So my name is Wolfgang Hans Hellpap.

And I was born in Berlin, Germany to a Jewish father, a Christian mother, and they were not married.

And it was 1931.

So in 1933, we know that there a man by the name of Adolf Hitler became elected by the German people to be premier of Germany.

So actually, my my life actually started in 1933 because my father was a very strict Jew.

And he had me when I was born he had me registered in a Jewish community center in Berlin.

And he also had my bris, you know, so he wanted to really have me to be Jewish.

You know, my father was very strict and because he was born in Poland to Jewish family, of course, and so he insisted that I should be raised as a Jew, you know.

So my mother agreed to that.

And so it was now 1933, and the Nuremberg laws in Germany started to come out.

And even among these laws, of course, was the discrimination against Jews and so forth, although my father was still insisting because he served in the German army in World War I.

So he figured that, no, nobody is going to touch him, you know.

And so he was also running a respectable business in Berlin.

He was in janitorial supplies, and he had a big warehouse and he was working as a sales sales selling his merchandise and so forth.

So he was really well-off, you know.

And he was sure that there's not going to be any problems even if Hitler was elected, you know.

So here we go in 1933.

And so I started to grow up and my mother, well, I mostly live with my mother, though, because my father had another family.

See.

So he just came a lot of times to visit us.

And, you know.

He was there a lot of times, in fact, he was thinking of divorcing his wife, you know, because he loved my mother very much.

Anyway, we had a little apartment in the middle of Berlin.

Not too far from the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, which they had the Games in 1933 and in which the Germans started to show their superiority in those games, you know, but it didn't work out for Hitler at that time, you know.

Buecause he was just.

Anyway, my father also was dabbling in boxing.

He was kind of an amateur boxer, you know.

So in the well, it was not professional, but he was very good in traveling from town to town and take some matches and he took me with him, you know, and he got to know the big boxer at that time, Max Schmeling.

You know, he used to be a big boxer in Germany.

And so one time he brought me over to see him, you know, and Max Schmeling was very he never got into the Nazis.

And in Germany, you know, which the other people started getting all worked up about it, you know.

Then Hitler started the Hitler Youth, you know, where they had these shiny little uniforms, you know.

So as I was growing up, I was looking at them.

I figured why can't I get into one of those uniforms, you know, they look so brilliant, you know, with medals and stuff.

So, you know, you're four or five years old, you really don't know here or there.

But since that was now the theme in Berlin, especially, you know, all the flags and banners and, you know, Hitler's speeches and the Brownshirts marching around, you know, it just the impressions were just too great, sometimes, you know?

So I didn't really realize yet what's going on, you know, all that was just the parades and stuff was great for me, you know, five years old.

So anyway, six years old, my mother put me to school, elementary.

Not, she was not aware either that Jews cannot even go to schools, you know, but the Nuremberg laws were not that enforced yet, you know.

They were there, but it's it's not that strict yet.

But anyway, so I attended first class, got into second class, then came the hammer.

You know, the teacher one day had a list, you know, and was sitting there and she says, according to our laws, of our leaders, Adolf Hilter and our superiors, all Jews have to be removed from school right now.

And we have one Jew here.

And she call my name, you know.

And of course, I was crying and the other kids started yelling and screaming at me you know, dirty Jew.

And it was just harmful, that experience.

You know, I was six, seven years old and feeling it, you know.

So that was the first encounter that I had, with that kind of regime, you know, that took over in Germany.

So I just to just leave the school.

Right now I run out crying and some kids came after me and throwing throwing some stones and start, you know, spitting.

And I was some of these kids were in the Hitler Youth, you know.

So I, I was running from them really.

So now I knew.

I got to my mother's and start crying and telling her, you know, what happened to me in school.

And she says, oh, no, don't worry.

I'm gonna go talk to the principal there.

And she was she was trying to to get me back in the school there.

She actually went next day to the principal's office and argued with him, you know.

And he says, no, we have proof.

that he has been circumcised and he's in the Jewish community center.

His name is in there.

He's a full Jew.

And he says, if you want to pick that up, you have to go to Gestapo and have them reverse the decision or something, you know.

Oh, she says she's going to do that, too.

She was, my mother was not very big, you know, but she went into Gestapo headquarters Yeah.

in the Unter den Linden and they were big guys and everything.

And she tried to argue with them, you know, that her, her son is not Jewish and that the circumcision was just medically.

And she's going to bring a receipt that the doctors will testify to that.

And they told her no, we have that he is Jew.

And you should be happy that we didn't even take him yet.

You know, you can keep you can keep him at your home, but we don't want him anymore in public places.

And you just if it's good for you, just keep him away, you know, because he got Jewish blood.

And Jewish blood is, in our, in our opinion, evil and bad.

So don't don't ever come again, you know?

