I am a Holocaust child survivor.
My grandfather Mordechai Eisen (Weisser) was born in Ropscize, a small town in southeastern Poland. He married Lea Betheil from Radomysl where they had 2 children. They moved again and went to live in Krakow where 6 more children were born including my father Jacob (Kuba), born on 25th May 1919. In 1929 when Mordechai was 38 years old, he moved again with the family and settled in Antwerp Belgium where he became a fruit merchant. His wife Lea sadly died in January 1933, and he subsequently married Perel Eisen (Schonback), who was a widow herself.
My father joined the Hanoar Hazioni youth movement in Antwerp where he met my mother, Martha Mandelbaum (born 10th January 1920) and they married at the beginning of 1938. My sister Lea was born at the end of the year. At the outbreak of the war, and to flee the onslaught of the Germans into Belgium (they entered on the 10th May 1940), the three of them fled to Brussels and then to St. Gaudens in France.
This was the beginning of an extraordinary and tragic odyssey running from one place to another within and between France and Belgium, all the while trying to stay alive, sometimes staying together but more often being split up until finally my mother and sister ended up in a French internment camp at Agde. Not long after, my mother and sister fell ill and were sent to a hospital in Macon where sadly my sister died. My father was finally able to find Martha and after various other incidents, arrests and incarcerations in Paris and elsewhere, they were released and went back to Antwerp in September 1941 where I was born on 7th February 1942.
Some months later my father was summoned to do forced labour for the Todt Organisation, working on the German Atlantic defence wall at Boulogne in France. Not long after he learned that my mother had been rounded up by the Nazis on the 11th September 1942 during the third big raid in Antwerp. She was sent to the Caseme (barracks) Dossin in Malines Belgium from where she was deported on train Convoy number IX on the 12th September to Auschwitz where she was immediately murdered in the gas chambers.
Unbelievably, before her actual deportation from Dossin, she had somehow managed to send a letter to my father (which he miraculously received) telling him she had been taken to Malines where she had also found her mother, brother and sister whom we now know were also murdered in Auschwitz. There was to be no other communication from her, and nobody has information as to the fate of her father.
My father managed to escape from Boulogne and his subsequent story of survival is in itself epic and fully described in his testimony. Unfortunately, he was subsequently denounced, taken to Draney and deported in March 1944 in Convoy 69 to Auschwitz and then Buna-Monowitz. He survived the Kabel Commando and on the 18th January 1945 he was forced on, and survived, the death march to Gleiwitz and on to Buchenwald. where he was forced to work in the Altenburg munitions factory which was evacuated on 10th April. Unbelievably he also survived another death march to Valdenburg where, in nearby woods he was finally liberated by the Americans on the 15th April 1945.
I do not know what happened to me between the date of my mother’s arrest on 11th September and the 19th September 1942 when an unknown person brought me to the Meisjeshuis (Antwerp) orphanage as I was just a 7 month old baby categorised as a ‘lone Jewish child’. Being so young actually saved my life for notwithstanding several roundups of children to be sent to Malines and onto Auschwitz, the German Sipo-SD (Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst) did not arrest those under 3 years old.
On the 23rd December 1942 several children, including myself, are rescued from the orphanage and taken under false pretenses of a serious illness to the Sint-Erasmus Hospital in Antwerp where we stayed in hiding until the 13th June 1944 when we are arrested by the Sipo-SD and taken overnight to their headquarters in Brussels. On the 14th June they transferred us to the Baron de Castro orphanage in Etterbeek Brussels which is under their constant and total supervision.
Towards the end of August, with the approaching American Army ever closer, the Nazis decided to send the last children in the orphanages to Malines but the Resistance found out and all of us were quickly taken away and hidden – some were then brought back when Brussels was liberated in September 1944. In my case, I was hidden somewhere first in Brussels then Virton in the Ardennes, where my father managed to find me in June/July 1945 on his return to Belgium from Germany.
