Outworker
Stories of healing, personal development, and inner work. Founded on the idea that the relationship with self is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect, Outworker shares conversations aimed at helping you develop that relationship.
Outworker
#076 - Gidon Lev - The Holocaust Survivor Who Rebuilt An Entire Bloodline
Gidon Lev survived the Holocaust as a child and became living proof of what the Nazis tried and failed to erase. He shares how his family was stripped of their rights, their identity, and ultimately their lives. He recalls saying goodbye to his father as a young boy, not realizing it would be their final moment together. He describes surviving on scraps of marmalade, clinging to life in a world built to destroy him, and never once believing he’d live to see freedom. We explore his complicated relationship with his mother, his abandonment of faith, and the quiet, powerful act of starting over—first in North America, then in Israel. From unspeakable loss, Gidon rebuilt his family tree—one that now includes six children, 16 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Timestamps:
00:00 Gidon's Willingness To Share
01:15 The Numbers Behind Gidon Surviving
03:24 A Childhood Microcosm Of The Holocaust
07:47 The Incremental Devolution Of Life
21:03 'Arbeit Macht Frei' - 'Work Sets You Free'
30:08 Gidon's Family's Experience In The Camps
38:43 Why Gidon Never Moved Camps
42:57 Creativity Restoring Humanity
44:57 Creating Propaganda
50:31 Never Believing In Freedom
58:22 Gidon's Biggest Regret
1:06:53 Gidon's Challenging Relationship With His Mother
1:13:10 New Name...New Identity
1:16:05 Moving To Israel
1:18:32 A Fractured Relationship With Faith
1:25:54 Rebuilding A Family
1:27:56 Gidon's Parting Words
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What's up outworkers. Gidon Lev survived the Holocaust as a child and became living proof of what the Nazis tried and failed to erase. He shares how his family was stripped of their rights, their identity, and ultimately their lives. He recalls saying goodbye to his father as a young boy, not realizing it would be their final moment together. He describes surviving on scraps of marmalade, clinging to life in a world built to destroy him, and never once believing he’d live to see freedom. We explore his complicated relationship with his mother, his abandonment of faith, and the quiet, powerful act of starting over—first in North America, then in Israel. From unspeakable loss, Gidon rebuilt his family tree—one that now includes six children, 16 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Gidon Lev (00:00.763)
whatever you want to know, whatever is of interest to you, I'm ready to try and answer anything that you want to know if I know the answer. Sometimes I may not know the answer, but...
Tim Doyle (00:04.734)
Awesome. I really.
Tim Doyle (00:15.299)
Yeah.
Awesome, yeah, I really appreciate it. Well, I'll kick things off. Gidon, welcome to the show.
Gidon Lev (00:27.089)
Thank you.
Tim Doyle (00:29.038)
I want to share a few numbers to help us grasp the scale of what we're talking about and to deepen the appreciation for you being here. 154,000 Jewish people were transported to the concentration camp to Reisenstadt. Of those, 88,000 were sent onto gas chambers. 35,000 died over a four-year span from starvation. And of the 15,000 children,
sent his raisin stock only around a hundred survived and you are one of those survivors where would you like to start take us there
Gidon Lev (01:10.535)
Well, first of I want to make a couple of corrections. First of all,
Gidon Lev (01:21.981)
It's true, at least it seems to be true, that only about a hundred children survived. But we're not talking only about children. We're talking about children and young kids. I would say up to the age of 16, 17, maybe 18. 15,000 all together. And you're right.
Out of those 15,100 survived. And those were not only children or young people who survived in Theresienstadt itself, but who actually were sent to other camps and survived there and came back. Now, the numbers, I don't think it really matters that much, but there are
some very big arguments about how many really there were. All I can say is very few did come back alive. And I was lucky enough to be one of those at the age of 10.
Tim Doyle (02:46.818)
So in 1938, you moved to Prague three months after Hitler takes over the part of Czechoslovakia that you lived in. And there's an interesting moment that I've heard you reflect on that's a memory that's stayed with you throughout your entire life when you were very young. And it goes to this memory of you leaving behind your tricycle.
Gidon Lev (02:52.529)
Yes.
Tim Doyle (03:15.574)
at the train station. And I feel like it's a microcosm for what was happening on a grander scale because you at such a young age weren't able to fully comprehend or understand what was happening. And it feels like that tricycle in a way and losing that part of your childhood in a way, it feels like it it's mirroring.
what's happening on a grander scale for what's happening for adults of, you know, their houses being taken away, their lives being taken away, the world that they're crumbling, this world that's just crumbling in front of them. Do feel like that's part of the reason why that memory has stayed so vivid for you all these years?
Gidon Lev (04:03.897)
You know?
Gidon Lev (04:07.485)
I'm sure you do know there are things in our lives, especially when we're young, we don't remember. I sometimes don't remember even what I ate two days ago. So imagine that approximately 80, 85 years ago, I was a little kid. I was three years old, but some things actually
stuck in my mind. And one of those things is definitely the fact that yes, in 1938, my parents and my grandparents on my father's side
decided that they cannot cope with the situation that developed in Karlsbad, Karl-Ul-Ivari, which was called Sudetenland and was already part of Germany.
since Chamberlain had given over that part to Hitler, hoping that to avoid war. And yes, I remember that time that, you I was three years old. I am with my grandfather.
That's me with my grandpa. And I loved him dearly and he must have loved me very much too, because whatever photos I have of him, he's always holding me. Not my father, my grandfather. So it's quite unusual. Anyway, so that stayed in my head. And I almost can feel it.
