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Frank Ephraim

“The way the trip went was we left one evening, went to the local railroad station in Berlin, that at that time was called Anhalterbahnhof. It no longer exists as such. Hopped on a train. It was a sleeper. We went overnight, changed in Munich, next morning, and from there we began to head toward Italy, the border. We went through Austria, and the train was stopped in Brenner, Brenner pass, which is the border between Austria and Italy. There everybody had to get out. The German side, we were searched, body search, all the luggage was searched. That delayed everything. The train left without us. We had to wait another six hours for the next train.”
(postwar testimony)

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Interview — Describes how the inmates in the camp in which he was interned in Cyprus colluded with the Greeks and the Palestinians to smuggle young male Jewish inmates to Palestine [1995 interview].

Transcript:

The camps were surrounded by two fences of barbed wire and in between, these concertina barbed wire rolls. And we began to escape through the barbed wire. My specialty was to crawl into this concertina so that when we split it it doesn't start running away because every 50 meters there were guards posted on towers. So this is where we started taking out youngsters of military age. Every week, every night, 8 to 10 people. Bringing back the wires, tying up the fence back so that nothing can be suspected. As the youngsters left the fence, they would walk to a road where the Greeks would pick them up and take them to an orange grove -- many orange groves around there -- and house them for a time when we had 40, 50 escapees collected together. At that point, Israeli fisherman would come with permits to fish in Turkish waters, and by prearrangement with lights and signs we were able to board them and take them in little fishing boats to Israel.

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