I left Bohumín in February 1948 and went to Liberec, where I stayed till September of the same year. The communists were already in power then. From Bratislava we traveled to Austria, from Austria to Italy and in Brindisi we boarded a ship to Palestine. When we arrived to Haifa, there were still officials from the UN and they were not allowing young people to immigrate to Israel. So we sailed back to Tel Aviv – there was not even a harbour there yet. We did not have any proper training; the others, who followed us in January, were already soldiers. My wife arrived officially in January. My arrival was still semiofficial. There were many elderly people on our ship, because they did not want to have too many young people eligible for military service there.
"The exact date of my arrival to Israel is October 20th, 1948. I joined the army right afterwards, on October 22, 1948, and I was in active duty till October 1st, 1950. When we came there, we felt very proud, because the weapons we used were made in Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, there were not enough weapons, not enough soldiers. We were being sent from one front to another. This was a difficult time. Back then, the country had 650,000 inhabitants, now the population is six and a half to seven million, that´s a huge difference. I´m proud of it, proud that our state, in spite of all these hardships, increased so much in size. Just tell me, whether there is any other state in the world that has grown so much. There is not."
"I do not like to talk about what follows. We were in the ghetto, then I got to the concentration camp. I was in the concentration camp - just a few words will suffice. When I was in this concentration camp, it was Gross-Rozen in Germany, they took us from there to Dresden to pull out bombs that have not exploded. This was the most dangerous work of all. Eventually it turned out that for us it was the best place. We had lots of food, the Germans ran away, and fortunately none of the bombs exploded - I mean of those that remained in Dresden. Then we were to return to the camp. Before we got there, we had to wait three days and three nights in a train, it was a cargo train, not the one for passengers. The tracks had been hit by bombs. From Dresden we got back to the concentration camp. Then the Russians liberated us, that happened in the Langen Billau Sportschule. It was the fifth of May. We had no idea what to do, and on the one hand we rejoiced, on the other we did not know what to do. I was not healthy either, I weighted only 37 kilos."
In which wars have you served? I have not served in the Six-Day war. But there was the "Chadesh" - the Holy war (Sinai/Suez war - ed.´s note). My tank was the very first tank to arrive to Falluja. This was in 1956. My son was only three months old then. At that time I prayed that , God willing, my son would not have to join the army when he grows up. Today, my son is 52, he was a high military officer, and twice he fought at the front. Once he was shot, but luckily the bullet only passed through his body. His first son was also in the army, the second one is still in active duty, he serves in the submarine unit."
„We spent several weeks in Germany in different places; various organizations took care for us. But I decided not to stay there, I wanted to go back to Czechoslovakia. There were no trains, no connection. So I found a bicycle and rode in the direction of Náchod. This took me several days, I was not strong enough. In Náchod, when one train conductor saw me, it was clear to him that I was coming from a concentration camp. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I told him that I’d like to go to Bohumín, to which he replied that there were no direct trains, but that I should go to Prague instead, and that there was the Czech Heart organization, which would help me. So I arrived to Prague, and waited there for somebody to come. Then came one lady: ´We’re closing for today, come tomorrow morning.´ ´I will stay here all night, I have no other place to go.´ ´All right, so you are going stay with us then.´ I became great friends with her children, so that I stayed with them not only for one night, but for the entire week. They became a family for me – whenever I came to Prague afterwards, I stayed in their place. When I finally arrived to Bohumín, I realized I had no home. I went to the place where we had lived, and another family was living there. I told them that I had been living there before. - ´I don’t care.´ I have waited so long to get home, and now I have no home anymore. I sat down on the staircase and started to cry. (...) I hoped father would return. I knew that mother and sister were not coming back anymore. (…) What would you like to do? I would like to study in the first place. To learn what I have forgotten meanwhile, to learn what I have not grasped yet, and to learn for the future. (…) There is a school in Ostrava, where they help those who did not have the opportunity to study.”
I went to the place where we had lived, and another family was living there. I told them that I had been living there before. I have waited so long to get home, and now I have no home anymore. I sat down on the staircase and started to cry.
Avraham Naiger was born in 1926 in Nový Bohumín in the Ostrava region, at that time his name was Adolf Naiger. After the Nazi invasion the family fled to Poland with the intention of escaping further to the Soviet Union. The escape attempt failed, the war front reached them in the town of Przemysl, and they had to return to Bohumín. His mother and sister were deported to Auschwitz, the father managed to escape to the Soviet Union, but he did not return after the end of the war and died somewhere in Siberia. Adolf Naiger was sent to the ghettos in Andrechow and Groeditz, and from there to the the Gross-Rozen concentration camp; towards the end of the war he participated in clearing Dresden of unexploded air bombs. After the camp’s liberation in summer 1945, Naiger rode a bike to the border town of Náchod, and from there he travelled via Prague to his native town of Bohumín. He joined the Zionist youth movement and took part in a training camp in Liberec. Naiger left for Israel in September 1948. He served in the Israeli army tank brigade during two wars: the war for independence and the Sinai war. Avraham Naiger lives in northern Israel in the city of Haifa and has two sons and five grandchildren.
