About Josef
Welcome to my story. For any of you that have tried this, you know that answering the question of “who am I?” is probably one of the most difficult things to do. Many people will start with “… I am a father of…” or “…I am the husband of…” or better yet they will start listing their profesion or occupation. There are all answers to the question of “… what am I? ” and not “…Who am I?”
Who am I? To answer this I think that I should go back to 1937 when I was born in a country that is now known as the State of Israel. In 1937 it was know as the territory of Palestine under the mandate of the British Government. We were a tiny collection of very isolated individuals who found refuge from the very Anti Jewish environment in the European arena.
The problem was that the resident neighbors of the area did not want the Jews either. In 1937 several incidents of anti Jewish riots took place and while the citizens of the area had to protect themselves with whatever weapons they could find, the British military made sure that they were “…Johny on the spot” with only one objective in mind and that is to confiscate any weapons they could find. So… the citizens of Palestine who were Jewish had to defend themselves while being attacked and had to hide the weapons as fast as they could or loose them to the British searchers.
That was the world I was born into. If that was not difficult enough, at my birth my mother was 18 and my father was 22. both were too young to be married, let alone be parents of a new born baby named Yossi.
By the time I was 2 years old my parents were divorced and my mother was gone to another city.
World War II was in full swing in Europe and part of it spilled over unto North Africa under General Romel. The Germans seemed to think that wherever they could find Jews it was OK to dump bombs. They would send their Airplanes over Tel Aviv and unload just for the heck of it. I remember, as a little boy, being wraped up in blankets and sitting under the stairway while the bombs were falling and when the “all clear” sounded we would go back up and have some hot chocolate.
By the time I was three my family decided that it would be safer to send me out of town and I was shipped out to Hollon and lived in a Foster home until I was seven years of age. By the end of 1944 it became obvious that the British troups would, with the help of the Americans, win in North Africa and the Americans will prevail in Europe.
The State of Israel was declared and formed on the 15th day of May 1948.