My son works as a manager for an organization that looks after seniors. Sarah works for the health insurance agency. Their children are called Omri and Dganit. Omri is 36 and Dganit is 33. She is a manager at Tnuva, the oldest and largest dairy firm in Israel.
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Displaying 25201 - 25230 of 50826 results
Hillel Kempler
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Once I was discharged from the military I first went back to my old job. I was an officer in the military, I gave orders. And when I was discharged from the military I didn’t feel good anymore in the workshop. I worked there for a few months and then someone I knew from the military offered me the opportunity to manage a small factory where new motors were being built. I was supposed to organize the work there. I was an expert, I wanted to do something proper, and he wanted to make money. So I became independent. There was a room through my father’s bakery where I set up a small workshop. I was a good worker but a bad businessman. I knew that it wasn’t for me. A friend told me that an electricity course was being set up in the Shevach technical vocational school on HaMasger Street in Tel Aviv. That was just the thing for my disposition. I liked it there and worked as a teacher there from 1952 to 1977.
The Communist Party was illegal under the English, but during the time of the Second World War they were no longer persecuted. At that time we were inspired by the Russians, the Russian military, and the Russian battles against the Germans. We also knew a lot of Russian songs. With the founding of the State of Israel, the Communist Party was legal. Ester and I weren’t actually in the Communist Party, but the Zionist party Poale Zion Smol was a left-wing party. Our opinions and those of our party changed when we learned about what happened and what was still happening in Russia from Khrushchev’s speech during the 20th CPSU party convention in 1956. Everything we had believed in was a lie. Communism was a nice dream, nothing more.
After the Suez War with Egypt, my work as a teacher became somewhat boring. I wanted new task, a bit of variety. There was the possibility to go to Eliat for a large construction company. Back then Eliat was a rock desert on the Red Sea, and they wanted to build a city there. They therefore needed to establish an electricity department for the construction company. They came to me and said I was the right man for the job. I don’t know who from the construction company went to the director of my school and convinced him to let me go. In any case, I was released, since the work in Eliat was important for the whole country, more important than my work as a teacher in a school. I was very pleased. They said: leave your family here in Tel Aviv and work there. But I said: We’re going together. I packed our furniture onto a truck and we drove down. That was 1957. In Eliat there was only desert and a few houses. We lived in one of these little houses. We were on the sea in the middle of the desert. We had a wonderful life there, like a return to the spirit of beginnings.
The Six-Day-War was in 1967. That was a short war, only six days long. I was in Beersheba then. I was with a troop of older people. Officially we were soldiers, but we didn’t need to fight on the front line. We helped younger soldiers, who could then fight. I was with the military for two, three months. They didn’t want to discharge me, since a lot was damaged by the war and they needed my expertise to repair large machines.
One day the city of Tel Aviv was seeking a director for all technical colleges. I was an autodidact, had read a lot of books, but I didn’t have an official education, no papers. As a director you needed a certificate from the university, and I didn’t even have my high school certificate. Despite all that, I was the right man for the position. I knew that if I wanted to get ahead, I needed to study. While I was still a teacher at the school I began studying at home and completed the university entrance qualification. Then I went to university. Luckily I could arrange that. I drove back and forth between work at the school, back then I only had courses a few days a week, and the university. There was also the summer semester, and so I studied the whole summer. Then I completed university and, starting in 1977, was able to take over the direction of all technical colleges. That was, again, the right work for me at that moment in time. I joyfully performed the job until my retirement in 1990.
Ester also worked. She was a teacher and for twenty years she taught courses in artistic handicrafts and drawing for adults at a club twice a week. The rest of the time she looked after our children.
The Yom Kippur War began on October 6th, 1973. That was a hard war. They were many dead on both sides. I was already 48 and was exempt from the military service due to sickness, my heart was no longer so healthy, and age. But I wasn’t totally exempt. There were also civilians in the military. You were there for ten more years. That’s changed somewhat now. You live perfectly normally as a civilian, but if an order comes, you are immediately mobilized. Every quarter has civic people, even women are part of it, who have many duties. In this area I was supreme commander of a group of older civil soldiers. During these times of war the schools are always the centers. If anything happens, we are the first aid. We need to be in all places in order to organize help, with calling the fire department or ambulances, for example. We needed to do everything for the civil population so that the military is free from these duties. We were like the police, but in war. Some of us were also chauffeurs for the military commanders or ambulance drivers.
The Yom Kippur War was also my son’s first war. It wasn’t nice that my son was in the war. But that’s how it is, you have to live with, and you live with it.
The Yom Kippur War was also my son’s first war. It wasn’t nice that my son was in the war. But that’s how it is, you have to live with, and you live with it.
In 1982 there was the fifth Arab-Israeli War; that was the first Lebanon War. The terrorists came at night over the borders into Israel from Lebanon and Jordan. I wasn’t in this war, but my son was a parachutist. Even my daughter was in the military. She is an officer and was given a fairly high rank. She was already in the military during the war in Lebanon, but she wasn’t in the war. She was voluntarily in the military for a few years.
