KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
longer had to pretend we were Greek refugee children. We were taken to a place where there were clean rooms, beds, food, and ev- erything else we needed, and we stayed there about a week. I believe it was an unused military base. Prague’s streetcars were running, and we rode them into the city. Once we got to Czechoslovakia, we were free to speak any language we chose and so could explore the city without fear of giving ourselves away. After about a week, we were told to get ready to go to Germany. We would be crossing the border illegally, on foot. I was concerned because I could not walk any significant distance. The young man in charge of taking us, an Israeli from the Haganah (the under- ground military arm of the Yishuv , the organized Jewish leadership in Palestine), told me not to worry. Because it was winter, they would have sleds to carry what little we were taking along. If I had trouble walking, they would pull me on a sled. I was able to speak to this young man in Hebrew, and we developed a friendship. I asked him what would happen if we were stopped at the bor- der. We were going to cross the border in a secluded area, he said, and hopefully it was prearranged with the guards that they would look the other way. He then lifted up his jacket, showed me a pistol, and said, “We’re crossing the border one way or the other — if we’re stopped, the people who stop us will not live. We are going to cross.” I had a wonderful feeling of true liber- ation because someone was carrying a weapon to protect us, rather than to kill us. As it happened, no one was guarding the border when we got there. There was always the danger that Russian officers might ap - pear at the station unexpectedly — although Czechoslovakia was independent, Russia was beginning to assert itself there — and that the Czech border guards, wanting to show how efficient they were, would intercept us. But we crossed to the other side without incident. Trucks from the American armed forces took us to the Leipheim Displaced Persons (DP) camp, a former SS officers’ camp in the American-occupied zone near Munich that then housed about three
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