Eliezer Ayalon

You can only listen to a life story like Eliezer Ayalon's with shock. He himself described it with incredible calm and composure in perfect English. Eliezer was practised. He worked six days a week to ensure that what had happened would not be forgotten.

About Eliezer Ayalon

Eliezer Ayalon was born in Radom in Poland and spent a very happy time there with his family, which came to an abrupt end with the German invasion. In 1942, when the Radon ghetto was dissolved, the then 14-year-old saw his family for the last time.

His work permit saved him from Treblinka, but not from the five camps, including Plaszow, which he had to endure during the war. Later, Elizier still woke up every morning looking at a small cup, similar to the one full of honey that his mother gave him as a parting gift with the words: "It is predestined that you will have a sweet life.

Eliezer Ayalon gave lectures, accompanied guided tours of Yad Vashem and answered questions. Ever since Eli Wiesel told him that it was predestined that he would tell his story, he has not stopped.

»And I am happy with what I am doing. I am passionate about life. I am passionate about people and I am passionate about what I do.«

Eliezer Ayalon

A PICTURE TO LIVE ON

"In my head, the cup is still filled with honey, and it overflows so that other people can fill their cups with the honey too. I have since adopted honey as a metaphor for my life."

Our encounter

We also learnt how important it is that the survivors of the Shoah have broken this silence after so many years. Eliezer has made it his life's work. He got up every morning, his cup on the bedside table, to fight against forgetting.

Because it's different when you can talk to someone who knows what it's like in a camp. When you're told that you can work out in the queue for a piece of bread whether you'll get a good piece from the middle or just the end, and that you'd better remember your number straight away so as not to give the drunken soldiers a reason for a spontaneous execution at the weekend.

It's also different when you get to know someone and associate a face with horror.

The evening after our meeting, we watched Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List". We already knew the film. But after our meeting with Eliezer, we also knew someone who had actually been in that cruel camp: a charismatic, impressive man who looked at us with kind eyes as he spoke of his time in the camp, his dreams and hopes.

Eliezer Ayalon died in 2012. We would like to take up his mission with our project and pass on his life story.