He managed to rebuild his life, remarried and had a flourishing leather business in Brussels but like many others, continued to suffer some mental trauma from the Holocaust. He was a wonderful head of the family but was always reticent about this period of his life. He sadly passed away in May 2010. I still have 3 brothers living in Brussels and a sister in Israel. The family was badly decimated by the war but happily quite a few survived and settled in Israel, England and France.
Sometime in 1945 I caught polio during an epidemic in Brussels which meant I have not been able to physically do as much as I might have wished. Nevertheless, I led a normal young boy’s life going to school in Schaerbeek Brussels until 1952 when I was sent to Wembley, London to live with one of my father’s brothers and his wife who were about to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as it was felt that climate would be better for my health.
I lived there for 6 years, first in Salisbury (Harare) and subsequently Bulawayo where I attended both Milton Junior and Milton High Schools, both non Jewish, greatly enjoying a teenager’s life in the mild weather of the beautiful country that it was back then. I had my Barmitzvah in March 1955 and joined the Zionist youth movement Betar with whom I went to various spring/summer camps including those by the sea at East London in South Africa. We had many diverse activities, sang Hebrew songs around the camp fires and learned a great deal about our Jewish heritage and Israel’s complex history especially the sacrifices of the first settlers and the concept of Aliyah. So, in February 1959 when I was 17, together with a small group of 5 South African Betar members, I did exactly that and made Aliyah. They joined the army but as I physically was unable to, I stayed on the collective settlement at Amatzia where we were all originally sent.
At Amatzia I improved my Hebrew and worked in the armoury, did various jobs including herding the cows on horseback as well as other agricultural tasks which were most satisfying. On days off we went on various trips around the wonderful country that is Israel enjoying the beauty of the land. A few years later I studied for and obtained a diploma in hotel management at the Tadmor Hotel Training School in Hertzlia and worked in several hotels around the country, ending up at the Galei Kinneret in Tiberias where I was to meet some of the Israeli glitterati and politicians of the time, including prime minister David Ben Gurion and his wife Paula.
Due to family demands I returned to Belgium and worked in various jobs including diamond cutting in Antwerp. When the 6 day war broke out suddenly in June 1967 I returned to Israel to help, together with my cousin. I was sent to assist in the north and my cousin who was a doctor, went to work in a hospital, returning to Belgium a couple of months later. I stayed on and whilst taking a much needed break in Eilat met my future wife Judy, an English girl who had also volunteered and was working on a Kibbutz. We subsequently went to Belgium, married in February 1970 and our daughter Corinne was born in 1972. Shortly thereafter I was invited to work in London and we moved there in July 1973.
In London I worked for 21 years in property, developing and refurbishing department stores and shops, as well as industrial and workshop properties. In 1994 I became Executive Director of The Association of Jewish ex-Servicemen and Women which I led for 24 years until retiring as a Vice President in December 2018; During this period it was my honour and privilege to engage with some truly exceptional people from all walks of life some of whom, during their service in the Armed Forces, faced incredible challenges especially during and after the liberation of Bergen Belsen and other notorious concentration and extermination camps in Germany, Poland and elsewhere in Europe. During special Remembrance and Commemoration events in the UK and special trips to Europe and Israel, Judy and I were to meet and interface with Royalty, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Ambassadors but one of the highlights must surely be an audience in Rome with Pope John Paul in November 2003 leading a delegation of the International Council of Jewish War Veterans. I was also honoured to be at the opening by the Queen of the Holocaust Wing at the Imperial Museum in London in June 2000.
I have been constantly and actively involved in a host of Jewish and interfaith organisations as well as my own Synagogue but most especially and closest to my heart, with the Shoah survivor community. I am a Trustee of Yad Vashem UK Foundation and a Vice President of Yom HaShoah UK which ensures the education of the younger generations and the memorialisation of the lost Jewish communities of Europe and I continue to work towards that goal, helping with the organising of annual commemorative events and regular activities and fund raising. I believe this has helped to reshape my own personal history.