Gidon Lev (06:13.789)
I always kind of, you know, here I am, have this tricycle brand new. I got it as a birthday present from my parents only three months before. This was June, my birthday is in March. And of course, I rode it all the time. And my mother used to, I remember my mother saying, no, we're going to bed. So I rode my tricycle to the bed. No, do you want to take it to bed?
I said, can I? It was a joke. But of course, yes, it was for us thinking, so tricycle, schmeicycle, what does it mean? But for a kid three years old that loves something so deeply, so much, enjoyed it, that was the first real.
Tim Doyle (06:46.766)
Ha
Gidon Lev (07:12.987)
Hammer on my head.
Tim Doyle (07:17.752)
So when you moved to Prague, there was this slow incremental shifting of what Jews were allowed to do. Little by little, the go posts kept moving certain places you couldn't go, certain things you couldn't do. And I think that step by step, I think that step by step process and that gradual shift is often overlooked. But it's important to understand that and appreciate that for the
alienation perspective of what you went through. Can you take us into what that felt like as a child and experiencing all those changes?
Gidon Lev (07:56.507)
yes i i at least partially i can look
Gidon Lev (08:04.761)
I was three years old, three when this happened. three years old. From age three to age six, almost six actually, we lived in Prague. And the Germans took over the country, Prague and the rest of the country, only about...
Two months later.
Gidon Lev (08:38.972)
It was so easy. There was a road connecting Kazbat with Prague, the tanks, the motorcycles.
Gidon Lev (08:51.629)
was all there. Nobody was stopping them. So Hitler gave the order, take over the rest of the country. And within three months, the German army was spread all over Czechoslovakia, including Prague. So that our, sort of as it was an escape from the German Nazis,
In Kazba, they followed us to Prague. And the Germans, being Germans, are very systematic. Though I must say to you that that didn't always work for them and they didn't always keep to their strict rules. But as far as the Jews were concerned,
It was systematic dehumanization, isolation, segregation.
Gidon Lev (10:03.015)
to a point where...
After two years of that, three years of that, the Jewish people living under Hitler in Kiosk, they felt what else can they do? They couldn't go to parks. They couldn't go to public places like a gym or a swimming pool. They couldn't own a bicycle or ride one.
or on a motorcycle or a car. They had to hand in any radios or cameras or typewriters. They had to hand in whatever jewelry they had. It was, every two or three days, there was a new rule.
I I recall, for example, I recall... By then I was already, I think, close to five years old. But the that I showed you before is to take me to a park. A little park just down the road.
and there was a playground there with swings and slides and all kinds of things.
My grandpa used to take me there and I would run to the one swing I loved, which was in the form of a canoe. I'd climb into it and he would push me and I, know, I was five years old, four years old. I loved it. One day we come there and I, of course,
run right away to my favorite swing and climb in and he runs after me says my name is my English name is Peter. He says Peter, Peter no no nine nine you can't go today no I'm sorry you can't go and I didn't understand. I why what happened what did I do what was I guilty of why am I being punished.
and he took me in his arms and I was hitting him with my little fist. He said, Grandpa, more, please. And he showed me. You see up there? See the sign here? You see what it says? Of course, I couldn't read it because I was not yet, I was five years old or something like that. And it said in German, Juden verboten, Jews.
are not allowed. And I didn't understand. I didn't know how to cope with it. I mean, I knew I was Jewish, even though I wasn't a, we weren't a religious observing family. But what does it mean? Why? What did we do? What did I do? Why am I being punished? And that kind of thing that left.
a mark, a deep sorrow, a deep pain. you know, it took me a while to get over that silly thing, being in a park and just in... But all the other children could do it, but they were Jews. So by the time, two, three years of that kind of regime...
Gidon Lev (14:29.339)
Jews were, had no rights.
They were almost as if nonexistent. Any document that the Jews had had to be stamped with a German cross, you know, the Hakel cross. It's the black thing. I personally didn't know exactly what was going on. My parents couldn't...
My father couldn't find work because nobody would hire a Jew. And my grandfather also was only old. Of course he couldn't. So my mother who had been trained as a hat maker, you know, like the queen in England and goes with a beautiful hat, know, the princess and all the lady go with this beautiful.
That's the kind of hat my mother used to make. So she took a table, an old table, put it in the living room and started making hats for rich ladies. Most of them, of course, all of them probably not Jewish. And I remember that.
Gidon Lev (15:59.441)
There was a sense of foreboding. What next? What else do they want to do? And then we learned.
Gidon Lev (16:11.473)
You're going to send us to another place. The Germans called it relocation.
relocation, not concentration. Hitler is giving the Jews a town.
and all the Jews will be sent there starting the month of December 1941.
And I remember my father and my grandfather came to the hospital because I was in a hospital. And why was I in a hospital? Because my tonsils were infected and I was having, I was being.
I was being sick all the time. So they decided to remove my tonsils. Imagine I'm a five and a half year old, or maybe almost six, in a hospital. My grandpa and my father come to say goodbye to me. I didn't understand. Why are you going? Where are you going? And I couldn't even say anything.
Gidon Lev (17:42.557)
because it hurts when you talk when the time is up. But I remember one thing. They brought me ice cream. They ice cream is good when you have time left because that you can eat. And they explained that they were going to set up a camp for the Jewish people and we will follow. The Germans promised that the first two transports of men that are going to set up the camp.
you know, put up the bunk beds and put up the barbed wire fences and whatever had to be done. The wives and mothers of these men would be sent to the same place. So on December 1st, they were sent there. And on December 14th, my father, my mother and I were sent to same place.
we were allowed to take 50 kilos of our belongings. And I remember these things even though I was almost only six years old.
But he was sincere that again, that's why we met. I assure you, I didn't remember.
