own home! I was a free person, but homeless. With
no family. Somehow I snuck into the basement through
the back entrance, and searched for the box of jewelry
my Uncle Israel Perl had hidden there. I found it! The
box was right where he had left it. Quickly and quietly, I
put it in my pocket. Eventually, I would give the earrings
to my cousin Rikva Kalush. They were her mother's
earrings, my father's sister. Rivka survived and lived for
many years in Moshav Massuot-Yitzhak in Israel and
today the earrings are in the possession of her daughters
Sarah and Rachel. I did not find the other valuables we
had hidden in the basement ceiling. I tried to reach deep
between the planks of wood, because I thought that
perhaps they had fallen in the cracks, but the tenants
living in my house caught me and forced me to leave.
My brother David, whom I would meet on my next visit
to the village, innocently complained to the police. This
is my house, where I lived before the War," he told them.
The Russian policemen mockingly answered: "Your
father did not pay his municipal taxes for a year, so the
house is no longer his".
I stayed in Muzsaj for several days. The Russians set
aside a house for returning refugees. It was there that I
[119]

learned my eldest brother Avrumoishe was being held by

the Russians in Hungary as a prisoner of war. He was
close to the city known as Baja. Avrumoishe was taken
to a Hungarian Army's forced labor camp even before
we were deported to the Ghetto. When the Russians
approached the front towards the end of the War, he
managed to escape and hide in the forest for three days.
When the Russians arrived they captured him with other
German and Hungarian soldiers. Avrumoishe was
sentenced to forced labor in Siberia. Luckily, he was
saved at the last minute by a Russian-Jewish doctor.
Once again I set out on a long journey, alone, to look for
my brother in Baja. I walked on foot from the village to
the train station in Berehovo, and I traveled by train
without really knowing how I would spend the night and
the length of my journey. I went from one train to
another, passenger trains, coal trains and I walked a lot.
After a few days I arrived in Baja. The prisoner of war
camp was several kilometers outside of the city. I was
warned that the road was dangerous as heavily guarded
German prisoners of war were detained there. Even
though I had been warned not to go there, I decided to do
so. I was not afraid of anything. After all I had
experienced, fear was well behind me. My instincts were
sharpened and my intuition told me that I was doing the
right thing. I was driven by my strong desire to see my
[120]

older brother. I arrived at the camp area. What do I do?

How do I get into the camp? I walked around in the field
for several days, studied the movements of the prisoners
and guards as they exited and entered the camp and
waited for the right opportunity. While observing their
movements, I noticed that on a fixed day some guarded
prisoners exit the camp in a convoy towards the adjacent
village. I waited for that day and carefully followed the
convoy. I discovered their destination was a dental
clinic. While they were waiting in line for the dentist, I
pretended to walk around and "speak to the wall" in
Yiddish. They understood the language and that is how
we began to communicate with each other without the
guards noticing. It turned out that they knew my brother,
who was part of the firefighters group. They suggested
that I return the next day at noon, the time when he
would be going from one camp to another, and I would
have the best chance of meeting him. That is exactly
what I did. I sat outside and waited until 12:00 PM the
next day. Suddenly I saw from afar a convoy of
prisoners crossing the street, among them my brother
Avrumoishe. I immediately recognized him. Luckily, he
also recognized me although I had changed so much. It
had been several years since he had last seen me, and
now I was dressed in a Hitler Youth uniform, the same
clothes that I had taken the day I was liberated from
[121]

Dachau. No doubt I looked completely different, yet in

spite of this he recognized me. He managed to approach
me for a minute and told me to return the next day at a
specific time, promising me that he would get special
permission from his commander to meet me. I arrived
early the next day. I was impatient and had no idea how
to pass the time. I sat outside, and suddenly one of the
Russian guards, approached me and pointed his rifle at
me. "What is your name? Where are you from and what
are you doing here!" he asked me in a threatening tone; I
was afraid that he would shoot me on the spot.
Thankfully, my brother approached that same moment
and saved me. The Russian soldier thought I was
German because of my uniform and wanted to kill me.
Only then did I understand the extent of the constant
danger I had been in walking around in a Nazi uniform.
I can only assume that the only reason I had not been
hurt was because I was so thin and looked younger than
my real age, and therefore it was improbable I was a real
German soldier.
We met again over the few days I stayed in Baja. I was
the happiest person. The knowledge that my brother was
alive and that we had reunited was beyond all my
expectations. Saying goodbye to him was very emotional
for me.

[122]

After seeing my brother I proceeded to Bucharest,

Romania. During my travels from city to city I met
Jewish refugees, and rumors were that in Bucharest they
distributed money to Jews returning from camps. And
so it was. I arrived there and for the first time I received
an identification certificate. In my ID card photo I am
still wearing the same Hitler Youth uniform; the same
one that I had been traveling around with for several
weeks since the day of my liberation from Dachau. Two
years later, before my aliyah to Israel, I would have to
destroy this ID card, as per the instructions I was given,
in case I was captured by the British.

[123]

1945. Yehuda in Hitler Youth uniform six weeks

after his liberation

[124]

With the money I received, I bought myself some

civilian clothes and finally, I happily parted from the
uniform. One day, while wandering around the streets, I
met someone who told me that my brother David and my
two sisters were alive. I was so excited that I returned to
the POW (prisoner of war) camp in Baja to tell my
brother Avrumoishe about the good news. I encouraged
him to do everything possible to secure his release so
that we could unite.
And once again I set out to return to Muzsaj. I arrived in
the village after a few days. One day while I was
walking in the street, I could not believe what I saw it
was my brother David. We had not seen each other for a
long time, even before the deportation from the village.
Even though both of us had changed a good deal, we
nevertheless recognized each other. David confirmed
that our sisters had survived the camps and that he had
already seen them; they were in a Displaced Persons
Camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany. He asked about
our father and unfortunately, I had to deliver the terrible
news that he did not seem to have survived. He had
already heard about our mothers and brother's fate from
others. I told him Id seen our older brother and we
decided that we would immediately travel to Baja
together. The desire to be together was stronger than
anything else, and we wanted to help him get out of the
[125]

prisoner of war camp. The next morning, I remember it

was a Thursday, we left on foot for the train station in
Berehov and about halfway there walking in the other
direction towards us, we saw our brother. We looked at
each other, incredulous. A miracle. We were
overwhelmed. We turned around and headed back
towards the village. We spent an emotional Shabbat
together in Muzsaj.
On Monday morning, three days later, the three of us left
towards Germany to meet Sylvia and Blimu in
Landsberg.

1985. Left to Right: Yehuda, David and Avrumoishe.

[126]

The road back to Germany was long and complicated.