So she took me home.

But at that time we we couldn't even keep the apartment.

You know, the the landlord told us that we have to move, you know.

So we finally we finally found another place.

But that was a lady with her sister that has an apartment and she says, we can have one room, you know, one room in the in her apartment.

But I should stay in the room all day long.

You know, I should not only go to the toilet or something, but not get out too much, you know?

Well, I have to do that.

In the meantime, my father, his family, they they pushed him saying, you can't stay in Germany anymore.

And, you know, you might be thinking that because you're [unintelligible] they can't touch you so it's should be good for you to leave Germany you know but he can't take you.

So anyway, he was weighing his options you know what what to do but he kept on visiting us anyway you know all the time as years go by the 1916 I mean 1936, 1937 and so on.

And so from finally my I got very sick at one time.

I got very sick, and I was about eight years old diptheria and my mother had to take me.

In fact, I was so sick and my my fever was so high that I was already hallucinating, you know.

So she took me, there was no other transportation.

She had to take me in a streetcar to nearest hospital.

It just so happened that was a Nazi hospital.

You know, they they were strictly by Hitler's rules.

But she got me there and they took me in because I was so sick and and I had to be there.

And the thing was, in the Nazi hospital, even if you were that sick, in the mornings when the nurses came in and so on you had to get out of bed and say, heil Hitler.

Everybody, all the kids there had to scream, heil Hitler.

And It was just terrible for me.

So then my mother came to visit me and she said, Well, your father, he decided he he will leave Germany.

You know.

Before he left Germany, the Kristallnacht came around, you know.

And he told me, don't go out in the streets.

Please don't.

Don't go any place right now.

All the hooligans, all the looters and stuff is roaming through the streets and carrying those flags.

And, you know, Brownshirts, they pushing people and the common people were, you know, all screaming in the streets there, heil Hitler and stones were thrown around.

Glass was shattering in Jewish stores.

They came even to my father's.

He had a storeroom, a big storeroom, and they smashed everything there.

Just wiped it completely out, you know, and even.

And after that, the police came around the German Berlin police and stuff.

They told him, well, Jew, you have to pay for that damage.

You know, you can't just.

So he said, but I, they smashed my place.

He says, that's [unintelligibe], you pay for it.

And so did a lot of other Jewish people in Berlin.

They went into the synagogues, you know, took Torahs, threw them on the street.

And they even started fires, you know, in the streets, which was not very happy for the German, for the Berlin Fire Brigade.

They had to put all these fires out.

You know, there they work overtime to get these fires out because it was just a grim picture in Berlin.

I mean, you never seen people like that.

Worked up.

Could you see it out your window?

Could you see and.

I could see some of that, yes.

You know, I got very I was so scared.

I, I knew by now that they persecuting me, too, you know, I'm the one that, you know, and but these two sisters that were living in the apartment, they said, don't worry, don't worry, stay there, stay there, stay there.

And so I did stay.

My mother, too, you know, she was she was worried, you know, because at that time, too, the Gestapo told her that I have to wear the Star of David on the outer garments.

If I don't wear that they really take me away immediately, you know.

So I had that star on my garment all the time.

It says, Jude, you know, Jewish.

And now anyway, so the Kristallnacht or after that, every Jew in Germany knew what's coming.

So my father was now lucky enough right after that he got into a ship or plane or whatever.

With his family and he went to Shanghai, China, you know.

Yeah, there was the only place that actually were welcoming Jews.

I mean, without every country in the world was kind of hesitant to to take all these refugees at the time, you know, especially Jewish refugees.

So but he was, they get there to Shanghai, and there's no -- But now I was left behind, you know.

I never saw my father again.

You know, he was he you know, so I grew up now, with just my mother.

The year came around 1939.

The war started.

You know, the German troops and the people were all enthused about all the victories that the German army was going on, you know, and we were still living in that apartment, see and of course, my like groceries and things like that for Jews, they had special coupons and stuff, you know, like I had only but but my mother had a full portion.

But most of the time I stayed in one room, you know, see, I've started since I had nothing to to be educated, I started reading books, little books, you know, and things like that so that I can start learning how to read and how to write.

You know, I taught myself.

I was just there in this room, and stayed all day.

That was my life, you know.

And as now came around 1941.

Yeah.

The Gestapo came all of a sudden.

They cleaned up everywhere.

Jews were now deported.

You know, German Jews were all deported, put into cattle cars and taken away.

So my name came up for them too, you know.

So they came to the house and they told my mother, they said, we're taking him, but we're not taking him to a camp.

He's gonna go into an orphanage.

There was a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that was established in 1888, where Jewish kids, you know, were housed.

And the ages in the in that orphanage was from two years to 18 years old kids, you know.

They took me over there, you know, and there was that was now my place to and the rumor was that eventually they gonna ship these, ship us somewhere in the camps maybe, you know.

