For this survivor, Covid immunity is a chance start telling his story again

One year ago, George Shefi briefed Prince Charles on the Holocaust and then, suddenly, the pandemic brought his life mission of raising Shoah awareness to a halt.

With poignant timing on Wednesday, International Holocaust Memorial Day, Shefi received his second coronavirus vaccine in Jerusalem. What is his big hope now? A family gathering, or a trip to the theatre perhaps?

For the tireless 89-year-old retiree, imminent immunity means something else altogether: a chance to fly to Germany and teach kids there about the Holocaust. 

To date, he has met thousands of youngsters during regular visits to the country were he lived until he was dispatched to the UK on kinder-transport, but all visits stopped during the pandemic. 

In fact, the last time he was asked to give a full face-to-face account of his wartime experiences was ahead of last year’s Holocaust Day, in Jerusalem, when leaders from around the world visited to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Shefi, who spent much of his childhood in the UK, sat with Prince Charles in the Israel Museum, and the royal shed tears as he and another survivor spoke.

In the months since then, the invitations from Germany kept arriving. He had to decline them, but hopes his vaccine will change this. “My generation is the last generation that can tell people about this,” he said. “I remember Kristallnacht like it was yesterday. I promised people in Germany that as long as I can stand on my own two feet, I’ll go there.

“Wherever they invite me I go; it has to be that way. Some survivors turn around to German kids and say ‘you’re bad,’ but that’s pointless. We can’t blame German youth, and this makes more antisemitism than it prevents. From my point of view I want to get back there and return to talking to young Germans.”

He added: “I feel it’s our duty as survivors. It’s not a matter or wanting to or liking to do so, it’s duty.”

When Shefi talks, vividly giving a glimpse in to the horrors, it is easy to see why he is in demand as a speaker. “I was eight years old at kristallnacht,” he said. “On the morning of 10th November 1938 my mother said I couldn’t go to school. Needless to say I wasn’t so sad about that. But I also couldn’t go out of the house for three days, and after that I wasn’t allowed out alone. 

“It was quite a Jewish neighborhood in Berlin, with 16,000 Jews among 60,000 people. I remember going out with my mum and seeing a store that was broken, with all the hats strewn in the street. In our building there was a stationery store owned by a Christian-Jewish couple, and people wrote on the store ‘this site is owned by a Jewish pig and a Christian sow.’ I saw people yelling things that were unprintable. I’ll never forget it. I was shocked.”

Shefi’s school was burned down because it was Jewish, and when sent to a new school he was so racked with nerves that “I was even scared to go to the toilet.” Telling the story of his grandfather, who was ultimately “worked to death” by Nazi forced labor, he captures the tragedy of German Jews who pledged their allegiance to their homeland only to find themselves rejected.

Shefi recalled: “My grandfather was a regimental sergeant major in the German army in the First World War, and when they brought in antisemitic laws he always said, ‘I won’t observe them; I fought in the German army.’ He sat on the benches that were prohibited for Jews and took me to parts of Berlin where we weren’t allowed to go.”

Asked about the pandemic Shefi, a self-described “eternal optimist,” tried to find a positive spin, but said he couldn’t come up with much aside from the fact he is spending less money on petrol and restaurants. But he stated that his sense of humor — which he admits some people find inappropriate when infused in to his telling of wartime experiences — keeps him young.

All in all, he believes that his turbulent youth gave him tools to handle the upheaval of the coronavirus crisis.

“I left Germany on Kinder-transport, and was shifted around quite a few families. I went on to Canada then America,” he said. “My life made me adaptable and this has helped. I lived for three years in a British family that went to church, for years with a religious Jewish family, then with a non-religious family in America before moving to Israel.”

He reflected: “I think I handled the pandemic better than a lot of other people. My experiences in life made me more adaptable to changing times and changing places.”