Many of the train tracks and bridges had been bombed
and had not yet been repaired, forcing us to take alternate
roads. Public transportation was irregular and there were
no train schedules. There were still no borders between
countries in many areas. Several borders no longer
existed and new ones had not yet been fixed. That same
year our village was transferred to Russia, and a new
border had been established at a point called Chop. It
was not easy going beyond the border and we took great
risks crossing in the dead of night on foot. We crossed
the border and continued on foot; we were able to hitch
rides on trains here and there and on trucks. We traveled
via Budapest until we arrived in Landsberg, some 60
kilometers from Munich. I cannot possibly describe the
meeting with my sisters. They never expected to see us.
There was a warm, homey feeling. On September 1945
the five of us settled in the Displaced Persons Camp in
Landsberg.
* * *
Displaced Persons Camps were exactly that camps for
people who had been displaced from their homes. The
Allied Forces established them to help solve the refugee
problem following the War. Survivors had lost families
[127]

and were in poor health mentally and physically. They

found it very hard to cope with the horrors of the
Holocaust. Some of them were so physically and
mentally depleted that they could not return to their
homes to look for surviving family members. The homes
in which many lived prior to the War had been destroyed
or confiscated, and their possessions had been stolen.
They had no country and no citizenship, trapped between
fleeing from hell in the past and their inability to control
their destiny in the present. They had no idea of what the
future would bring; most were also financially unable to
begin a new life and the path to rehabilitation was very
long. Additionally, the option of leaving Europe was
often blocked. The British Mandate had closed the gates
to Palestine and there were no other countries willing to
take in so many refugees. It didn't take long before
liberation became a partial liberation. They were
liberated but not free. They were completely dependent
on outside forces. Those were the reasons that the Allied
nations established the camps, particularly in Germany
and some in Austria and Italy. The camps were built on
the grounds of the concentration camp infrastructures. In
some camps, the survivors were living in the same
barracks that they had been housed in prior to their
liberation, and some were housed in units that the SS had
occupied. That was how an absurd situation was created
[128]

whereby the survivors continued to live in overcrowded

conditions, surrounded by barbed wire. In spite of the
conditions, disturbing memories of the past and a foggy
future, the survivors began to rehabilitate their lives and
dream of leaving Europe. They fell in love, married,
gave birth and these events became the focus of their
lives. A social and cultural life developed, schools were
established, youth movements started, dances took place,
and even newspapers were published in several
languages.
With the help of the Joint Distribution Committee 10,
survivors benefited from professional retraining courses
and Hebrew lessons. Some of the streets and houses in
the camp were given names of communities from which
they had come; some had Hebrew names, others
American names, such as: Roosevelt, White House, and
Washington to honor the Allied Forces who had built the
camps. But the survivors still lived in camps, and slept in
overcrowded barracks with no privacy; food was scarce
and many did not participate in public activities. The
activities were disconnected from the extant emotional
situation and the survivors carried the trauma of the past
and their longing for their lost families. In hindsight
some of them were suffering from PTSD.
10

An American Jewish charity organization established to help Jews

in need or in danger.
[129]

The Displaced Persons camps were temporary solutions

that left the future hazy. What was originally designed
to be temporary for those lacking a homeland, lasted for
too many years, during which the displaced people left
the camps gradually until emigration from Europe was
possible. Some two-thirds made aliyah and the others
went to America. In 1957, the last displaced persons
camp was shut down in Europe.
Landsberg also established a Displaced Persons camp on
a former concentration camp site. At first, it was
intended for refugees of all nationalities, Russian
prisoners of war, Poles, and citizens from Eastern
European countries who had been hounded based on
their political beliefs. At some stage, some 5,000 Jews
remained, who created a vibrant Jewish life there, and
transformed it into a center of educational, cultural,
political and religious activities. The camp was closed in
1950.

[130]

[131]

Shortly after the five of us were living together in the

Displaced Persons camp, David left us. He began to
work at UNRWA, an international UN body founded in
the United States, designed to assist post-War refugees.
He would occasionally stop by to visit. On one of these
visits, thanks to his connections with a rabbi in the
American Army, David found a house for us, located
outside of the camp on 14 Kogler Strasse. It was a
lovely, roomy house where an SS officer's family had
previously lived. After the War, Jewish officers in the
American Army confiscated the houses of SS officers,
banishing their families. Jewish refugees were then
housed there. We began to live a 'normal' life in this
house.

14 Kogler strasse, Landsberg

[132]

Slowly my brothers and sisters began to return to

religion. It didn't appeal to me. I didn't have the chance
to go to yeshiva before the War as my two older brothers
had, and had not experienced the intensive religious
learning that takes place there. Avrumoishe tried to
convince me to follow his ways and we had many
arguments. As the older brother, he felt a particular
responsibility to fill the void left by the death of my
parents and took it upon himself to serve as a father
figure to all of us. That was particularly meaningful for
me, as the youngest member of the family. He insisted I
study in yeshiva and I had mixed feelings about it. In
the end I capitulated and began to learn in order to
satisfy him and avoid further arguments, and also to
check myself and see what I really felt about my faith.
Soon I realized what was clear to me in advance; I did
not relate to this, I wanted to be a free man with choices
and opinions of my own. For several months I wandered
around Europe alone, independent and I got along not
badly at all. I decided I had to learn a practical
profession; so I went to vocational school to learn radio
and electricity. I remember that the teacher was a
German engineer.
Other Jewish survivor families lived in the same
neighborhood in Landsberg; one of them was the Weiss
family: Aharon and his two sisters, Yoli and Rachi,
[133]

second cousins on my mother's side. We met them after

the War, and became close. This friendship resulted in
two weddings. My brother Avrumoishe married Yenta
(Yoli) Weiss and my sister Blimu married Yoli's brother,
Aharon (Ari) Weiss. Their first sons were born in
Landsberg: Shiu, son of Avrumoish and Yoli Hollander,
and Abie, son of Blimu and Ari Weiss.
We dreamed of making aliyah to Palestine and building
a farm together. Between the fact that Blimu and my
sister-in-law Yoli were already pregnant, and the great
difficulty involved in getting to Israel, legally or
otherwise, the plan of making aliyah together vanished.
Discussions turned to U.S. emigration. I very much
wanted to make aliyah. Outside of Bible stories I learned
in cheder, my knowledge of Palestine was limited. I
dreamed of seeing all the historical Biblical places that I
had learned about. Also, the conversations with my
cousin Schwartz whom I had met in the Buchenwald
Camp and his desire to make aliyah had influenced me. I
had a burning desire to be a free person, to belong to a
people with a state and to be free of the need to rely on
others goodwill. While we were in Landsberg
emissaries (shlicim) from the Jewish Agency arrived and
their stories about Palestine and the plan to build a state
for Jews conquered my heart. As opposed to my brother
and sister who had already begun families and had
[134]

