Itzchak S. (HVT-3489)

Biography

Itzchak S. was born in Berlin, Germany in 1915. In his testimony, he recounts his father’s military service in World War I; attending public and Jewish schools; bar mitzvah; participating in Jewish and Zionist youth groups; antisemitic harassment; traveling to Amsterdam; his mother joining him; founding a Zionist youth group; returning to Berlin to obtain a certificate to emigrate to Palestine (his mother remained); establishing a Youth Aliyah center in Cologne; improvements during the 1936 Olympics; teaching at a Jewish school in Herrlingen; returning to Berlin; obtaining false papers as a non-Jew; working at a Youth Aliyah school with Recha Freier, its founder; vain attempts to convince his parents to leave; hiding during Kristallnacht; organizing clandestine meetings and religious services; his mother’s disappearance from the Netherlands and his father’s deportation (he never saw them again); living on the streets and with many non-Jews for short periods; a brief trip to Nordhausen; obtaining new false papers from a German officer when his were compromised; being warned to leave; traveling to Singen, then Radolfzell; illegally entering Switzerland; traveling to Schaffhausen; arrest; release with assistance from the Jewish community; living in a refugee camp in Zurich; and emigration to Israel in 1953. Mr. S. discusses visiting Berlin with a fellow underground member in 1979; a reunion of hidden Jews from Berlin; and speaking to students in Germany.

Unedited Testimony