Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Anna Greenberger - August 24, 1982

And uh, in 1949 when in Israel the war started in '48, and Alex was already big uh, uh, ???...pro-Israel.

???.

And he said uh, he wants to go in Haganah. So from one day to the next, I didn't know nothing. He came home and he said, "I volunteered in the Haganah." I said "Alex, I don't want to leave here." I said--my three sisters and here uh, Erica was a baby. I said--and my mother--I don't want to go to Israel. I said, and that's--we were registered to United States. In 1946 uh, when the family heard that we came home they started to write and they...

People? Your family from here.

Alex's uncle...

Mm-hm.

...Phil Greenberger and my mother's brother in Miami Beach. They wanted us here. And I said, "Alex uh, we want to go--we are registered already to United States, why?" But no, he says, he was in Czechoslovakian army and he was in Hungarian army, and he wants to be in a Jewish army. I said, "Okay." So we go to Israel. I said--Erica was little--I said, "She will stay with my mother and the rest in Czechoslovakia. I go with Alex to Israel and we establish a home and everybody will come to Israel." But what happened, he was a volunteer so we had original papers because we were born there. And many people didn't have any papers, they couldn't go no place. They came like ???, was Russian and we were Czechoslovakian. So the Haganah sold our papers for a Polish guy. And all the transports were going to Israel and we were stuck--not to United States and not Israel, nothing. We didn't know what's going on. So Alex went to Prague and he went to the uh, there to that uh, office and he said, "What's going on here? Uh, I had all the papers, I volunteered, I was in training, everything." So they said, "You don't have here any papers, nothing." So Alex took out original papers and uh, he bought a bottle liquor and I baked cake, and he took to that officer--it was a Czech officer. He went to Israel so. He was a Gentile, a Czech uh, I don't know what kind. He was a high officer in the army. And he gave it to him. And ??? was his name--a very handsome young man. And uh, he said uh, "I will arrange for you everything and you go to Israel."