responsibilities, my sister Sylvia and I were still very

young, Zionistic and without responsibilities. Our plan
was to make aliyah together. As days went by, Sylvia
wavered. She was very close to our sister Blimu, with
whom she had spent the difficult days in the camps, and
it was thanks to Blimu that she had survived. Blimu was
already well along in her pregnancy and Sylvia felt a
responsibility towards her and wanted to stay for the
birth and help her with the baby. In the end, I was left
alone with my dream, and deferred the easier possibility
of immigrating to America with my brothers and sisters.
Getting to Israel was far from simple. You had to acquire
a certificate11 and the British limited their distribution. I
used David's connections. In his position at UNRWA he
was a representative of Youth Aliyah and Aliyah-Bet.
Through him I acquired a certificate to come to Israel
legally. However, because I was young and without a
family I thought that I could get to Israel illegally and
give my place to a pregnant woman or woman with a
child. On hindsight that was a terrible mistake which
cost me dearly.
In order to make aliyah within the framework of AliyahBet you had to belong to a party of one sort or another.
11

A certificate granted by the British authorities which enabled legal

emigration to Israel. Permission to emigrate to Israel was granted
according to quotas that had been agreed upon in negotiations
between them and the Zionist administration.
[135]

During those chaotic days, belonging to a party or a

youth movements was a life preserver for the displaced
who were wandering aimlessly over Europe. They were
public, organized bodies that directed and navigated. For
many, belonging to a movement served as a substitute
for the families they had lost and provided them with a
community to belong to. The movement provided basic
needs, from food, housing, and clothing to transportation
to Israel via the borders and a place on a boat.
Because of my religious background, I joined the Po'alei
Agudat Yisrael Movement (the ultra orthodox group),
which was established to retain an orthodox lifestyle in
light of the secular movement. The movement
emphasized religious education and objected to socialist
Zionism. I used David's connections with them through
his work at UNRWA. I felt that by joining them I would
satisfy my brother Avrumoishe; here I am following our
faith. I also thought that I would feel more comfortable
with this religious youth group, because this reminded
me of the education I had received at home. Two years
after being liberated from Dachau, in the spring of 1947,
I parted from my family. Avrumoishe and David came to
say goodbye and gave me ten dollars or ten German
marks. I had no idea that the journey to Israel would take
over a year.

[136]

My brothers and sisters remained in Landsberg for

another year and in 1948 immigrated together to New
York.

The family in Landsberg 1946. Left to right:

Avramoishe, Yoli, Blimu, Ruchi (Yoli's sister), Sylvia,
David. Sitting: Yehuda

[137]

Yehuda, Landsberg 1946

[138]

Up:
Sylvia and Yehuda
Landsberg, 1947.
Down:

Sylvia and Yehuda

New York, 2000

[139]

Aliyah-Bet, the illegal aliyah of Holocaust survivors, was

executed in an organized way through the Bricha
(Escape) movement. At first, it began as a spontaneous
movement by partisans who had survived the War.
Later, the movement became part of the national mission
and emissaries from Israel and representatives from the
Haganah joined it. Bricha people transported the
refugees from the DP (Displaced Persons) camps and
Eastern Europe via the borders to the Italian and French
port cities in illegal ways. From there they could get to
Israel by boat. Many of the Bricha operators were
survivors who had been active in pioneer youth
movements, and fulfilled different roles such as
administrators, convoy supervisors, manning border
crossings, etc. This was an unprecedented, vast
campaign that was conducted in an orderly manner and
under complete secrecy.
The city of Ulm, Germany, 120 kilometers from
Landsberg, served as a gathering place for refugees who
planned to make aliyah via Aliyah-Bet. Trucks carrying
groups of Jews from orphanages, DP Camps, members
of different parties and youth movements, arrived from
throughout Germany in Ulm. I arrived there as part of
the Agudat Israel Youth Movement. Polish born
Yehoshua Iveshitz, was our leader, responsible for the
movement's youth aliyah, and our escort to Israel. I met
[140]

David in Ulm, where he was responsible for the orphan

groups on their way to Israel. We left on a Saturday
night. It was customary that groups would depart for
Israel every Saturday night. Our departure towards
Marseille, in the south of France, was conducted in
secrecy on American Army trucks accompanied by army
jeeps.
The smuggling of refugees from Germany to France was
a complex operation and the crossing to Marseille was
only done when there was a boat in the harbor ready to
sail to Israel. Bricha people were helped by Americans
who supplied trucks and gasoline. We traveled for many
hours until we reached the French border. On reaching
the border, the trucks were covered with tarpaulin to
appear as if they were transporting goods, and we had to
remain completely silent. At this point, responsibility
was transferred to the Mossad. In France we were
transferred to a passenger train which arrived in the
morning in Marseille. From there we were once again
transported in trucks to a neighboring village where we
were housed in a large, isolated two-story estate
surrounded by a huge courtyard and a stone wall. We
stayed there for several weeks until the boat we were
supposed to sail on was ready to board. We devoted our
time to training and organizing activities in preparation
for our journey. During the days of waiting we had a
[141]

regular routine: rising early, exercise, prayer, selfdefense training, Judo and target practice, lectures,
gatherings, meals and lights out. They prepared us for
possible confrontation with the British. It was forbidden
to leave the compound or correspond by mail because of
the need for complete secrecy.
One day we were told that we had to be ready to leave in
a matter of hours. We were permitted to pack ten
kilograms of personal belongings. Remaining
possessions were to be left behind. Before leaving we
were told to destroy all identification and photographs,
anything that might indicate where we came from.
Sadly, I had to destroy the identification card that I had
received in Bucharest. Everyone received a card noting
his place on the boat, which we had to present upon
boarding. In the late hours of the night, we left on trucks
traveling to the port. I had no idea what kind of
adventure lay before me. The future was unclear, but the
desire and excitement to go to the Land of Israel enabled
us to have faith and to blindly follow our emissaries.

[142]

The Five Siblings 1985. Left to right:

Yehuda, Blimu , Avrumoishe, Sylvia, David.

The Five Siblings and Spouses, 1997.

Left to right: Yoli (Avrumoishe's wife), Ester and Yehuda,
Sylvia, Blimu, Lilly (David's wife) and David.
[143]

[144]

On the Ship to Israel

I made aliyah to Israel on a ship named "Theodor Herzl."

The ship departed from the Port de Ste in France on
April 1, 1947 during the early morning hours, carrying
2,641 ma'apilim (illegal Jewish immigrants to Israel after
the War), mostly concentration camp survivors, young
men and women ranging in age from twenty-two to
thirty. There were more than forty young pregnant
women, some sixty babies under the age of one, and 500
orphans, among them myself. The immigrants on the
ship were divided into groups according to their
affiliation with a youth movement, and I, of course, was
with the Poalei Agudat Yisrael Youth Movement. The
immigrants arrived at the disembarkation point in several
convoys under the supervision of the French police, who
were told the immigrants would be sailing to South
America. The Palyam (Marin Company of the Palmach)
took control of the ship; at the head was Mordechai
(Moka) Lemon12.

