“They caught one prisoner, a German Jew, and he had a can with a false bottom. This German-American SS guard was in charge of us at the camp at Budzyn and he opened the can and found gold pieces. You know what they did to this prisoner? They put an electric wire around his throat and one to his penis. And we had to kill him. Do you believe this? The Jews had to kill him. They had us wrap the wire around him, electric wire to his penis and his throat. He was spinning around and everyone got to hit himkilled him right away. It’s a shame to tell this. The Jews had to kill somebody. It’s not easy to talk about. Before this the Germans killed a couple of other prisoners who refused to cooperate. They said to us, ‘If you don’t do it, we’ll kill you too.’ …

I was liberated in Germany. I was a young man. I went to Israel and fought in two wars in 1948 and 1956. I could have come to the US straight from Germany in 1945 but I said, ‘No. I better go first to Israel and fight by the Israeli Army.’ We went from Germany to France to an army base in Marseilles. We created an army from people who survived in Russia. We were there a couple of months, maybe a year and everyone was studying how to operate a machine gun. When we got to Israel we were already an army that could fight the Arabs.

In 1948 it was a nice war, beautiful war. Our army was stretched so thin. We didn’t have enough soldiers to cover all the fronts. We didn’t have enough rifles and ammunition. There were two rifles for every ten people. We were so happy to find out the Jordanians nearby got the artillery and didn’t use it even. We went in there during the night and took everything from them while they were sleeping. And so we survived 1948 with a little army. 99% was boys from the camps, from the Holocaust.”