Gidon Lev (19:11.335)
So.
After three years in Prague, very difficult.
we were, at the center of the 14th, sent to Arizona.
The German called the camps lag. Some people called the ghetto. But it was not a ghetto. Ghetto were neighborhoods in existing cities like Warsaw and.
other towns and cities where there was a certain neighborhood that was mostly Jews. And once the Germans took over, all the other Jews who were not living in the Jewish neighborhood were transferred to there, and fences and walls were put up, just like in the Warsaw Ghetto. That's a good example.
Tim Doyle (20:29.986)
Arbite mocked fry work sets you free that was painted over the entrance to the courtyard. What's the deeper significance behind that?
Gidon Lev (20:32.294)
Yes.
Gidon Lev (20:40.221)
Look, I find that sign, Arbaik Machfray, the most horrendous.
greatest lie that the Germans perpetrated. Because what really were they saying, which we didn't know. I'll bite my fly.
work frees you. The only free people working were those that died. Now, death is freedom, so be it. Yes, that's true, but it wasn't, because the fact is the Germans' real purpose was to use work to kill the Jews.
And not only Jews. They're real.
Gidon Lev (21:53.435)
significance was vernichtigung durch arbeit, destruction through work, annihilation through work. Work them to death. Sometimes they did it in spite of the fact that these people, like my mother and millions of others, were working, let's say making
shoes, gloves, jackets, pants for German soldiers on the Russian front.
The Germans were dying from cold because Hitler had forgotten that the Russian winter is...
Gidon Lev (22:51.207)
horrendous.
Gidon Lev (22:55.003)
Napoleon learned it too late, but I guess Hitler didn't ever read the war about Napoleon because thousands and thousands of Germans died on the front against the Russians, mainly from cold and being stuck in mud and deep snow.
So.
The logic.
of some of the things that the Germans did was impossible to understand, impossible to comprehend.
Tim Doyle (23:40.2)
Was there a belief ever that, okay, if we work really hard, that will set us free or it was you always people had the appreciation for that is propaganda. This is means death.
Gidon Lev (23:53.469)
Look, I was six years old. I was in a group of kids that were not old enough to work and live separate from their parents and not
Gidon Lev (24:18.714)
not
small enough not to do anything. So we fell between the spokes. I lived in a barracks called Dresden. There were about six or eight barracks, three stories tall, that were made up town of Theresichal, because they had been planned.
Years, years, years, years earlier, long before the German Nazis took over Germany as a defensive position against I don't even know who. So there were these barracks, and each barracks was with
Gidon Lev (25:15.779)
inside courtyard and each one was designated for one kind of population. There were barracks for the old people that couldn't work, the barracks for the men, the barracks for the women, there were barracks for the women and children and I was in that one.
So we said, there were a lot of activities going on there, but I wasn't part of it. My mother went to work at six o'clock in the morning, came back at six o'clock at night, and I was all by myself, together with tens, maybe hundreds of other children.
I learned very quickly that if I can find some kind of work helping to unload bread, maybe working, cleaning the horses of the German officers, I might find a little bit of food, not a piece of bread, maybe a little jam, maybe half an apple.
I guess the will, the determination to remain alive was there. Children don't want to die. Children want to live. And it expressed itself in me. And that's how I survived. That's how I survived.
Tim Doyle (26:56.716)
So that was work that you seeked out with the horses and the bread.
Gidon Lev (26:59.729)
Yes, yes, I look, yes, you know, in these barracks, they were pretty big. Maybe I have a picture someplace. will show, see my head. I'll show you. The barracks were three stories, and there were two gates to go in and to go out.
because they were under guard of the Germans. And inside, things to do were, I don't know, I found and I remember that once or twice a week, a truck would come through the May, go,
gate and unload the bread. Who's going to unload the bread? The Germans? No, of course not. The women were at work and the men were at work. So what was left was us kids. So I, together with three, four other kids, the minute we saw a truck coming, we ran to it and then helped unload the truck.
put the bread into the storage place. Loaves of bread, they were pretty heavy because this is German bread that's pretty heavy. Four, five, six loaves of bread on your hand and six, seven, eight years of taking it from one place to another. What was the idea here?
The idea is maybe I can break off a little piece of bread from one of the loaves. Or maybe I find something in the storage place. And one time I remember, this was once again, so many things I don't remember, but this I remember. One of the kids that was with me, his name was Michael, he ran over to the back.
Gidon Lev (29:25.967)
of the storage bin and said, hey guys. And we saw these big like beer barrels, you know? But there was no beer in them. But there had been some kind of marmalade or jam in them. We broke off some cardboard from someplace, I don't know where, and scratched the inside.
And then that same day, when they gave us a slice of bread for supper, we would put a little bit of jam on them. And that's one way of surviving.
Tim Doyle (30:12.226)
With your family at Theresienstadt, was there ever a point where you and your entire family were at that camp or did certain family members never make it to Theresienstadt and they were sent other places from the start?
Gidon Lev (30:28.001)
Actually, most of my family, most of my family had actually...
gone through the Risen Shatah. I do not remember, I honestly have to admit, I do not remember many of them. I do remember one.
Gidon Lev (31:01.021)
I remember one family member, my 83-year-old great-grandmother. here I'll show you some pictures that I didn't show you before. This is when I told you. This is still in Karlsback.
Gidon Lev (31:26.545)
My grandpa is holding me, my father and my grandmother. That grandmother actually died in Prague before the transport started.
Bye.
Thank
Gidon Lev (31:48.369)
Here.
Gidon Lev (31:52.157)
is an interesting picture.
Who are these four people?