My father was born in Lviv [today Ukraine]. I never saw his family. At the age of 14 he was an apprentice in a pastry shop, and in 1906 he received his certification as an assistant in a gingerbread bakery. After that he did his mastership.
In the First World War my father was a soldier with the Austrian military and was stationed in Albania. Sometimes he would tell us how horrible the war was. He got sick with malaria and so couldn’t fight any more. Then he cooked for the officers.
I think my father’s family was killed during the Second World War, but I don’t know who they were.
I never knew my grandparents’ names. In 2000 something interesting happened. It had to do with the Berlin Jewish Museum. I was visiting Berlin with my wife Ester a year before the opening of the museum. Someone told me that there were tours through the unopened museum. The building was already finished but it was still empty. That sounded interesting to me and so we went on a tour. I then told the man leading us through the museum that I was born in Berlin. That really interested him and so we stayed in contact and I gave the museum some of my family photos and documents. My wife and I were invited by the city of Berlin to the opening of the museum. It was very exciting for me; almost 70 years after my family fled from Berlin to Palestine I was a guest at the opening of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. There were people from all over the world there. And in one of the rooms hung a picture of my family as well.
Some years later a couple from Texas visited the museum. They were really interested in the photo of my family and went to the office to ask who it came from. The man from Texas was also called Kempler. The people in the office didn’t give him any information, but they sent us his address and wrote that we could get in contact with him if we wanted, since they weren’t allowed to give out any information. My daughter Giza, who is interested in our family’s genealogy, took over immediately. She wrote to Texas and also spoke with Mr. Kempler on the phone. It was proved: yes, it is my family. They sent us pictures and so we saw that this Mr. Kempler looked very similar to my father. And since then we always send them our wishes on Rosh Hashanah. That’s how it’s been. Maybe we’ll meet some day.
Some years later a couple from Texas visited the museum. They were really interested in the photo of my family and went to the office to ask who it came from. The man from Texas was also called Kempler. The people in the office didn’t give him any information, but they sent us his address and wrote that we could get in contact with him if we wanted, since they weren’t allowed to give out any information. My daughter Giza, who is interested in our family’s genealogy, took over immediately. She wrote to Texas and also spoke with Mr. Kempler on the phone. It was proved: yes, it is my family. They sent us pictures and so we saw that this Mr. Kempler looked very similar to my father. And since then we always send them our wishes on Rosh Hashanah. That’s how it’s been. Maybe we’ll meet some day.
I believe my parents were married in Vyzhnytsia. I don’t know how or where they met. But they both came from very religious families and in those days there was Schadchen [marriage-arranger], who connected the partners on behalf of the family.
In Berlin he opened the kosher pastry shop “Krakauer Café and Konditorei” at Grenadier-strasse [today Almstadt-strasse] 20. In my father’s pastry shop there were some baked goods – they would also be delivered from the shop - and you could eat breakfast and supper there. I own a photograph of the pastry shop that shows everything.
Grenadierstrasse was a Jewish street in the famous Berlin Scheunenviertel. The Scheunenviertel was located between Hackescher Markt and the current Rosa Luxemburg Platz. During the time that I lived there, Rosa Luxemburg Platz was called Bülowplatz. In those days in the Scheunenviertel there were a lot of very religious Jews with payot and shawls, modern Jews like my father and his friends, workers, and businesspeople.
A communist group met regularly in our pastry shop. There were approximately ten to fifteen people. They spent a lot of time in the pastry shop. I know that there were Jewish and non-Jewish communists. They exchanged information and played games – I can remember dominoes well. I really liked playing dominoes as well. They often called to me: come, Hillel, play with us! And I was always very proud that I was allowed to play with them. They drank beer and coffee and ate a lot of cheesecake. My father’s cheesecake was pretty well known. They always paid for everything. My father was a devout Jew, he didn’t understand politics, since politics didn’t interest him at all. It was good for him that the communists came to him, since they consumed so much. That was his interest. Our street was very Jewish, but we co-existed nicely with the communists. Of course, at that time I didn’t know what a communist was.
There were a lot of kosher shops and many synagogues in the Scheunenviertel. These synagogues were not stand-alone buildings. In those days you would rent only one or two rooms and open a synagogue there. I went to so many small shtiebelekh [prayer rooms] or shtiebel. Shtiebelekh means room in Yiddish. I can still remember some of this shtiebelekh very well.
My parents were religious. Every morning my father would put on tefillin, and Friday evenings and on Saturdays go to his shtiebel. All of his friends were at the shtiebel, and his community life revolved around the shtiebel. My father had a beard, but he was modern orthodox. You couldn’t tell from his clothing that he was very devout, and as the Nazis came to power in 1933, he immediately shaved his beard.