12

Several years later Moka was appointed Commander of the Israeli

Navy.

[145]

"Theodor Herzl" was an old coal-powered, iron ship,

originally used for placing underwater cables. After the
Mossad acquired it for its Aliyah-Bet campaign,
extensive work was done to ready it to transport
immigrants. Conditions on the ship were very difficult.
Even though the ship set sail in spring in relatively mild
weather and a calm sea, from the first day, many
problems arose. The crew was busy with malfunction
repair non-stop throughout the journey. It turns out that
the ship was much slower than they had anticipated,
almost doubling the estimated arrival time. There was a
problem with the water supply and within several days
the sweet water turned salty. There was a food shortage.
They had installed wooden planks of four to five levels
for sleeping in the ship's belly, which reminded all of us
of the barracks in the concentration camps. The
overcrowding resulted in serious ventilation and
suffocation problems. Many suffered from sea sickness,
and babies cried unceasingly; several of them were
feverish, and several of the pregnant women aborted.
With no other possible option, the immigrants went up to
the deck in rotating groups to breathe fresh air and lessen
the suffocating environment.
The overcrowding on deck plus the incorrectly placed
water tanks caused the ship to dangerously tilt to one
side. To solve the problem of overcrowding and
[146]

suffocation, mothers with babies and pregnant women

were lodged in spaces designated for immigrants who
were supposed to board in Italy. We had no choice, so
we deviated from the original plan and did not pick up
the group in Italy. The communications system
malfunctioned, so the deviation from our route was
unknown to the Mossad in both France and Israel. This
caused a good deal of worry. With so many people on
the ship the danger of identification from afar increased.
So, people underwent training in rapid evacuation should
the ship be detected by a British ship or plane. The
discipline among the immigrants was commendable.
Everyone cooperated and, despite all the difficulties,
morale was high among immigrants. There were
enormous expectations and great hopes of arriving in
Israel and beginning a new life. We "celebrated" seder
night at sea. That same night there was a storm, and we
could not conduct the seder correctly neither on deck nor
below. We had to suffice with eating matzah and
drinking wine. On the seventh day at sea, the ship's
captain decided to further protect the ship from detection
and he established more stringent guidelines; he limited
the time and frequency that we could go out to inhale
fresh air on deck.
But, detection was inevitable.

[147]

On April 9, at 20:30, near the Crete Islands, two planes

flew overhead. At 22:30, a British battleship approached
and shone floodlights on us. In answer to their question
as to where we were sailing, the crew identified us as a
merchant ship on our way from Italy to Port Said. The
ship flew a Honduras flag under its original name
"Guardian". The British battleship did not investigate
further and sailed away. The next night a British
battleship appeared again, circled us a number of times
and left without asking any questions. The crew believed
that the British had learned of the ship's true identity. We
had no choice but to prepare for a confrontation. The
chances of escaping from the British and secretly landing
the immigrants on the beaches of Israel were slim,
particularly because of the communications system
malfunction, which prevented the Mossad in Israel from
directing us to a landing point. The last three days of the
journey were devoted to preparing and training for battle
with British soldiers. The orders were to object, refuse
to let them board and to throw objects at them. People
were divided into groups and were assigned areas to
defend. Those assigned to defend received gas masks to
protect them in case of a gas attack. Others were given
"arms" rubber sticks, boxing gloves, canned foods,
bottles.

[148]

At midnight on April 12th, following twelve days at sea,

when the ship was already approaching Israels shores,
the radio system came to life, enabling us to
communicate with the team in Israel. But, it was too late
and the Mossad people in Israel did not have enough
time to properly organize. They ordered the ships
captain to return to sea because of the impending danger,
but the extremely difficult conditions on the ship made
that demand impossible to execute. The result was a
change of plans, and the orders were to return the next
day at 22:00 to Herzliyah's shores, drop anchor and
evacuate people.
Throughout the next day the ship slowly made its way
undisturbed. After sunset, in the darkness of the night,
the lights on the ship were darkened and we stood with
great anticipation and hope looking towards Herzliyah's
shores. Suddenly, at 20:30 a strong floodlight lit up the
darkened ship, blinding us. The ship stopped alongside
two British battleships on a regular tour across from Tel
Aviv's shores. They sailed on both sides of the ship and
butted us. Later on we learned that we had been spotted
on the radar screen. British battleships forcibly stopping
ships was an extraordinary measure in their regular 'hunt'
for ships carrying immigrants.
Using speakers, the British called out to the ship's
captain to identify himself. No one answered, and the
[149]

spokesman demanded: "Let us board your boat, Do not

resist, we won't harm you. If you resist we will use
force". They repeated these warnings several times in
English, French and German. In response, the
immigrants spontaneously broke out singing Hatikvah,
the Israeli national anthem loudly and hanging up a huge
poster:

The Germans destroyed our families and homes

Don't you destroy our hopes
The British took over the ship from the stern. They threw
cables over us and we cut them; we threw bottles,
canned goods and other articles at them. But they
remained unmoved and boarded the ship, while firing jet
streams of water and throwing tear gas at us. One would
have thought that they were in battle against enemy
soldiers in a battlefield. And who was on the boat?
Babies, children, pregnant women. This was a
particularly violent battle, one of the most difficult and
one in which there was the greatest opposition to the
British. We did not surrender and conducted a stubborn
battle, but it was a losing one. We had no doubt that they
would counter our opposition to them with force, but no
one believed that the soldiers would use live fire. In
previous cases, the British used guns only for self[150]

defense in the case of real danger to their lives. This time

the soldiers deviated from instructions and shot at
people. Perhaps the opposition among the immigrants
was a bit more vigorous than what they had anticipated.
From the moment that there was live fire, there was
chaos and the battle got completely out of hand. The
violent struggle lasted three hours, into the late hours of
the night, until the final takeover of the ship.
When the firing was silenced and the tear gas dissipated,
the catastrophic results became clear: three young
refugee boys who had survived the Holocaust had been
killed by British fire. Many others had been injured and
were transferred to a hospital in Atlit. The battle and its
ensuing results left everyone in shock. My life could
have been finished in this battle. Sheer luck, nothing
more. In comparison to previous confrontations between
immigrants and British soldiers what happened with the
capture of the "Theodor Herzl" was unprecedented,
particularly the number of injured people and the way
they were injured. This incident led to an escalation in
the British war on ha'apala (Jewish illegal immigration
to Israel). On hindsight, it seems that the number of
injured immigrants was an embarrassment to the British
and in the first official statement they published, they
omitted details of the injured. It could be that the
discovery of the ship was a surprise. It was not
[151]