Anyway, our days were just, they could not teach the teachers could not teach because Jewish children were not supposed to be educated.

So all we could do all day long is, is just play, or do some hobbies, you know.

And well, for me, I made friends with kids my age in that orphanage.

The terrible thing was that a lot of those Jewish teachers they started cooperating with the Nazis, you know, because they wanted to save their own hide, you know, so especially one teacher was very bad, his name was Abramowitz, and he was a very bad apple.

Very, you know, he was beating up and hitting people, you know, and pushing us around.

And the food was horrible.

You know, you just get rations from the Nazis what they gave to the orphanage, what they allowed, you know.

And so most of the time we trying to hide from the from the teachers sometimes, you know.

So we would hide in the bathroom or something like that.

You know, that was about the day.

You know, that we spent in that orphanage.

This was just our whole experience there, too.

My mother was allowed to visit me, about once a month, all relatives was allowed to visit only, you know, for once a month.

And now, this is 1942, 43 the Nazis started deporting our kids, too.

So what they did, they came in the middle of the night.

When they usually came.

And they had the list, you know, of the kids that they gonna take.

And Abramowitz, of course, he had a big whip, you know, he liked that.

So every time they called a kid's name, in the bed he whipped it over to that kid, you know, get up and, you know, get ready.

And of course, you sit, I mean, here I was, 9, 10 years old.

I was shivering in my bed thinking, I hope they don't call my name.

You know, everybody was kind of shivering and worrying, you know, that they gonna call their name and so it didn't for a few times but every almost every night they came, you know, the Gestapo with the list, and took more and more kids away, you know.

And we always had the picture, yeah, you know, where they going, you know, because they were they told us, too, Abramowitz too, told us, he says, well, there are camps where you're going to go to, you know, and They'll be treating you okay, you know.

Anyway, so they didn't take us.

So it came 1943.

One day the Nazis decided they going to dissolve the whole orphanage, you know, so SS came in, you know, [unintelligible] came into the orphanage and they started taking and the little kids, you know.

One of my my tasks was in the orphanage, sometimes babysitting them.

And these little kids, you know, because I was a little bigger already than the little ones, you know, they were.

And so I had some some babies that I liked very much already, you know.

And so when they came, they started crying and screaming.

And so so they take a machine gun and start to shoot.

They just wiped them out.

They still have a wall, all the kids names are on.

You know, they just killed them right there, and finished the screaming and the screeching.

And, you know, and the rest of us, they took us into trucks, you know, and there was a big assembly point in Berlin.

There was hundreds of people, maybe even thousand people were already there waiting for deportation.

The cattle -- The the vehicles, the trains, they were already ready there to push them in and take them to camps, you know.

And here I was with two other guys, you know.

We survived like.

And I'm looking, and he the other guy says too, you know, he's looking.

There's a little wall there, not too high, you know, you think, you think we can get over that?

And the other guy says, I don't know.

The SS is looking everywhere.

I said, well what can I say?

Let's try.

And we run to that wall and we get over it.

and we've gone, you know.

But at the time I start looking back, I saw one, a soldier, he saw us, he didn't shoot, you know, he did not shoot.

So we got over here and back in the streets, you know.

And of course, I couldn't run to my mother's place because I knew if I run there, that's where they gonna look first.

You know, on the other hand, she had the brothers and sisters living in Berlin, too, so I knew one uncle.

He had a little spread outside of Berlin little cottage, and some big backyard and things.

So I thought that's the the place that I go first, you know?

So I took off and oh it was a long way to go there.

You know, I couldn't take any transportation or anything.

You know, I just in the meantime, I also kept my star on here, you know, because I figured if a policeman see, you know, maybe I'll be in bigger trouble, you know, like that.

So I finally made it to my uncle.

But he had two girls.

His kids, one one one girl, a cousin of mine.

Now, she was already 14, 15 years old, and she was also in the Hitler Youth.

But my uncle was very strict.

He was he was against that Nazi regime.

So he told them, you're not going to tell anybody that you have your cousin over here now, you know, and he told me he had a little water hole there in the backyard.

He says you gonna hide in there during the daytime, especially because the neighbors otherwise, they're going to be thinking, what is that kid running around?

Daytime not in school?

So they might just, you know, say something.

But he was very I mean, I really loved that uncle, my Uncle Max was his name.

And well, he had a big habit.

He was drinking a lot, you know, but he was very glad.

I was very glad that he took me in for, he says for a little while, you know, until somebody will get suspicious or something.

So then you may have to go to another place.

And hide there.

So I was hiding there.

Now, in the meantime, the the bombing started, you know, the allies started to bomb Berlin, and and I couldn't even go anywhere else in the shelter or anything like that, you know, because with my star and as a Jew.