We were kosher, of course, and weren’t allowed to even think about pig. My brother Isi, he was six years older than me, took me by the hand one day and said: come, Hillel, we’re going to buy sausages. There were small wagons on the street that sold sausages. Of course these were sausages made of pork. Isi brought me to one of these wagons and crept around it so that no one would see us. Then he positioned himself at a corner of the wagon and bought us each a pair of sausages. We quickly ran with the sausages to the next street and ate them in an entryway. Isi then made me swear: Hillel, you must never tell anyone. And for years I was afraid that someone would find out and tell that I had eaten pork sausages. But that was such a thrill, the forbidden! Isi needed to try it once. We thought, who knows what would happen to us after eating the sausages.
My parents spoke a mixture of German and Yiddish, but it was certainly more Yiddish than German. Sometimes they also went to a Yiddish theatre, of which there were many in Berlin. My sister, I guess, spoke High German, since she went to the Jewish High School in Berlin. I was always playing with lots of kids in the street. All the children were on the street in those days, and someone said to me when I arrived in Israel: I know your language, you’re from Berlin. I had picked up a bit of Berlin slang from the kids on the street.
Our apartment was also on Grenadier-strasse, directly across from my father’s pastry shop. The apartment had six rooms. It was on the second floor. There was a parlor, which was a large room. In the parlor there was a long table for twelve people that had been very expensive. I can recall it exactly. And there was a large bureau and a grandfather clock that needed to be wound once a week. Only my father was allowed to do that, no one else. My parents were very proud of everything that they had accomplished. My father often gave gifts to my mother, once he even bought her an Astrakhan coat. That was quite exceptional, of course. In 1933 she sent the Astrakhan coat with our moving boxes to Palestine, but she of course had no need for it here.
We had two maids that looked after us children. One was called Herta. She was a young girl.
We had two maids that looked after us children. One was called Herta. She was a young girl.
Before I went to primary school I would go to a shtiebel in the afternoon. There was a Rabbi and a couple of other children there, and we learned religion and Hebrew. When my brother Isi was young, he was certainly also in a shtiebel. Later we were enrolled in a completely normal primary school.
On Friday, on Shabbat, we always ate at the large table in the parlor. We were all so proud of the fact that we only ate at the large table on Shabbat and the High Holidays. During the week everyone came home at a different times and we didn’t eat together.
Before Passover the whole apartment would be cleaned, food would be cooked, and the Passover dishes would be taken out. The dishes that we used throughout the year were put away. The Seder was a very important evening. A large white tablecloth with religious symbols was laid out on our large table. On the table there was a plate with five sections – that was the Seder bowl. There were various things to eat in it, each with a symbolic character. There were three matzoth in a cushion with three levels. My father took out one matzo, broke it, and hid one half. That was the afikoman. We children had to look for and find the afikoman. My father wasn’t allowed to end the meal until he got the afikoman back. Whoever found the piece of matzo was allowed to ask my father for something at the end of the meal in the evening, which lasted a few hours. It could be a book or a game. Then he, my mother, and my sisters would bite the afikoman into a round shape, a hole would be made in the middle, and there was a nail in the room the afikoman would be hung on. It would stay there until the next Passover. For the Seder my father wore a satin coat. He had to put the coat on over his head. The arms were embroidered with silver thread, and my father wore a flat cap on his had that was also embroidered with silver thread. He ate like a king. He wasn’t permitted to sit on a chair, two armchairs were put together for him, and so he would be half sitting, half lying down. That was the tradition: if he’s a king, he should also sit like a king. Today when we read the Haggadah at home, we always jump ahead because we want to eat. But my father read the whole Haggadah, and that took hours. We loved our father; we respected him.
It was a tradition in Jewish households to leave a section of wall in a room, not big, maybe a meter, unpainted. That was to commemorate the history of the Jews. We had that in Berlin, not in the parlor, but in one of the upper rooms.
We were a real Berlin family, and enjoyed ourselves. We often drove around and were always out and about. My father would come too, since the pastry shop was closed on Saturdays. For example we’d go to Wannsee or Grunewald. We’d go to Alexanderplatz, which was really close by. There were always markets at Alexanderplatz, and often circuses. I can also still remember a Zeppelin from New York that landed in Berlin. We were there for that; the whole city was there. The Babylon cinema was located near Grenadier-strasse, on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, across from the Berliner Volksbühne [a famous Berlin theatre]. I went often to the Babylon; I knew it well. I would see funny films there – they were still silent, pictures without talking – with my brother Isi or my sister Gusti, and in winter I would skate on the ice on the square in front of the Volksbühne with other children. We also had good relationships with gentiles. It was totally normal and didn’t matter if someone was Jewish or not. You were accepted. I never heard “Jew” associated with anything negative from the people on our street. Maybe in school, but I was only there for half a year.
In 1932 I was enrolled in the primary school on Gips-strasse. Of course I also got a candy cone for my first day of school, which was already customary back then. I have a photo of myself in a sailor suit with my candy cone. Both Jewish and gentile children received a candy cone. I don’t know how many kids in my class were Jewish, I didn’t care in those days. My siblings were all at different schools, all in the neighborhood.
If Hitler hadn’t come we definitely would have stayed in Berlin.
I can’t recall my brother Isi’s Bar Mitzvah any more. It must have been in 1932 in Berlin.