intercepted en route, but rather discovered on the radar

screen when it was already near Tel Aviv shores. As Tel
Aviv was relatively densely populated, the British were
concerned the immigrants would disembark, which
would make it difficult to find them. As such, the assault
was immediate and spontaneous and the junior soldiers
neglected to wait for specific instructions from their
commanding officers. After the battle, the British tried to
tow the ship back out to sea to prevent the immigrants
from jumping and swimming to shore. Because the
engines no longer worked, they tied the ship to the two
British battleships and towed it to the cargo pier in
Haifa. The immigrants gathered all together on the deck
and as it approached the port, they broke out an
incredible rendition of Hatikvah while hanging two flags
a blue and white flag and a black flag denoting
mourning for their murdered friends. A curfew was
announced and the pier was transformed into a closed
military zone with tens of armed British soldiers,
armored cars and barbed wire to prevent the immigrants
from escaping and disappearing in Haifa. They forcibly
disembarked us, while we were still resisting. Then they
took our possessions and directed us to a tent for
disinfection. Immediately after that we were transferred
by deportation ships to the detention camps in Cyprus. I
managed to see the lights of the Carmel from afar.
[152]

Illegal immigrants of the "Theodor Herzl" waving a banner:

The Germans destroyed our families, Don't destroy our hopes.
the Palyam and Illegal Immigrants
website: http://www.palyam.org

[153]

[154]

Expulsion to Cyprus

When we arrived at the Cyprus port they loaded us on

trucks and, under heavy guard, we were transported to
the detention camp, which had been declared a closed
military zone. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire.
There were watch towers with floodlights manned by
armed sentries who conducted patrols around the
perimeter to watch over the "prisoners" day and night
all of this was reminiscent of the concentration camps
and very traumatic for me. After tasting freedom, after
endless waiting in Germany and France to board the
ship, the difficult and exhausting journey, the struggle
with the British, when I was so looking forward to Israel
and to a new life, I once again found myself a prisoner.
Again I was denied freedom, again feeling hunger and
thirst, again lack of clothes and personal belongings. No
privacy and again rigid regulations ruled my life. An
indescribable feeling of loss and pain. I relived the
camps. I could not believe this was happening to me.
* * *

[155]

During the period from August 1946 to April 1948,

51,530 immigrants sailed to Israel on thirty-nine ships
and were expelled by the British to Cyprus. Most of
them came from Displaced Persons camps. They arrived
at European ports after having endured long treks with
Bricha, crossing borders, staying in training camps and
waiting in endless anticipation until the sailing date
arrived. Most of the youth were between the ages of 1218. They had arrived as orphans, on their own. They felt
their loneliness even more when they were amidst the
tumultuous crowd. They yearned for a private and
intimate corner, for warmth and family, and they felt
they could no longer wait to arrive to Israel and integrate
into Israeli society and above all else, to begin a normal
life.
The British Army was responsible for the detention
camps and they treated those in the camps as prisoners of
war. They did not distinguish between these populations
and war prisoners. These were people who were injured,
hurting and traumatized. Prisoners of war have clearly
defined rights and privileges guaranteed by international
treaties. Lacking citizenship, these illegal immigrants
were stripped of these rights. Life was difficult in
Cyprus. There was a shortage of water for drinking,
bathing and laundering. It was very hot; there was no
shade, no trees or sun protection. Refugees were unused
[156]

to the hot and dusty weather. There was a shortage of

medications and medical care; sanitation and hygiene
were deficient. In the barracks and tents there was
nothing but beds: no chair, no table or closet to store
possessions, minimal as they were. There was
inadequate lighting and no heating in the winter. There
was a shortage of clothing which was particularly acute
during the winter months. In the absence of an organized
delivery, the immigrants used to sew their own clothes
made from tent fabric. This angered the British military
authorities, who considered this vandalism and often
inflicted collective punishments. Food was limited,
unvaried and rationed based on an estimate of what was
considered a reasonable amount of daily calories for an
individual. The immigrants were constantly hungry not
only because of the theoretical amount of calories
provided, but mainly because of the poor food quality
and bad cooking conditions. In time the Joint 13 increased
its aid and the nutritional level gradually improved.
Another difficulty the immigrants faced was their
complete lack of outside communication. Mail was
limited and problematic. Every person was allocated one
monthly stamp. These were the very same people who
had lost most of their family in the War and were
desperately seeking relatives; people who badly needed
13

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

[157]

to renew ties with relatives from Israel and all over the
world. When the Joint entered they increased the quota
to two stamps monthly per person.
Organization in Cyprus was under the same parties or
movements the immigrants had been under during their
attempt at reaching Israel. Party affiliation was totally
encompassing; anyone who wasn't affiliated was an
exception, such individuals or families were categorized
as "loners". Although joining a movement for anyone
who wanted to reach Israel was done for practical
reasons, in Cyprus the need for party affiliation
increased dramatically. Each movement had its own
identifying marks expressed by symbols, dress, daily
activities, etc. It was forbidden to transfer among
movements. Most people were secular . Less than twenty
per cent were religious or traditional and identified with
religious movements, Mizrachi, Bnei Akiva and Agudat
Yisrael.
* * *
Because I initiated my aliyah with Poalei Agudat
Yisrael, I remained with them in Cyprus; some seven per
cent of immigrants were affiliated with that movement.
The movement was largely influenced by the Gur Rebbe,

[158]

who emphasized education, manual labor, cooperation

and mutual assistance.
During Pesach 1947, with the arrival of immigrants
from France, among them the Theodor Herzl ship, a
relatively large group of children and youth from Poalei
Agudat Yisrael entered the camp. Tzvi Wolf was a
religious man from Kibbutz Hafetz Haim; his goal was
to establish a group in Cyprus camps for Poalei Agudat
Yisrael. Fearful that the religious youth would be
swallowed up or influenced by the secular environment
in the camps, Tzvi received permission to establish a
religious youth village. The village was built in Camp
64, separate from the general youth village in Camp 65.
The youth village in Camp 65 was large, housing some
2,000 youths and children, mostly orphans, from
different backgrounds, religious and secular. It was
established in order to separate the youth from the adults
and to create a youthful atmosphere with uninterrupted
educational activities. This division gave the youth
advantages over the adults with regard to food, clothing,
medical help, studies and daily activities. Although the
youth village was technically in British detention, they
enjoyed a relatively independent existence and greater
security in comparison to the highly pressured adult
camp. This atmosphere helped the youth and children
feel they were no longer "nomads", as they had been in
[159]