Anyway, we had this bombing and one one day, a bomb fell not far from that.

I mean, it was really scary, you know.

And so my uncle, he says, you know, it's better you can't stay no more.

It's too dangerous for you to stay.

So I did go back to see my mother, you know.

Well, I was in touch with her.

She came to see me all the time.

there too, you know.

She was working in the meantime as a telephone operator and in the telephone central, you know, and she she knew a lot about what's going on where people going to the camps and, you know, the cattle cars that were loading up in Berlin you know to bring them to Jewish to camps.

And so now I left that uncle's place and she says you know, I have some friends that they might not know.

The men, the friend of mine, he is was a communist.

He hated the Hitler regime.

So he might be willing to hide you there.

So I went there and see then they said, okay, they had two boys too, that were almost ready to go in the German army you know, 14, 16, you know, but still they, you know, they didn't say nothin.

They kept me actually we became friends like, you know.

So I stayed there for almost four or five months.

And finally the bombing was so bad, you know, that they said you can't stay here no more either.

So now I was almost like on the street.

Well, I didn't have any place more to go.

So anyway, any time when the bombs, I couldn't go in the shelters and stuff.

So was just hiding in places where they smashed from the bombings, you know.

So I was hiding there, like, I mean, homeless, you know.

And but of course, my mother was always trying to keep track of me and she brought me food and things like that, you know.

And she says, no matter what now Berlin is bombed.

You come to my place.

Now you stay with me.

Whatever happens, we're going to go through this together.

So she took me there and again, it was that little room that I had to stay, you know.

And but now the bombing was day and night, you know, Americans were bombing at night.

The English were bombing at daytime.

And I saw all those houses around is smashed too, going into ruins.

And I watched all that through the window that I had.

Well in the meantime the German people started getting a little bit disillusioned with all that stuff that they start losing now, you know, instead of winning.

So the newspaper was already sometimes, you know, but Hitler was always giving those big speeches and screaming heil Hitler on the radios, you know.

We knew that the Russians were advancing in East, you know, because we did read the newspapers, but they still encouraged the German people to be we were going to be the winners because, you know, they thought that they can hold it up and and come up with some terrible weapons that they can.

Well, you know, they had almost invented the atomic bomb in Germany.

Werner von Braun and the scientists, the German scientists, they were already inventing these rockets that they could shoot.

The were bombing England.

And so they always give the German people hope we'll-- Once we get that, we're going to be the winners.

You know, we're going to smash the rest of the world.

And by that time now, I was already 11, 12 years old.

And finally the Russians came through Berlin, you know, and I was hiding in a basement of my uncle's uncle's house now.

You know, and it was fighting all around.

Those two boys that I talked about?

They all of a sudden became patriots.

And they they wanted to shoot the Russians, you know, they got killed, you know, both of them got killed.

And I remember.

And anyway, so I was in the in the cellar with other people.

And then we saw a Russian tank came down the street slowly coming, you know.

So they told me, go out there, go out there.

So I did, I run out the cellar.

I went here.

It was a Russian lieutenant or something and he saw my star.

So he kept screaming, Hitler's dead, Hitler "tot", Hitler dead.

And he embraced me.

And that was my liberation there.

Just 1945.

And it was in May.

And so now, Berlin was liberated and but believe it or not, there was still before the Russians really took over Berlin, they were still deporting Jews.

They were still doing it.

In fact, when we visited Berlin, later on in the years, they showed me that even in the suburbs of Berlin, they had these still cattle cars and right underneath, people who lived in these houses, they saw all that, you know, never did anything.

You know, the German population was just simply they were hypnotized or something.

You know, there was not much resistance anywhere, you know, they almost till the last second or last minute, they were still loving Hitler or something, you know, Hitler and his regime, you know.

Anyway so now the Russians liberated us.

And uh but by the time now that I, we got to get to my then next destination.

Let's say we still had to live in Berlin, you know.

But in the meantime, they punished, the Russians punished Berlin.

In general, you know, they didn't give any more.

There were no provisions, no food, no nothing.

They had to stand in long lines to, you know, sometimes we had to even stand in line for for meat.

They had horse meat, you know, for sale.

Hours and hours you had to stand in lines.

And the even one time I went out to the country.

I wanna see, maybe bring some food back when I was already 12, 13 years old.

So the trains were overcrowded to go out from Berlin and I went, I went out to a little farm way out from Berlin.

The farmer, he says, okay, he says, you work here for 14 days and you can take anything you want.

You can take bacon and chicken can all put in your backpack and take it back to Berlin.

So I agreed.

You know, I start work for him fourteen days there.

And then I had to walk with my backpack on.

And here comes a Russian truck, you know with some Russians, young Russian soldiers and they have fun with just taking my backpack.

And I told them I'm Jewish Jew, they didn't care.