But these four people, you can already probably guess. You have my great-grandmother, that I showed you before, my grandfather, that's her son, my mother, and my father.
And guess what? I'm there too. You don't see me, but I'm in my mother's tummy because this was in October 1944. And she gave birth in March, 1940, 40, I'm talking 1934. She gave birth in March 1935.
So I was there with them. And you see their faces? Do they seem happy to you? Yeah, to me too. And they are. Why not? They're living in Czechoslovakia. What's happening in Germany? that's Germany. They're crazy there. Who cares what they do? What? They were, they were.
Tim Doyle (32:54.115)
Yeah.
Gidon Lev (33:14.353)
wrong. What was happening there very shortly after that started happening in Czechoslovakia because Hitler wanted to rebuild the German, the greater German, the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a Nazi.
Tim Doyle (33:16.322)
Yeah.
Gidon Lev (33:39.609)
Empire. And here they are walking, on a promenade, all happy. Now my great-grandmother arrives in Theresienstadt about three months later.
was there for three months and then she was shipped to Treblinka.
And because she was old, because she didn't work and she couldn't work, she was too old. She was 83 years old. So she was in the barracks with all the other people, which was a terrible place, terrible place. People were sick. People were hungry. The Germans fed the old people the least amount of food because it wasn't, why feed people?
that don't work.
And I remember one time going with my mother to visit her. I couldn't even walk straight. People were on the floor in the halls. And it was so horrific. It is indescribable. And then when she was told that the next day she's going to be sent to another camp.
Gidon Lev (35:05.575)
She was happy. She said, at last, I'm getting out of here. Also, she was very middle-class, very well-brought up, cleanliness, neatness. upper-middle-class.
and she couldn't wash there. So I remember going to the railway station, which wasn't actually a station, just a building in the end of the rail line. And I see her, she sees my mother and me coming towards her, and she sees that my mother is almost in tears.
No, stop, stop, stop, No, I'm glad I'm going. can't anymore where we were. And what can they do to me? What can they do? I'm too old to work. So I will just be. Little did she know, the very fact that she was old and she couldn't work was her death sentence.
because that's exactly what happened. And she wasn't sent to Auschwitz, she sent to Treblinka. And one correction I wanted to make about something he said at the beginning is that people were not only sent to one camp, people were sent to many camps. Perhaps the majority was Auschwitz, but...
The Strabiota. Dahal.
Gidon Lev (36:59.917)
many bergen belz many camps and the germans didn't tell you you're going to go here you're going to go there
The fact is, part of the big lie was we in Dresdenstadt never knew.
Gidon Lev (37:22.883)
about gas chambers and firing squads. By the way, for your information, more people died by shooting, mass shootings, than by them in the gas chambers. So you can imagine how horrific that was. there two things that were.
Gidon Lev (37:55.311)
A.
terrible reality in doing this stuff. One was hungry. We are hungry from morning to evening, from evening to morning, all the time. All of
And the other was the fear, just the fear of being sent to the East. You never knew. And there is, that was a very special place. There were concerts there and shows and puppet shows. So today, we were playing the violin.
and playing it well. The musicians were good, conductors were good.
The cream of the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia was in Prague. They were all intelligent. So today you play and tomorrow morning you receive a notification to report to the train rails and be sent to war. It was horrific. It was horrible.
Tim Doyle (39:19.948)
Why didn't you get sent east? Was that just pure luck?
Gidon Lev (39:25.903)
Yes and good question, yes and no. Now what do I mean by yes and no?
The women, as I told you, the women that were in Terezin-Shetak, wherever they were, all worked. My mother worked in a factory where they were splitting mica, which comes in a form of stone that's mined in mines. Mended the mining, the women had to split the stone into very
thin, thin, thin sheets that the Germans used for their electronic equipment as insulation.
And every few days, the Germans would weigh the amount that each woman did. And they never told the women how much they have to do in order to remain in this factory. But they, the Germans, knew what they wanted. And if the woman...
Inger, or Doris, or Hannah, or Betty didn't do the amount that the Germans decided was the amount that they needed to get from them. The next day, they were informed.
Gidon Lev (41:11.781)
report to the trail. I guess my mother must have done enough to remain and because she remained, I remained. So you can look at it as you wish.
My mother, it's just so happens. Fact is I can tell you little short story. For a short period, my mother and I and another young woman, my mother was about 35, 34 and the other woman was the same, lived in one little room. I don't know how come where there was just.
a double bunk.
Only four of us in The little girl, her name was Eva, and she was about my age. our two mothers went off to work at six in the morning, and we stayed alone.
and we became friends. We this with seven us, eight of us.
Gidon Lev (42:33.639)
can say that he fell in love, I was in love.
I was in love with Erychka and she was, you know, she was very agile. She knew how to do somersault and carpouille and all kinds of things. And I loved it. Then one day.
Tim Doyle (42:42.573)
Wow.
Gidon Lev (42:57.597)
The mother came home.
Gidon Lev (43:01.885)
and said, well, say goodbye. Tomorrow morning we have to go to the train station. And I cried.
I cried, was so, so sad. I can't even explain it to you. My mother was not very supportive. stop crying. You'll find another friend. I never did. I never did. So.
Yes.
Tim Doyle (43:36.632)
Something you briefly mentioned a little bit earlier was different concerts and plays and playing the violin.
I find that really interesting that there was that creative component. Was that entertainment for the Nazis running the camp or was that the purpose or what was the purpose for that?
Gidon Lev (43:55.281)
Yes.
Gidon Lev (43:59.931)
Good question, good question. Because there was so much talent there, so many people, and the Jews were able to organize themselves. They had to do what the Germans said, they, fact is there were some concerts that were on such a high level that some of the officers would go and listen.