Europe. They felt on the verge of realizing their dream;

this situation was comparable to being on the "Eve of
Israel". Mizrachi and Bnei Akiva youth had no problem
living alongside secular movements, they enjoyed good
mutual relations and their youth housed together.
Since I was 17 years old, I was transferred with the other
religious youth to "Youth camp 64" also known as
Ramat Chizkiyahu named for Rav Chizkiyahu
Mishkovski, who was active in saving children after the
War. The village had 100 youth, boys and girls, housed
in four shacks: two for boys and two for girls. When we
arrived in Cyprus we parted from Yehoshua Ivshitz, the
counselor who had accompanied us throughout the long
journey from Germany. He had received a new position,
and our group was assigned two new counselors: Leibl
Rosenblum and Leibl Yud.
Daily life in Camp 64 Ramat Chizkiyahu was quite
organized, and revolved around a rigid learning
schedule. Because everyone had missed years of school,
we could choose our own learning level in both religious
and secular subjects. There was a list of subjects to
choose from including: Hebrew language and grammar,
math, Bible, Jewish history, Land of Israel, literature and
Judaism. We also chose workshops; I chose carpentry.
Great emphasis was placed on a Torah worldview. The
Agudah counselors were so impressed with the sports
[160]

counselors instructing the secular youth that they invited

them to instruct us as well. Occasionally they hung flyers
asking the secular youth to observe Shabbat in the
village. In particular, they asked secular girls to dress
modestly.
In addition to religious studies and prayer, there was
agricultural training in preparation for settlement in
Israel. We also had arms training for the Haganah, as the
counselors believed we should be ready, even as an
ultra-Orthodox group, to defend the people and the land.
The counselors did their best to act like parents, to give
children a sense that they were not alone, to fill the void
created by lost families and to instill in them the feeling
that we all belonged to the same community with a
shared cause.
The religious movements in Cyprus were very troubled
by the lack of kosher food. The British Army
warehouses supplied most of our food, which was not
kosher. There was general hunger among all, but it was
more acute among observant Jews. The meat was not
kosher, so we received canned fish as a substitute. Some
of the youth hid their bread, a habit they developed
during the War. We all yearned for fruits or sweets.
I remember one day they took us to bathe in the sea
under the heavy escort of British soldiers. It was a
surreal sight; a group of innocent children marching in
[161]

rows accompanied by tanks. Bathing in the sea was

made possible by the pressure of the Joint, who
convinced the British official responsible for camps that
it was inhuman to hold so many people during the
summer at the beach without letting them bathe.
Eventually, during August 1947 the British allowed
groups of 100 youth at a time to bathe in the sea in a
designated area, for that month. Each group was allowed
to stay on the beach for forty-five minutes. Naturally, the
activity was cancelled if anyone dared disobey
instructions.

[162]

The Poalei Agudat Yisrael youth movement in the Cyprus

detention camp. One of the counselors, Leibl Rosenblum or
Leibl Yud, he is apparently the one with a beard in the center.
Yehuda is the second one standing on the right.

[163]

As part of the monthly quota of permits for Jews to enter

Palestine, the British gradually included prisoners from
Cyprus along with European refugees.
The quota for Cyprus prisoners was 750 permits a month
granted on a "first in first out" basis. During the summer
of 1947, the queue of Cyprus prisoners grew longer and
there was no solution on the horizon to shorten the
detention period. There was an atmosphere of depression
and apathy expressed in all movements. Fortunately, in
June Queen Elizabeth announced her engagement to
Prince Philip. As a tribute to the royal event, the British
Government announced in July 1947 that "orphans ages
6-17 imprisoned in Cyprus could be brought to Palestine
for humanitarian reasons". One thousand certificates
were issued to the camp children. There were two
thousand children at that time in the detention camp. A
special committee was in charge of establishing the
criteria for release and they drew up a list of who would
stay and who would be released. On August 19, 500
children left Cyprus. For the first time, a ship set sail for
Palestine with elated children aboard without military
escort. In September another 500 children were released.
Although my age was borderline, I was one of the
fortunate orphans who received a permit to enter
Palestine.

[164]

Shana Tova from Cyprus 1948

Yehuda 1949

[165]

Yehuda with his friends from Poalei Agudat Yisrael

[166]

Bnei Brak

After our arrival in Israel, we spent a day or two in Atlit.

Here I registered as a citizen of the State and received a
Palestinian identity card. We were asked to decide where
we wanted to go. Being part of the Poalei Agudat Yisrael
group didn't leave me many choices a religious kibbutz
or a yeshiva. I decided to go to yeshiva. I had not been
in school since I was twelve years old, and I wanted to
fill in the gaps. My brothers went to yeshiva before the
War, but I didn't. I was still uncertain regarding my faith,
and I wanted to see how I really felt. It was also very
familiar to me; it is what I had seen at home, and for me,
attending yeshiva seemed a natural choice. I knew that
the yeshiva was located in a large city, and that thrilled
me.
I was sent to the Ponevitz Yeshiva in Bnei Brak where I
stayed for eighteen months. During that time I worked as
a childrens counselor and received pocket money. I
would also supervise children in the dining room during
meals. One day, a young girl who worked in the dining
room turned to me and said:
"You look very familiar. Are you related to David
Hollander?"
[167]

"Of course. Hes my brother!" I responded. "Where did

you meet him?"
I was both surprised and very excited. I had not heard
from David or my other siblings for a long time.
"He was my counselor in the children's camp in France
before I made aliyah. Before I left, he asked me to look
for you when I got to Israel. He knew you were in a
yeshiva in Bnei Brak."
This moving conversation continued and I asked her a
number of questions. Her responses made me realize that
David was not planning to make aliyah and I was deeply
disappointed.
* * *
The young lady was Sara Zilberstein. Several years later
they would meet again in Haifa; their friendship led to a
strong bond that extended to their families over the
years, until today.

[168]

[169]

Haifa April 1949. Left to right: Yehuda, Aunt Piri, David.