He just smashed all that what I worked for.

You come back to Berlin.

I said, oh no, and I saw a field with potatoes, you know that's, so I said, when the dark comes I grab some potatoes and stuff you know, put in the backpack.

So I did.

At least I came home you know, my mother and bring that.

A nd she in the meantime she got a job in a Russian kitchen cooking for Russian soldiers, you know, so she was able to give good food sometimes, bringing home.

We were all eating a little bit from that you know.

So we got all into buses two buses and the mother said, my mother said, they told her that she can come later, but right now they just taken us to Palestine.

And so we were in the trucks and stuff, you know, and start going.

But then they, they divided Germany into zones.

You know, there was the Russians, the Russian zone and they were they were in Berlin.

And you had to leave the Russian zone to get into the American zone, you know, and then the Russians, when they left with the buses, they say, oh go to Moscow, to Moscow.

Well we didn't.

We kept on going into the American zone finally.

But in the meantime also my mother before that before I even got into those buses before that my mother decided to stay in the Russian zone in Berlin is not good.

So let's try to at least get into the American zone.

Berlin, you know.

There was no wall yet, but you had to go into the train to get into the West zone and you couldn't get any package or any luggage because the the Russians were patrolling the trains, you know.

So actually we got into the American zone.

That's where HIAS really picked me up because we went into a settlement there in Stuttgart, Germany.

And so that's where they picked me up and we got into trains and they go through France first.

So we go through Paris and from Paris, we traveled all the way down to Marseille.

In the meantime, I learned to speak French pretty good, you know, I was talking perfectly French.

And because it was a long, long time went by.

About five, six months before we even, they sent a ship, they're going to take us to Palestine.

And finally the ship came along in Marseille.

We boarded the ship.

And they told us too, you know, that we gonna hide some young people, young men, you gonna hide them.

Because in Palestine we going to need those young people.

We got conflicts and problems over there, too.

Okay.

We got in there.

And I have one young man that was hiding with me, you know, in the ship.

And so we traveled, came to Haifa in Palestine.

And the English came aboard, you know.

The English.

The second Nazis, you know, all of a sudden, they came with weapons and everything looking for illegals.

You know, they find that young man.

They found some of these young men.

They took 'em away, you know.

And here we are.

They took them to Cyprus or something.

Where they established some camps for illegals that are trying to sneak into Israel/Palestine, but we we were the first Jewish children transport from Europe to Palestine.

So they had a big welcome for us.

You know, we came from the war zone now to Palestine.

They took us to Tel Aviv and in Tel Aviv we, it was a special it was kind of a farm like, you know, to to give you agricultural training and catch up with your education.

By that time I was 14 years old, didn't have much education at all.

So we had to learn, of course, the new language, Hebrew, and go to school, you know, third class, fourth class, five fifth.

We had to catch up.

So we did all that with we enjoy it I enjoyed my stay there in this.

They call it the Hannah Cichick House.

It was you know it was kind of a really good experience, you know free compared to the orphanage that I was in Berlin.

It was heaven, you know, although the the British, they were really sometimes really nasty around, you know, the these have had curfews in in Tel Aviv and the bubonic plague came along.

You know, in Tel Aviv and the bubonic plague was so bad that when people were walking on the street and just wobbling a little, the English were shooting them.

You know.

Yeah, they had to.

They were boarding up houses and things, you know, because it was that contagious.

But they were, there was, they almost enjoyed that, you know.

And so, what I'm saying that we had a good time in that facility there, you know.

My mother in the meantime, she did come to the United States.

Oh excuse me, came to Palestine and we settled into a into a kibbutz.

They called it Kvutzat Schiller not too far from Tel Aviv.

And these were mostly German Jews that settled that kibbutz, you know.

So we settled in there and because they were speaking German, but my mother could not speak Hebrew or anything, you know.

So she was just yeah, it was kind of strange, you know.

But anyway, they were kind to her and everything, but they never at that time they didn't want to speak German with her.

They hated the German language and she had to start learning a little Hebrew, you know.

I try to give her hints.

And so we lived, I lived there till 1948.

And finally they decided, is Palestine become Israel, you know.

The United Nations voted.

We were we were listening to the radio for each country that voted for or against the state of Israel.

You know, every vote was for we Become a state, you know, and then finally it passed in the United Nations.

You know, and that was the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, you know, called Israel.

And so we were very happy at that, you know.

But before that, the right after that, my mother decided we can't stay here in the kibbutz.

We are going to try to find some job, some work in Tel Aviv and we maybe rent an apartment there.

And so I did, we did move back to Tel Aviv and she found a job as she was a nurse, really a baby nurse.

She found some job to a family there, you know.

And so we lived.

We had a little again, a little apartment that we found.

Actually, an old Arab place.