Gidon Lev (44:30.395)
end.
People always ask, how were these people able to be creative? In music, in plays, in puppets, in shows.
And the answer is, the people gave an answer that I today can understand. As long as we are active, we are creative, we play, we sing, we perform, we are alive. We are living. What will be tomorrow?
We have no, absolutely no control over that. And that's my answer.
Tim Doyle (45:29.42)
Yeah, I mean, that's incredibly powerful. It's like that creative outlet was how they could reclaim any sense of their identity and their humanity rather than simply just being seen as this working object. On the flip side of that creativity, I want to talk about something that was created on the Nazi side of things. So in
Gidon Lev (45:45.02)
Yeah.
Tim Doyle (45:57.526)
June of 1944, the International Red Cross came to inspect the camp and the Nazis made pretty much like a propaganda film to make it look like the conditions were much better than they really were. Do you remember the whole experience of that film being created and you know, like
Gidon Lev (46:04.775)
Yes.
Gidon Lev (46:12.059)
Yes.
Gidon Lev (46:21.373)
Thank
First of all, I've seen part of the film now.
It was, by the way, never hit the big screens or anything. But the fact is...
Gidon Lev (46:42.876)
once alive is so
in three.
intricate part of life. It doesn't matter what goes after that. It all is life. The Germans, you have to understand what extreme that was. The Germans demanded from all the countries such as Holland,
Gidon Lev (47:19.005)
I think Norway, Denmark, even though they didn't, they were neutral. Okay, you'll be neutral, but we want you to get rid of the Jews. And then the Danish.
government agreed to send the Jews from Denmark to the Risenstadt under the condition that they could send a Red Cross delegation to see how they are.
So the Germans spent half a year preparing.
Gidon Lev (48:09.115)
They set up a whole street with stores, painted signs. mean, they had the labor, the Jews were there.
Tim Doyle (48:20.632)
This was set up within the camp.
Gidon Lev (48:22.407)
within the camp. They even printed money that had the same value as if you play Monopoly, Monopoly money has. Same value, no value. They printed it, if there is, start written on it.
Gidon Lev (48:45.681)
They set up stores. Not a whole bunch. Three, four, five stores. One store with clothing. Where were the clothing? New clothing? Yes, new clothing. From the last transport of the people that came. From Prague or wherever. Took the clothing, had them iron it, fold it, put it on the shelves.
Gidon Lev (49:13.787)
They even created a little park, which was in existence. There were trees there and grass, but we never were allowed to go there. You get cross. All of sudden, there were swings there and a slide. And I remember, and this I remember almost like it was today, a truck came to my barracks.
the resident barracks and German officers said, come here, come children, come here, we're going to play.
to play kids six seven eight ten years old okay yeah Germans say we play we'll play they took us there they opened let us jump out and move cause what did we do we played we ran to the swings and ran to the slides and did whatever there was to do
Red Cross wasn't standing next to us.
Tim Doyle (50:33.23)
And that was all being filmed when you were playing? Wow.
Gidon Lev (50:37.831)
It was all being filmed. All being filmed, not from 10 meters away, from 5 meters away, from a distance.
Gidon Lev (50:50.125)
And the whole show was like a make-believe.
And once the delegation left, and they had a wonderful report to write, the Jews that can buy clothing and they have food. And of course, they prepared also people what they're allowed to say to if they wanted to speak to Or if he said something that was not critical, or not good. and you have CNN here.
Yes, we have seen the truth. was only half truth. And half truth alive. Then, yesterday and today too.
Tim Doyle (51:43.778)
When did you first start to believe that you were going to survive and be freed?
Gidon Lev (51:50.491)
Never, I never believed it. I never, I never thought, I just had the thought of, I want to stay alive.
I thought, I want to stay alive. I loved playing soccer. And we even played soccer in the yard. In the dressing room. We didn't have a real ball. So what did we play with? We took old clothing, cut it into strips, made it into a roll.
And for the first half hour and 40 minutes, it stayed and it fell apart and the game was finished.
It was such a strange place, there were competitions and so on.
Underneath it all, underneath the joy, the happiness for five, ten minutes, an hour, two hours, was the thrill of death. And we didn't even know it. And we did not know.
Tim Doyle (53:17.132)
you ultimately get freed by the Russians, the Red Army in in May, 1945, and you first go to a recuperation place. What was that like?
Gidon Lev (53:21.115)
Yeah, next time.
Gidon Lev (53:30.909)
Oi, you know, I remember but I don't remember the details. But you know, in European countries, there many castles. If not castles, like the...
Gidon Lev (53:52.205)
ultra-rich society had its various people who had mansions, mostly mansions with gardens and gardens and gardens and people working and serving. So of course, by the end of the war, they were mostly empty because they had been held by the German.
Nazis by the officers. So they, the Czech government at the time, the Czech regime arranged the Jewish representation that the children from the age of let's say three or four to the age of 10 would be spent.
We spent two weeks recuperating in these places. So I was one of those and it was fun. But it was also a little tricky because we were crowded a little bit in rooms. didn't each have our separate little room. There were 10 of us in the room instead of two of us. And there were some bigger rooms with one.
bunk our bed next to the other and there were activities. Now remember one thing when we took little walks or hikes outside of the perimeter of the Schloss, the Germans called it. They warned us, be careful, don't pick up anything. The Germans sometimes threw away their arms.
and anguining.
Gidon Lev (55:54.693)
and did it so that if you touched it, was the last time you touched it. And that happened a number of things. I was careful. I was afraid. Yeah, there was a short period, a couple of weeks.