[170]

The Navy and the Columbus Campaign

In 1948 I was old enough to be drafted. As a yeshiva

student I received an exemption from the army and
instead was recruited for the Civil Guard. I was
disappointed. I wanted to join the army. I did not enjoy
my yeshiva studies. I was ill-suited to the studies,
demanding environment, and rigid framework. I found
the lifestyle unsatisfying. I would often take advantage
of the yeshiva's proximity to Tel Aviv and escape to the
seashore or enjoy a good time in the city. I felt I was
increasingly distanced from religion, and I wanted to
lead a secular life, to feel free.
I went to the recruitment center in Ramat Gan and asked
to volunteer for the army. My request was immediately
fulfilled. I was sent to the Atlit military base, where I
underwent basic training. My dream was to join the
navy, a dream that was born in Europe after the War. I
remembered the actor who played the role of a ship's
captain in the movie I saw in Budapest shortly after the
War. I had a burning desire to be involved in anything
sea or ship related. The sea symbolized freedom for me
and I dreamt of sailing and seeing the world. That was
not so simple because the number of ships in the Israeli
[171]

Navy was limited, as was the need for sailors. My

request to join the navy was denied. I was not
discouraged; I wrote a letter, with the help of my friend
Baruch Aspis, describing my background and my dream
to the Chief of Staff. My letter must have touched his
heart, because I was accepted into the navy. I served in a
number of different positions on the ship; I took a radar
course and afterwards served as a radio communication
technician. My determination to serve in the navy bore
fruit and thanks to that, I had the privilege of
participating in Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's visit to the
United States.
In March 1951, David Ben-Gurion traveled to America
with a large naval contingent; the first visit of an Israeli
Prime Minister in the United States. The visit was called
the Columbus Campaign. The goal of the visit was to
cement Israels relationship with the American
government, strengthen ties between Israel and U.S.
Jewish communities, and raise 500 million dollars from
American Jews for funding absorption of immigrants
who came to Israel. Two naval vessels, Haganah 20K
and Misgav 30K joined the delegation. I was on the
Haganah 20K vessel, serving as a radio communication
and telephone operator. I rotated with two others in the
same position. This job was considered "aristocratic" as
we were adjacent to the Captain's cabin, while other
[172]

sailors worked on deck or in the engine room.

Consequently, I interacted with them less. The journey
took three months. The route to America was a long one
and we stopped several times to refuel one refueling
stop was in Napoli Italy where we stayed for one week,
and another stop was in the Azores in the Atlantic
Ocean. The American navy was impressed that we could
cross the ocean with two such small ships. Haganah 20K
was originally an immigrant's ship, which had been
renovated for the journey. Misgav 30K was a supply and
escort ship during World War II and it, too, had
undergone renovations. They were both small ships in
comparison to American Navy ships.
The visit began in Washington, and the delegation then
continued onto New York. New York gave the
delegation a very warm greeting, the mayor of New
York declared a Ben-Gurion Day, and the highpoint was
a parade in honor of David Ben-Gurion and Israel's third
Independence Day. The parade began at the Waldorf
Astoria hotel, continued down Fifth Avenue and finished
at city hall. Ben-Gurion traveled the length of the avenue
in a large car with an open roof, standing and waving to
the crowds. Afterwards, a band comprised of 120 U.S.
navy men played, followed by 120 Israeli soldiers in
naval uniforms, myself among them. An estimated two
million spectators attended, most of them Jews from
[173]

New York and the surrounding areas. Among the crowd

were my brothers and sisters who had immigrated to
America and were living in New York. The Israel Navy
delegation's honorable welcome was a source of pride to
us. That was the first time that America saw Israeli
soldiers. In honor of the event, we wore blue uniforms
that had been especially sewn for us. Tailors from
Macy's, the famous department store, came to the ship
before the parade, took our measurements and tailored
uniforms for each of us. They also made white hats on
which were written: Israel Defense Forces.
Afterwards, the delegation continued their journey to
raise donations in major cities, among them Boston,
Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia. Everywhere they
went they were enthusiastically and lovingly greeted by
local Jews. During our time there, thousands of Jews
came to the pier to look at us Jewish soldiers, kiss the
ship and the soldiers who had come from the Land of
Israel, and visit the small synagogue on board the ship.
Naturally, I took advantage of this trip to New York to
visit my brothers and sisters. Four years had passed since
I had last seen them before I left Germany. We kept up a
correspondence, but I felt I was beginning to forget them
and our ties were waning.
They felt as I did, and were similarly afraid of
disconnection. They lived as neighbors, and I, the
[174]

youngest brother, was living so far from them. They

tried to convince me to come to America immediately
after my discharge from the army.
And so I did.

[175]

[176]

[177]

Yehuda with his brother David,

on the Navy delegation visit to America 1951

[178]

After my discharge, I moved to the U.S. with my friend

Avraham Reif and stayed there for three years. In order
to get a visa, I changed my name to Lee Hilton.

I traveled, had a good time, worked in various jobs,

made new friends; I nearly married a young lady named
Lucy, but my brothers and sisters advised me against it. I
enjoyed being together with my family. But, my Zionist
spirit never left me and I preferred to return to Israel and
build my home there.
[179]

Yehuda in New York, 1953

[180]

Yehuda and Aunt Piri in America, 1953

[181]

Yehuda and Ester Hollander, 1958

[182]

Home in Israel

Haifa 1957. My father Yehuda lives in a small, oneroom apartment on 23 Haganim Street in the German
Colony. The apartment belonged to his maternal Aunt
Piri, who gave it to him after she left Israel for America.
A little lonely. No family. Some army friends. A few
months after returning from three years in America. He
was trying to restart his life, earn a living, start a family.
He worked for the Paz Gas company. On Shabbat
mornings he used to sit on the bench in his neighborhood
tennis court watching players hit the ball back and forth.
He was particularly fascinated by an athletic young girl
and he loved to watch her. Her shiny black hair fell to
her shoulders and her charming smile captured his heart.
He heard her speaking English. He decided to try his
luck and play.
One day, while he went to the post office to collect the
tennis balls his brother David sent him from America, he
saw the girl from the tennis court walking towards him.
He stopped and asked her:
"Hello. Do you know me?"
"Sorry. No"
Does this box remind you of something?"
[183]

"Yes, I play tennis"

Well, I know. I saw you in Windsor, the tennis court. Do
you remember me from there?"
"No."
"May I invite you for a date?"
"Sorry. Im very busy."
Okay. I have plenty of time. Let's meet two weeks from
today, near Armon cinema."
"Im busy. Maybe I'll come. Im not sure."

Right to left: Sylvia, Yehuda and Ester

[184]

1967, Left to right: Ester, Ami, Edna, Yehuda, Michal.

1975, Left to right: Ester, Yehuda, Ami. Down: Edna, Michal.

