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A Zionist group--the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir--had uh more or less
infiltrated the orphanage. And uh there was one counselor who got
all of us who want...those who wanted to go...to Israel--it was
then Palestine--put the names on a list. And [we] would then run
away, one by one, to the Zionist kibbutz in Poland, or camp. And
from...and would be shipped from there to Palestine. And I signed
up uh for this group. Problem was that...that I was the only one
who had been in Auschwitz and in other camps. And so the decision
was made that I should run away last. Because I would be
interviewed on newsreel and on radio about my camp; and they
thought that if I ran away it would blow the whole operation. So I
was put onto...on the list. The list was sent to the Jewish Agency
for Palestine, to Jerusalem. But I was told that I would be told
when to run away, but I would be the last person. In the meantime,
something unbelievable happened. My mother had survived the camp.
And my brother...my mother's brother was here in the United States.
And they began looking for me all over, of course, after the war.
And they couldn't find me. My mother never gave up hope that I was
alive. Everybody told her "it's impossible that he survived." But
she believed that I survived. And among other places where they
looked, of course, was the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Somebody in
the Search Bureau of the Jewish Agency for Palestine noticed that
there was a child in an orphanage in Poland who was going to be
coming to Palestine, who met the description of the child that the
woman was looking for in Germany, and notified my uncle in the
United States. And that's how they...how I was eventually reunited
with my mother.
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