I was born in Berlin, Germany, on June 25, 1931, the only child of Max Hirschel, a Polish man in textile sales, and Klara Hellpap, a pediatric nurse. My father was Jewish and my mother was Christian. My father would visit us from time to time, but I don’t know much about his family. He left Berlin before everything started. My parents never married.

The first experience I had with anti-Semitism in Germany was in 1937, when I went to school. According to the Nuremberg laws, Jewish children couldn’t attend school, but my mother somehow got me into one. I made it to the second grade before they found out I was officially Jewish. They kicked me out of school in the middle of class, when the teacher said she had my name on a list and told me to leave. That was the law. All of a sudden the other kids were throwing rocks and spitting at me, so I had to run as fast as I could. I was crying.

My mother wanted to keep me where she lived, but she couldn’t. She had just one room in another person’s apartment, and the owner wouldn’t allow me to be there. She wanted to ask her relatives to hide me, but the German police insisted I wear the Star of David and report in every two weeks at the precinct. In the meantime, my problem was finding a place to stay.

I looked for places, even though I was only seven- or eight-years old. Most of the time I’d stay with family, but they’d only let me stay a few nights at a time, and then I’d have to hide elsewhere, sometimes in old sheds in the parks. I was so young that I thought there must be something awfully wrong with me. I was afraid of the police, and would try to hide the Star of David. My mother had to work and couldn’t have me in her apartment. She’d say that someone would eventually tell the Gestapo, so I had to stay at various places temporarily.

The police finally found me when I was staying with one of my relatives and decided to go out. They put me in a Jewish orphanage – just a little camp really – where even some of the Jewish teachers cooperated with the authorities. It was an awful place, but it got worse once the Germans started transporting some of the kids to camps. The Gestapo would usually come at night with a list of names, and the teacher really liked it. He had a whip, and every time the Gestapo called out a name the teacher would crack that whip right at the child, in bed. Imagine being nine-years old, hoping they didn’t call your name.

In 1940 my mother was finally able to get me out of the orphanage. She went to the Gestapo and argued that I wasn’t actually Jewish and shouldn’t be persecuted. They told her I could stay with her, but I’d still have to report to them every two weeks. She was working as a telephone operator then, and she was so afraid. When we’d go out I had to wear the Star of David, but my mother was a Christian.

I had an uncle who lived outside Berlin, and he agreed to hide me. He said I’d have to live in the shed that hid the water meter and not in the house. I had stopped reporting to the police, so they put out a warrant for me. I was officially in a kind of parolee status – and I’d violated my parole.

The years went by, and then the allied bombing began. This was in 1943, when I was twelve years old. At that point I was living with my mother again, but when the bombing started I wasn’t allowed to go into the cellar where everyone else was hiding. I had to stay upstairs instead, where I watched the buildings fall after the bombs fell. These bombings went on day and night, yet I wasn’t allowed in the shelter. I survived by the grace of G-d.

I had to teach myself a lot of things, like how to read and write. I found out that the war had ended by reading the papers. The Russians started moving into Berlin, so the streets were mayhem. There were rumors they wanted to flood the whole city. The day I realized it was over we were in a basement, and when we looked out we saw a Russian tank there. We debated who should go out to look. My uncle said I should go, and show them my Star of David. So I did.

A Russian officer near the tank saw my Star of David and started yelling happily at me in Russian. I was so excited. He came to me and said, “khleb?” meaning “do you want some bread?” I told him, “Yes!” The Russians had already liberated many camps by then, so they knew.

The Jewish organizations started looking for survivors, especially the HIAS. They found me finally, and told me I was going to Israel, which at the time was Palestine. They organized a bus, and I left with another 10 or so Jewish children. I said goodbye to my mother and told her I hoped that I could bring her to Palestine later.

The bus took us from Germany to France. Each time we’d pass the Russians they’d yell, “Go to Moscow!” We stayed near Paris, where we were told we would go to Israel on a ship from Marseilles once the English agreed that we could. When they finally did, we went to Marseilles, where we had to wait another two months. We finally boarded a ship and sailed to Israel, where we were the first Jewish children to make aliyah to Tel Aviv.

There was a well-known woman in Israel named Hannah Chizhik who founded a large compound in the middle of Tel Aviv to teach children. I was almost fourteen years old by then, and I was finally catching up on my schooling. We were isolated for awhile in 1946 because of a bubonic plague outbreak in Palestine. The British would shoot people right in the streets if they thought they had the plague.

I was able to get my mother to Palestine in 1947, and we were sent to a special kibbutz for German Jews. One unfortunate problem was that the people on the kibbutz no longer wished to speak German, which is all my mother could speak. So it was difficult for her.

The State of Israel was formed in 1948, and right away the surrounding Arab countries wanted war with the new state. A friend and I decided we wanted to fight. There wasn’t a real army yet, but there were these different factions, like Haganah. We went to basic training, and in the meantime eight Arab countries came at Israel from all sides. Ironically, the rifles we were learning to fire were German made.

One day they told us an Iraqi Army group was coming, so we went into battle for the first time. Iraqis were known for being cowardly, and we shot as much as we could until they ran. The Marines took over for us, and after boot camp my friend and I were sent to Jerusalem.

A very well equipped, really good Jordanian faction was in Jerusalem, coached and supported by the British. They were trying to chase all of us out of Jerusalem. During one of the fights, my friend and I were running across a field and I was shot in the leg. We made it to a field hospital, where it was complete mayhem. The doctor looked at my leg and said, “Cut it off.” My friend, Peter, pointed his gun at the doctor and said, “You take off his leg, I shoot. I’ll pull this trigger.” So the doctor told them to put me in a bed. I was there for a few months, and then they sent me back into combat.

We fought the Egyptians in the Negev. They weren’t as good as the Jordanians, and would often run. Sometimes we’d even put props up, fake artillery and things like that, and they’d still run. We wound up taking prisoners, and because I was just seventeen years old they told me I’d be one of the people accompanying them. When I did I heard some of the prisoners speaking German, and reported that to my superiors. There were eight Arab nations fighting us, and now there were even Germans. They weren’t treated very well – they were killed.

I had to start earning a living, so I started in air conditioning. I learned a lot about electricity and such things in Tel Aviv. My mother and I never really made much headway in Israel, so she suggested we go to America. But there were no visas available, so in 1953 we decided to go back to Germany.

We arrived in Stuttgart, Germany, with little money, and tried to find relatives. Once again I went to HIAS to tell them I wanted to go to America. They checked me out to make sure I was Jewish, and agreed to help. My mother and I left for America in 1955, and in 1956 I got drafted in the U.S. Army, in San Francisco, so I had to go to basic training again.

The U.S. Army shipped me back to Germany, this time as an American soldier. The army stationed me in Stuttgart, so my friends that still lived there didn’t believe I’d even left. I was in the army for two years and returned to San Francisco after. I worked as an industrial lab technician, but eventually started my own janitorial business. I moved to Arizona in 2005 to retire.

I have three sons who know about my ordeals. I want them to remember me as someone who went through many travails and still succeeded. I want them to remember to never give up.