[185]

[186]

Commemorating the Village

The "Valley of the Communities" at Yad Vashem was

established to commemorate the thousands of Jewish
communities destroyed by the Nazis, an eternal
remembrance of a Jewish world that no longer exists.
The valley sprawls over a spacious area, built as a maze
of courtyards and walls, correlating to the geographical
locations in Europe and North Africa of the destroyed
communities. The names of more than 5,000
communities are etched on the stone walls. The letters
are proportionately sized according to the size of the
community. My father Yehuda's birthplace, Muzijovo,
was not etched there. My father was deeply hurt by this,
and until the day he died, in July 2005, he tried
repeatedly to convince Yad Vashem to add the name of
his village, and give it proper commemoration.
In July 2001 he sent a letter to the director of Yad
Vashem in which he wrote:
"Seventy three families numbering more than 400
people lived in my villagemost perished in the
Holocaust. A few remained and I am the youngest of
them.I request that you add my village's name in The
Valley of the Communities."
[187]

After extensive correspondence, the following letter

arrived in June 2004:
"in the past you have requested that the name of your
village, Muzijovo, be etched in The Valley of the
CommunitiesYad Vashem is currently in the midst of a
development and building programthe new Museum
and Hall of Names will be completed in 2005. Upon
completion of construction we will make efforts to etch
those names that are currently missing"
My father's answer to the last letter:
"I am 74 years old, the youngest person still living
from my village. I have cancer and only God knows how
much time I have left to live. Do you think that the few
people who are still alive will live to see it? Will they
have a chance to get their picture taken with their
children and grandchildren near the commemoration
sign?"
In February 2007, two years after my father's death, the
name of his village was added to The Valley of the
Communities at Yad Vashem.

[188]

[189]

With my father in his last year, 2005

[190]

Farewell

I gave a great deal of thought to the most fitting title for

this book. I considered: Belated Story, Memories of the
Past, The Story of Yehuda Hollander and similar titles.
But I simply didnt connect with any of them. I decided
to drop my pre-occupation with the book's title. I intuited
that if I just stopped thinking about it, the title would
eventually come to me. The more I researched and the
more I wrote, the stronger I felt that I was experiencing a
strong sense of late farewell to my father; I didn't plan on
this. I did not really let him go until today and writing
this book gave me closure. "Farewell from My Father"
seemed a fitting title. I even liked it for a few days.
Everything was ready, even the cover design. I felt that
the title was perfect and connected me to the story and to
my father. The day before the book went to press, we sat,
Amir and I, in a local pub, and unusually for me I drank
a vodka-martini. And the insight came. "Farewell." That
is the ideal title. This is a farewell story. My father's
farewell from his hometown, to his broken childhood, to
his family and loved ones who perished, his farewell to
his brothers and sisters after the War when he decided to
make aliyah by himself. And my farewell to my father.
[191]

The next generation.

Left to right: Amit, Noam, Omer, Dafna, Guy, Ohad, Oded, Gonen, Tomer.

[192]

[193]

[194]

Sources

Yehuda Hollander's First Person Testimonies

Video testimony given as part of the Steven

Spielberg commemoration project, Haifa June, 1997.
Taped interview (audio) by Edna Tal Elhasid, 2003.
Twenty-page manuscript
Handwritten testimony prepared for the Ministry of
Justice in Ludwigsburg by Israel Police, Haifa, 1969.
First-hand stories

Testimonies from Family and Friends

Video testimony from sister Sylvia Greenblatt, New

York, 2012.
Video testimony from brother, David Hollander,
Israel 1995.
Video testimony from Rivka Kalish, Yad Vashem
Video testimony from Bura Elisabeth-Gerendasy,
native of Muzijovo Village, Yad Vashem
Conversation with Meir Reich, friend from the navy,
October 2012, Kiryat Motzkin

[195]

Conversation with brother David Hollander,

September 2012, Jerusalem.
Conversation with sister Sylvia Greenblatt, June
2012, New York
Conversations with mother Ester Hollander
Conversation with Leah Schnap, friend from Bnei
Brith, September 2012, Jerusalem.
Family pages of testimony DAF-ED, Yad Vashem
Exchange of letters with Marshall Katz, Researcher
of Carpatho Jewish community, living in U.S.A

Books

David Hollander, My Life Story, 2011.

Meir Mashkit, To South America and Back
Yehoshua Halevy, Jews of Berehovo-Bergsass in
Pictures, Organization of Natives of BerehovoBergsass and Its Environs Publishers.
Auschwitz Album, The Story of the Transport, Yad
Vashem Publishing.
Yitzhak Peri (Friedman), The Story of the Jews of
Hungary from Ancient Times to the Holocaust,
Special publication commemorating the 50th year
since the Hungarian Holocaust, in cooperation with
Association of Hungarian Immigrants in Israel, 1989.

[196]

Azriel Mordechai Schwartz, For Remember The

Journey of a Boy from Bergsass via Death Camps to
Israel, Yesodot Publishing.
Dr. Moshe Avital, Not To Forget, Impossible to
Forgive, Mazo Publishers.
Bella Gutterman, A Narrow Bridge to Life, Jews in
the Gross-Rozen Concentration Camp and Its Labor
Camps 1940-1945, Yad Vashem Publishing.
Elie Weisel, All the Rivers Run into the Sea, Yediot
Ahronot Publishing.
Leah Friedler, To Know the Last Generation.
Rachel Bernheim-Preisman, Earrings in the
Basement Moreshet Publishing.
Dov Freiberg, Sobibor Survivors.
Avraham Lantzman, The Day After Liberation, BenYosef Publishing.
Irit Keynan, Hunger Does Not Relax Holocaust
Survivors and the Emissaries from Eretz-Israel:
Germany 1945-1948, Am-Oved Publishing, Ha'apala
Library.
Yehuda Bauer, Habricha, Moreshet Publishing.
Nachum Bogner, The Resistance Ships: Ha'apala
1945-1948, 1993, Ministry of Defense Publishing.
Reuben Aharoni, Leanung Masrs: Ships of Jewish
Illegal Immigration and Arms After World War II,

[197]

The Yisrael Galili Center for the History of the

Defense Force, 1997.
Nachum Bogner, The Island of Detention Illegal
Immigrant Camps in Cyprus 1946-1948, Am-Oved
Publishing, Ha'apala Library
Menachem Oren, To Begin Differently To Live
Differently - Youth Movements in Detention Camps
in Cyprus 1946-1948, Yad Tebankin Publishing
Menachem Oren, Look at the Land from Afar
Education of Youth in Cyprus, The Ghetto Fighters
House and Kibbutz Hameuchad Publishing
Menachem Weinstein, Religious Zionism on the
Sidelines of Eretz Yisrael, Torah and Avodah
Movement in the Detention Camp in Cyprus.
Terror Site (in German): Der Ort Des Terrors,
Wolfgang Benz, Geschichte Der
Nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Band 6,
Natzweiler, Gros Rosen, Stutthoff.

Websites

Yad Vashem, http://www.yadvashem.org

Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/
The Historical Jewish Press Site
http://web.nli.org.il/sites/jpress/english
The virtual library of CET, http://lib.cet.ac.il
[198]

Daat Jewish Studies and Spirit, http://www.daat.ac.il

Moreshet Mordechai Anielevich Memorial
Holocaust Study and Research center ,
http://www.moreshet.org/
The Palyam and Illegal Immigration,
http://www.palyam.org/
Israel Navy, http://www.navy.idf.il,
http://amutayam.org.il
The Last Days: directed by James Moll and Steven
Spielberg as executive director
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Days

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