And I got a job at the British company, the refrigeration, you know.

So I worked on a bit and I found a good friend of mine.

His name was Peter Bergman.

He was with me in Israel, you know, I mean, he was in Israel with me all the time too, you know.

And his name is they actually they changed my name to My name became Zev.

Zev Hellpap.

And his name became Moshe Bergman.

And we became very good friends.

He went into watches, repair watches.

I went into refrigeration and stuff.

So when in '48 war for Israel started, you know, so Moshe came to me and he says, you know, we have to I was only now 17 years old.

He said, we have to volunteer.

You know, we have to fight for our country.

And I said, Well, there's so many organizations.

There was the Haganah, there was the Swaeet and the Etzel.

I said which are we going to join?

The Haganah.

So we got into the Haganah and he said, well, we're going to train you know, you are going to boot camp and train.

And in the meantime, seven Arab stations, uh nations got ready to attack Israel, you know, and they started to trying to throw us in the ocean.

You know.

Well all we had when we were in boot camp there, we had weapons for some ironic reason we had German rifles and they were old rifles, you know, that they confiscated in Czechoslovakia and took to the Jewish, well Haganah.

We were the Haganah.

And we had to shoot, learn to shoot.

But aim a little bit to the side, you know, So that we get the target.

And so we were training there.

Then all of a sudden it was alarm.

The Arab troops are attacking start attacking.

Was Iraqi troops.

You know, but fortunately enough, they weren't trained so well either.

You know, we had to go into the ditches and start.

Now we were just recruits.

We were just, and we had to get ready to fight them, you know, and a lot of them.

Well, we we were scared, you know, the whole they were screaming, howling, you know, and they and trying to get on us.

And we were, well, we're going to lose.

But then the Palmach, the better equipped troops, Jewish equipped troops, they came they started helping and fighting those Arabs.

But that's the way I get into the war now, you know, and this well then they transfered me and Moshe to Jerusalem.

We were fighting the Transjordanians And they were helped and they were armed by the English.

They helped them.

In fact, the English tried to help the Arabs instead of us.

We didn't have any weapons.

We didn't have any real tanks.

Sometimes we had props we had to put up like a cannon or a tank, you know, props, you know.

So we were in Jerusalem fighting the Arabs the Transjordanians troops, and they were whipping us.

So we were actually running and fleeing, you know.

Well, I did do and also Moshe we went into some of the synagogues these ultra religious they didn't want to leave the Torah and we had to sometimes drag them out.

You know, they come they're not going to care about, you know, about your Torah or anything you gotta leave.

Let's go.

You know, because the Arabs were very brutal, you know, when they took sometimes they took prisoners.

These prisoners send them back.

They gouged their ears, their eyes out.

And came back to us.

You know.

They released them like, with eyes gouged out.

So this was just terrible.

I mean We started hating, really hating the Arabs in general and the British, you know, when they turned all their forts they had in Israel.

They turned them over to the Arabs, you know, and in here, in the middle of fighting and everything, Ben-Gurion, who of course was a leader for us he came to visit, you know, and that's the picture you're seeing.

But I wasn't in the picture right next to him, but I was around there, you know.

He encouraged us and gave us speeches you know, to stand fast and we were for some reason we were able to stand all these attacks, you know, even the Transjordanians, even that they start pushing us out of Jerusalem.

You know, we were still fighting, you know, all young we were all young boys.

You know.

This one time time I was fleeing, we were fleeing over a field, you know, but Moshe and I, we were inseparable.

He was just and I got shot in the leg, you know, a sniper, sniper shot me in the leg here.

And I was just bleeding.

And Moshe came, you know, to take me right, take me on him because had to move, start losing too much blood and we get to the nearest first aid and hospital much like you know there was all there wounded soldiers got shot in chest and arms and stuff, you know, so it was chaos, you know.

And the doctor looked at my leg and he says this, too close to the bone and stuff.

He says, amputate.

Cut it off.

There's no time.

So my friend Moshe, he took off his rifle, you know, he put it on the doctor's head and he says, you take off his leg, I pull the trigger.

So the doctor said, oh, put him in the back, way in the back.

Forget about it, he go next guy.

That was just like that, you know.

So they never got him for that.

There was just much chaos, that much confusion, you know, going on.

And they transported me to the hospital after that.

Then they found out that I'm not of age, I was not 18 yet see.

They found out so they actually said, we're gonna have to discharge you from the Haganah, you know.

But I was now in that hospital where all wounded soldiers were you know some lost their arms, some lost their, lost their legs, you know.

The doctors made rounds, but on my papers was that I lost my leg.

You know, the doctor came up around.

They looked, and he says, I'm going to fit you with a prosthesis.

Why, I said.

I have my leg.

Oh, she was surprised, you know at that.