Tim Doyle (56:15.864)
So you and your mother from your family are the only ones that survived. And after the recuperation, you went back to Prague with your mom, hoping that, all right, let's go back there and see if other family members would return. Do you remember how long you stayed in Prague until you realized nobody was coming back?
Gidon Lev (56:46.237)
You know, I really don't There's nobody around to ask. My mother died in 2003. She's the only one. And I didn't speak or talk to her about what there was before. I regret not having done so. But I was concentrating on today, now, living, raising a family, having a wife.
My hands were full, I have six children, so I was busy trying to make a living feeding them. But I think it was something like a few months, not very long. After three, four months, I think we realized that nobody's coming back. And...
went back to Kalzbad. And my mother found a friend there who owned a house.
and she had a little apartment and we lived there and it was was fine and my mother started working in the air profession and yeah it was it was good it was clear that nobody's coming back i want to just make one correction here actually
out of the 26 family members or more. I think there were actually more.
Gidon Lev (58:37.821)
who survived a great end.
my grandmother's sister and a cousin.
She was my father's cousin.
They both survived and of course now they're dead. But once again, because I didn't talk about the past, because I wasn't interested in the past, because I didn't want to remember the suffering, I didn't speak. Once again, regret, regret, regret, because I'm sure that my raid ends.
could have told me a great deal about my grandmother.
Tim Doyle (59:37.784)
That's a tough thing to grapple with. I mean, because it obviously would have brought a lot of pain and suffering to you to rehash that. But I guess
Gidon Lev (59:42.363)
It is.
Tim Doyle (59:54.488)
potentially a lot of.
I mean, what do you think it would have been like for you to have pursued that work to further understand that and uncovering those truths?
Gidon Lev (01:00:13.149)
I think it would have enriched my life. If I would have known a little more, you see, I want to show you something. I'll come back to that. This is a wedding picture.
of my grandfather and my grandmother.
Tim Doyle (01:00:35.478)
on your father's side or mother's side there.
Gidon Lev (01:00:37.373)
mother side. Her name is Liesel, Liesel. And this is my grandpa that you saw in the picture before, is a heavy and he played the viola by
Tim Doyle (01:00:48.963)
Yep.
Gidon Lev (01:00:56.517)
This man.
Gidon Lev (01:01:01.255)
fought in the First World War.
For the German, of course, for Austro-Hungarian, there are, by the way, a good many Jews who fought in that war for the Germans. And you would think because they fought for the war, the Germans, the Germans would treat them with respect and honor them. And that's what he thought. That's what he thought. His name was Fritz. That's what he thought.
Tim Doyle (01:01:34.347)
Wow.
Gidon Lev (01:01:35.035)
What can they do to me? I fought for the Germans. I was even decorated with an iron cross. It didn't help him at all. He died in Treblinka together with his, not his wife, because he divorced her.
or some idiotic reason that I can't even explain because there's nobody to ask today. Her sister is who survived. Out of a family of six, she was the only one. But because I didn't ask, she didn't tell and now it is gone.
It's the very idea that this lady, she was beautiful, pretty, outgoing, was raising my mother all through the time of the First World War while her husband was in the army.
When he came back in 1918, 1990, it took a while till the soldiers came back. His sister and his mother cooked up some kind of story that she had been unfaithful to him.
while he was there, and it wasn't true. Another cousin who I did once hear speak about it said, it's not true, it never happened. They were just jealous of her because she was so friendly and outgoing and pretty.
Gidon Lev (01:03:42.567)
What's he?
listen to his mother and to his sister, divorce her, and she was sent back to a family that lived in Vienna.
Gidon Lev (01:04:01.659)
so that when she was sent to the concentration camp, she was sent actually to a camp, not to a camp, but to a village in southeastern Poland.
in 1943. And there they just slaughtered everybody who was Jewish. And she was among them. So.
Gidon Lev (01:04:33.767)
Things that bothered me because I didn't ask, because I didn't, because I would have loved to really know what was it, what happened here. He himself died with his second wife, and his son from the second wife in Treblinka. And Treblinka was 100 % dead again. Nobody left there alive.
They killed 900,000 Jewish people in one year.
Gidon Lev (01:05:12.891)
And when they finished doing that, they destroyed any and all evidence of there ever, ever being a concentration camp.
Tim Doyle (01:05:34.336)
So going back to that.
reflective process for you and having that regret of not pursuing that work to
understand what happened with your family. Do you think that would have been a very painful process for you where you would have relived all that suffering and then ultimately it would have felt enriching or yeah.
Gidon Lev (01:06:05.604)
Yes. Yeah, exactly how you put it. Exactly how you put it. I think I would have been very...
I would have maybe cried.
Tim Doyle (01:06:20.908)
Yeah, I mean, can you appreciate that you wouldn't have wanted to go through that again?
Gidon Lev (01:06:20.967)
Good.
Gidon Lev (01:06:27.713)
Yes, you know, as you well know, knowledge gives you power. And the more you understand, the more you can...
Gidon Lev (01:06:49.625)
imagine construct, reconstruct the richer you are. So I lost out on this and I'm truly very very sorry that this is so.
Tim Doyle (01:07:10.946)
That's beautifully said though. I I completely agree with you that the more knowledge you have, the more you're able to construct different stories and different narratives and perceptions of everything as you continue to live your life.
Gidon Lev (01:07:18.269)
Yeah.
Yes, that's what happened. It's painful, not easy, but it enriches you. The whole story of my grandmother. Can you imagine a being forced in Vienna in 1943 to kneel on the sidewalk?
and using a toothbrush, brushing the... and people around there yelling and calling names and maybe hitting you, spitting on you.
Gidon Lev (01:08:08.477)
It's just about unimaginable.
