When the Russians occupied Pinsk, they deported my immediate family to Siberia because we had a cousin who was accused of being an anti-Communist. From Siberia, my father wrote a letter to an official in the Russian government who allowed us to return to Pinsk. However, we had no money to buy train tickets. My father then wrote home for the family to send us money but by then World War II had broken out. We were trapped and had to remain in northern Kazakhstan which is Siberia. We later learned that our entire family back home in Pinsk all perished in the Holocaust.
After the war, we went to Shtetin, Poland, we did not return to Pinsk because everything was burned down. It was dangerous to be in Poland because of anti-Semitism. We smuggled across the border to Germany and went to live a Displaced Persons’ (DP) camp in Berlin. I went to school there. We left in 1948 because of the Russian Blockade of Berlin. We flew to Frankfurt and from there went by train to Schwäbisch Hall in western Germany. We were there till 1949 and then Marseilles, France to Israel. I was with my parents. My brother and sister were already living in Israel.
In 1950, I went into the Israeli army and was there for two years. In 1954, I married Miriam Rozwaski. Being in the Reserves, I fought in the Sinai Campaign in 1956. My parents and my brother passed away in Israel. My sister lives in Kfar Saba, Israel.
In 1959, my wife, our baby daughter Batya and I moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba to be with my wife’s sister and brother. We all later moved to Windsor.