Well, I said, no anyway I recuperated there my leg was going okay.

And well anyway they kind of discharged me but they didn't discharge.

They put me on the telephone operator.

I became a telephone operator in the big camp in Tel Aviv.

And then finally they said, okay, you can go to the Negev.

And there were some prisoners that were taken there.

So I went down to the Negev and the Egyptian border.

They started taking prisoners, Arab prisoners that they had.

And one time we had a queue of prisoners going along.

And I hear them speaking German, you know.

I hear them speaking German, these Arab prisoners.

So I go next next to them and in German I say, you guys are fighting for the Arab armies, for the Egyptian army?

And they thought for some reason, because I speak such good German that, you know, that they can, that I am with them or something, you know.

They say, yeah yeah yeah.

We volunteered to fight.

Then I went to my lieutenant.

I said, these are German soldiers.

So they took them right away to the side, you know, kept them away from the other prisoners.

They were not prisoners anymore, you know.

So they were supposed to go to court.

Get judged in courts.

In Jewish courts.

Yeah, so then now finally the war was over.

And we existed.

Became Israel.

And I knew that I did my task, you know, for my country.

But I had to go back to work now and start my life.

You know, because it's what I had to do now.

So I started working as a technician in refrigeration.

Mostly working in Tel Aviv and my mother worked as a nurse.

So we kind of build our life a little bit.

But kind of years went by in Israel, and became more and more harder too, you know, the economy went up and our aim was always at least my aim was I wanted to go to America, you know, United States.

I was also looking if I see anybody from my father's side you know because I know he had a family really.

You know, the former wife and they had two children, I was trying to find my step, my brothers like, you know.

Well, I knew that one one went to Argentina.

One brother, one of the kids went to Argentina.

And the other one here to America.

You know.

I did hear from about my father, and that he eventually died in the fifties and he died of a heart attack.

But we don't know really what he really died of.

You know, we know the Japanese conquered most of China, you know, and they were also shipping also Jews, you know.

They dissolved the ghetto in Shanghai.

And we know that they were suffering the same almost like in Germany, you know.

The Japanese were cooperating with the Nazis.

You know, they knew that the Nazis wanted the Jews to be killed and whatever.

And so that's all about mostly what I know about my father because, you know, I was too little really to be really bonded, you know, because I was only six, seven years old when he left.

So again, we went to the HIAS, you know, and seeing if they can, they couldn't get any visas to they couldn't get any visas or anything to come to America.

So my mother, he said, they told us if you go back to Germany as refugees, you might have a better chance to get visas to the America than from Israel, you know.

So we decided wo go back to Germany, you know.

But there was a strict law, now almost a law, that Jews cannot leave Israel, go to back to Germany, you know.

So my mother was not Jewish, you know.

So she she did they said, okay she can have the visa to go to Germany and since you you're her kid her son, we give you the visa exit visa too, you know.

So we went back to Germany and we arrived in Germany and I was starting to work there, you know, in Stuttgart, Germany, so kind of settled there a little bit.

And our aim was always to try to get a visa to the United States, you know, to apply to the American consul in Stuttgart, Germany, to get back to the United States.

I finally I went and try to get HIAS, you know, and HIAS says, you have to go to the rabbis in the in the Jewish community center in Stuttgart and to verify that you really Jewish, you know.

Yeah I had all the pictures and the the identity card and everything I mean, that I suffered.

But anyway we went there, my mother and I and the rabbi, he look at me, he says, I know you and all, but we have to make sure that the Jews that you are Jewish refugee.

So I said, how?

Well, let's go to the bathroom.

So he came back and he says, yeah, he's circumcised.

He's Jewish.

So I finally get that visa to go to United States and my mother too, you know, we could go together.

So we sailed all the way to New York.

Saw the Statue of Liberty.

I was so happy that we could get into American soil.

When they shipped me back as a soldier to to Germany, I was stationed near Frankfurt-de-Main.

And we were a few Jewish soldiers together.

And we were very angry because anybody over 30 they, they might have been Nazis, you know.

1956-57.

We started a lot of fights.

Yeah.

Sometimes we went into a place, you know, restaurant or place, and we saw some guys that looked like over 30.

We start fighting with them.

Yeah.

Stupid Nazis.

And so military police many times they had to take us.

Because.

Well, we were young, too, you know, we did have resentment.

We figured that they either was in the German army or was Nazi or something, you know.

Yeah, but we didn't forget that the German people elected Hitler, you know, to be their leader, you know.

So it was not only the Jews that he started to, right, he was going after any any subhuman, any subhuman elements, you know.

They were all supposed to be dead.

You know, he didn't believe he'd only believed in a very clean race, you know.

And the Nazi philosophy was adjusted to that, you know.

In my in my family, they had they were even going after people with handicaps.