Tim Doyle (01:08:15.948)
You've spoken about having a challenging relationship with your mother and you've alluded to it a little bit throughout the conversation, like going back to when you were in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and your friend who you were in love with leaves and you start crying and she says, you know, stop crying. So you've shared a few moments like that, given that she was the only immediate family you had left.
Gidon Lev (01:08:21.115)
Yes.
Tim Doyle (01:08:46.156)
How do you think that shaped your bond with her, especially if you did have that challenging relationship where that was the only family you had?
Gidon Lev (01:08:55.291)
Well, I'm afraid to admit that I was...
Gidon Lev (01:09:04.893)
an idiot. I know it's strange for me to come out and say, yes, I should have, I could have.
Gidon Lev (01:09:22.189)
as painful as it was, as difficult as my mother was. Of course she was difficult. When I learned that she was sent away from her mother. No, was, she had been raised by her mother for six, seven years, and then her mother is being sent away without her. Can you imagine a little girl how terrible that was?
No wonder she never wanted to talk.
Gidon Lev (01:09:58.875)
No wonder. So she was a troubled lady long before the concentration camp. But it carried through. She was terribly strict with me. She made me do things that I don't even want to think about.
Gidon Lev (01:10:24.145)
painful
Gidon Lev (01:10:37.83)
This is her.
This is here in Theresienstadt. This picture, my father held with him.
until the day he was sent to Auschwitz.
He had it in an envelope together with an emblem of the city of the town of Theresienstadt that he had made, had somebody made for him. And he threw it out in an envelope from that little window that you have in his.
my mother scooped it up and has it to this day. have the emblem I have also, it's with somebody who's trying to make it a duplicate of it. And this is a style of David that my mother wore in Prague.
Tim Doyle (01:11:42.499)
Wow.
Gidon Lev (01:11:49.817)
I didn't have one. Only children above 10. But everybody else did. You see, as the Germans kept on calling for new and more restrictions, the final restriction was this. Because what did it do? What effect? The Germans couldn't always tell who was Jew and who was not Jew.
Because not all Jews have big noses.
as they picture them.
They don't. But once the Jew patted on the left side of the chest, it easy. Come here, come here, you there. It easy.
So, as I said, it was systematic, was planned, it was thrown out, it was horrendous.
Tim Doyle (01:12:59.456)
Yeah, I mean, that's the biggest shift with the alienation where it goes from not just about what you can and cannot do, but then having that physical demarcation and that identifier.
Gidon Lev (01:13:14.301)
That's That's Identify. You can't do anything. You can't go anywhere.
Gidon Lev (01:13:26.023)
You didn't dare. You were afraid. If somebody, know, the big thing in that time, we didn't have television or little phones in the hand. All they had is the old phones on a wall and radios. Radios weren't small. Radios were big boxes like that.
Jews weren't allowed to have. But let's say some family decided, now we're going to keep this radio on a high and listen to it at night. But if your neighbors who weren't Jewish, who maybe were Czechs but were supportive of the German anthem called the Gestapo.
that they heard some noise they think it's suede.
In the next morning, they came to your house and found the radio. And they took the radio and took the entire family. And you never saw them again.
Gidon Lev (01:14:39.485)
So, yeah, it was.
Tim Doyle (01:14:43.854)
So continuing your journey forward after you get liberated and you start out in Prague and then you go back to Carlsbad and then in June of 1948 when I believe you're 13 years old, you moved to North America. You first go to the United States and you live in Brooklyn for a year and then the following year you go to Canada and you move there. And in my eyes,
You go into Canada is it feels like the true mark of your new life beginning. And the reason why I say that is because of your name. Like you mentioned earlier, your original name was Peter, Peter Wolfgang Love. And you first changed your name to Abraham, but it didn't stick. And then you officially changed it to get on live.
and that's your legal name now. Do you feel like you became someone new when you changed your name?
Gidon Lev (01:15:52.199)
That's a very good question.
I don't know if I became someone new, but I felt, I'm in a different country, a new country, my country. My name, Petel, certainly isn't Jewish. Peter Paul and...
I remember the trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, you remember? That they were very good, very good group. And Wolfgang, I didn't even know I had that name. And Lev, in school in Canada, they called me Peter.
I said, no, don't. But the fact is that I think it had a renewal effect on me in some way. I'm now Gidon Lev and the name was given to me by this
person from Ikebukuro here in the Jezreel Valley, actually above the Jezreel Valley.
Gidon Lev (01:17:33.061)
I stuck to it ever to this day and I'm happy to have it.
Tim Doyle (01:17:39.064)
How did moving to Israel continue that renewal process for you?
Gidon Lev (01:17:43.821)
it was shocking. It was hard. It was not easy. It was hard. You know, you talk about kibbutz and you learn about kibbutz you try to imagine, but you really don't know anything. When you come, it's like...
Tim Doyle (01:18:04.354)
For those that don't know what is kyBootz?
Gidon Lev (01:18:07.783)
For those who don't know what is a kibbutz, a kibbutz is a...
socialist community where every person...
Gidon Lev (01:18:25.725)
is part of the community, has full rights, but owns nothing except his immediate belongings. Nowadays it's changed, so it's not exactly the way it was. But that's the way it The kibbutz was a community that allowed...
Gidon Lev (01:18:51.813)
in many ways for the women of the community, not just to be with their children, raise family, but to work outside of the family, to work in agriculture, in the barn, in the fields, in factories, because their children are being taken care of by a...
responsible, educated person who would take care of your child. It allowed for tremendous lot of cooperation and...
It's like rebuilding a country, rebuilding a society.
