Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Zwi Steiger - March 27, 1982

Brother Moves to Israel

Did your father encourage your brother to go to Israel when he did?

Did he encourage him? He always had a plan to go to Israel and...

Who?

My brother.

Your brother.

And my parents too, they--it was always say eventually go to Israel. He, he left as a student. You know, he had to be legal. You couldn't go to Israel--you want to go to Israel, so you can go. There was only a limited number of, of so called certificates that people were getting that you could take off--you could go to Israel. I remember people trying to go illegally, I think, and always getting stuck somewhere in Greece or in Syria or in Lebanon, never being able to get to Israel. My brother got a, a student visa to go to--at that time--to the Hebrew University to Jerusalem. And he was waiting for it in '40, 1940, yeah, in the spring--Pesach time. He left for, for Israel through Budapest on the train to Venice and the boat to--or, not to Venice to, I think to ???, and from there on a boat to, to Palestine at that time. So he, he had a, he had a visa to go. And I can't remember how he got the Hungarian passport. If it was by bribe he got the Hungary passport and he left for Israel. Did he encourage him? I'm sure he, he, he wanted him to go. The only way to, to get out for, for some people.


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