The and uh, you know, backwards people that we had one one of the sisters of my my mother, she was a little and they were afraid they would take her too because they were going after all every everything like that.

I mean, Hitler killed 17 million people biggest catastrophe in human history.

I believe in God, yes, but I'm not a, I'm a kind of interfaith man.

But I'm still do, yeah, Yom Kippur I wanna keep Sabbath, Yom Kippur.

But I believe in destiny, in God.

Some people I've interviewed have said I don't believe that there's a God who would let world.

Well, in a concentration camps and things.

Yeah, I guess some, some people that a lot of the Jewish people that had survived.

But then they survived.

They're the ones who should be grateful that they survived.

well maybe the ones that are dead before that, before they got but I mean the ones that survived, especially in my group, too, you know I think they should be thankful because we're here, we're not dead.

So God was there, probably.

So that's that's the way I look at it, really.

We were invited to Germany to get two weeks in Berlin with all the, you know, hotel stay and meals and extra money to visit and things to do.

We learned a lot of things when we were there.

You know, because we went to the archives.

They took us to the Jewish archives where they kept all the papers.

And it seems that the Nazis did have a lot of paper stuff on me, on me, you know, yeah.

I found out in these archives, they knew about me.

They had that identity card and it was in the papers and I asked the clerk if I could take it, and he says, I don't know, but I have to go to the bathroom now.

And I took it.

I took it and he just closed his eyes.

He let me have it.

An identity card, you know.

But I didn't have it before.

It was in the archives and there were all papers about my father.

That he was deported.

They knew about my circumcision in the Jewish community center and they had it all on paper.

The Nazis were really thorough with everything.

on paper, a catalogue and everything.

So we went to a lot of to also the Jewish Museum.

Then, of course, we went to the place, my orphanage, you know.

What was the name of the orphanage?

Auerbach Auerbach Weisenhaus And it's a family, a Jewish family, very prominent in Berlin, that established that particular orphanage, like I say in 1888.

And, well, it was not there anymore.

You know, it was demolished because all Berlin was in ruins, you know, like the Berlin.

But there is a is a wall.

All the names of those little kids that they killed there, you know, all their names are on this wall.

And the people who lived there in these, in the new building, they have to pass that wall all the time.

Show 'em that that's where these kids got murdered.

You know.

And like I said, I still get tears sometimes thinking about what happened.

That was the worst bloodbath that I have seen in years.

You know, I mean, it was it was just unimaginable, these kids screaming and they were just killing them, you know, and then taking them and throwing them in trucks, you know, so get them away with them.

It's just it's just unbelievable that that happened, you know.

And I told the vice vice mayor of Berlin that he give us a dinner party like, you know, and I told him, I says, you know what that experience is and said never forget in my life.

And he said, yeah, it's just horrible what you people had to go through, you know.

What message do you hope people kind of take away from your story?

What do you hope they learn or think about from it?

Well, to remember us, you know, because we're gonna die out now.

We're getting into ages that we'll pass away.

And we should convey that message to the young people.

That they, that they remember what happened Holocaust.

So they know what happens there in that period.

You know that this was never even in the old times and old they never, that kind of a masacre, you know, for a specific race to be wiped out.

That's my message would be.

And is, you know, and all the lectures I have with the high schools that I'm make presentations and so forth I always emphasize that that the younger generation should be, you know, I have a granddaughter that she really is into it, too, you know, and I hope she carries it on.

My sons, not so much.

Yeah, you know, my my oldest son is now 62 and he knows that I was a Holocaust and so but he's not very active, I have to say.

Did you talk about your experiences when you were younger?

Yes, of course.

I always, always talked about it in Germany too.

You know, I gave the story to there in 2016 I told my story there.

They know my story.

They took me to a Jewish museum.

I have to say that in Berlin, they doing a lot for population of Jewish surviving and stuff.

They have a lot of Jewish museums and they have a big square where they where they kind of imitate the camp Auschwitz they imitated, you know then they have the place where Hitler died in the bunker.

They have a little plaque there, you know.

She told us, our guide she told us, she says we don't want to make a big thing like that.

People would accumulate.

No it's just a little plaque.

This is the bunker that Hitler died.

Do you think there is a danger that we can repeat this kind of history?

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I think there's always been anti-Semitism in the world.

And there are some people are just, you know, crazy enough to.

But I don't think that there's ever going to be another, let's say, Hitler.

No, I don't think so.

Personally, I don't know.

I'm 91 years old now.

I, I don't know much of the future anymore what the future holds.

But at the present, I don't believe so.

Because even right now, when I talk to these kids in high schools and stuff like that, and I tell my story they are not Jewish.

They believe my story.

They wrote me a lot of letters, you know, thanking me for my presentation.

They took it very seriously, you know, I told them it's not only that, but it's something that should not be in the future anymore,