At the time we had hoped that the whole country would become a quasi socialist democratic country. We are very far from that now. Still, the remnants of it still do exist in today.
Tim Doyle (01:20:08.782)
want to talk about faith. Your family, like you mentioned earlier, identified as Jewish, but wasn't religiously observant. You didn't have a Jewish name originally. And there are two moments from your life that feel like bookends to this conversation on faith. So the first one is that when you were a young child, right after you got liberated,
you shared how you would pray to God that your father was still alive and was coming home. But when you learned that he died and it was confirmed, you said, I stopped praying to God and never believed in him again. If there is a God, I thought he's awfully cruel and I didn't want to believe in such a God. And the second moment I want to talk about is years later when you did move to Israel,
You reflected back on a childhood memory. You went to a summer camp and the camp director tells you he wants you to sing a song for Parents Day called Song of the Jezreel Valley. And about 11 to 12 years later, when you did move to Israel, you ended up living in the Jezreel Valley in Kibbutz Hatshariyum. And you have this deep feeling of like
I'm finally home and I'd say that feels like a spiritual and divine moment with that trajectory of how things played out. These two experiences have two very different energies. Looking back on your life, what does faith mean to you and what do you think your relationship with faith looks like now?
Gidon Lev (01:22:00.061)
You really prepared yourself. I can see it's good. Okay, let's start with A. Yes, I came from a Jewish family that was very much assimilated.
Gidon Lev (01:22:26.605)
I don't remember as a family.
celebrating any Jewish holiday, including Hanukkah. I think it sort of seemed hazy, but I think that Hanukkah we did celebrate because it coincided with Christmas. So we had a Christmas tree, not a huge one, a little one, but we also, I think, had a Hanukkiah.
Did I know anything about it? Did I understand? No. And so you can see that religiously I was never deeply committed. And you're right. After the war, when we were waiting to hear if anyone would come back from the war, from the concentration camps.
I
foolishly perhaps. At least my mother thought it was foolish. Would kneel on my, next to my chair or my bed, bench, and pray to God, dear God, please, please, bring my dad back.
Gidon Lev (01:24:04.529)
He didn't. And yes, at that time I recall that I sort of made a mental decision.
Gidon Lev (01:24:21.531)
I don't believe it.
Gidon Lev (01:24:25.487)
And as you said, there is such a dream.
He is too cruel for me. How is it possible that he allows
Gidon Lev (01:24:50.883)
so many innocent people, so many people to die only because they were Jewish. And even if they weren't religious, they still will die. It doesn't matter. So, having said, I'm getting older.
Gidon Lev (01:25:24.285)
I still don't believe you, but I do.
So they recognize that for Jews, religion wasn't just religion over the centuries. It was a means by which they could identify themselves as being part of a certain people. And that's important. I don't believe it.
Gidon Lev (01:26:07.195)
I don't believe it. I give it a great deal of respect, more so today than ever before. Result.
being religious. In the name of religion, you can do almost anything, including...
Gidon Lev (01:26:29.821)
killing people.
Tim Doyle (01:26:32.397)
Mm.
Gidon Lev (01:26:33.789)
So, yes, that is where I am today.
And I, for the record, I feel that our government here today in Israel.
Tim Doyle (01:26:42.551)
Interesting.
Gidon Lev (01:26:52.067)
is a terrible, terrible government for the Jewish people as a whole, not just Israel, because many of two ministers that have become part of that government, Ben Will and Smodrich.
Would I be younger? I might do something to get rid of them. But I'm not. So they are safe, supposedly.
Tim Doyle (01:27:35.896)
building off the faith component, what we understand faith in unison with is also family. You have six children, 16 grandchildren, four great grandchildren, and it's not five now. I gotta keep going up.
Gidon Lev (01:27:49.437)
Thanks.
Pardon me. The last one is a great-grandson. His name is Agam. And Agam means lake, pond. Why is they giving him that name? Because they met at a certain lake.
Tim Doyle (01:28:12.152)
Wow, very cool. Yeah, I mean, the reason why I bring those numbers up is because no exaggeration at all.
How does it feel to know that you are the connecting link that kept your family bloodline alive and made it possible for future generations to be able to grow?
Gidon Lev (01:28:39.905)
I'm thrilled. I'm thankful to have been given that chance. I'm thankful that I have the children, grandchildren, and...
It wasn't planned. I didn't plan to have six children. It so happens that I did. I was married twice, so my first two are for my first wife, my next four are for my second wife. And here we are.
Gidon Lev (01:29:16.509)
16 grandchildren, five great grandchildren. I never thought I would live that long to have that joy and satisfaction. We rebuilt our family and it's thriving and there's some wonderful guys and girls in it. Believe me.
Tim Doyle (01:29:44.866)
Gidan, it's been a real honor to be able to speak with you today and to hear your story and the journey that you've been on throughout your entire life. Is there anywhere that you would want to send people to learn more about you or the info that you share with people or any lasting words you'd want to say?
Gidon Lev (01:30:15.389)
Yes, first of all, I want to just make one small little addition that you didn't have. Here is a picture. 19... I believe it's 1936, maybe 37. And who do we have here? Starting from uncle, second wife of my grandfather.
My grandfather is sister and
sister who is the wife of his and that's their son, John. John was the other survivor because in 1937 his parents saw, heard what's happening in Germany. They put him on a boat and send him to New York, Brooklyn.
to the great end, the same great end that found me and my mother in 1948. So now for anybody, please, the world is a really difficult place, but we can. No, we must make it a better place. And you, and you, and you.
can make it so. So do it. Thank you.
Tim Doyle (01:31:56.93)
Gidon, thank you for such a beautiful conversation.
