Baruch with his wife in the 1950's

By the time Baruch Fettman arrived in Israel at the age of 14, just months before statehood was declared, he had learned more about the depths of human cruelty and the strength of the human spirit than most men learn in a lifetime. Born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1934, Baruch lost his entire family before he was 10 years old. "The Nazis took my father away to the Yasanowatz death camp in Yugoslavia, where he was executed just a week before the liberation," he recalls. "My mother, my sister and I ran away to my uncle in Budapest. But my mother and sister were sent to Auschwitz, where they were killed." The young boy was put in a Jewish orphanage, where, miraculously, he was able to remain through the war.

When Hungary was liberated, the Zionist organization Dror Habonim gathered up Baruch and other war orphans and sent them to a camp for displaced persons, where, the survivor recalls, "the Joint Distribution Committee and UNWRA fed us, rehabilitated us and tried to give us an education to make up for the lost years of the war. But we children were broken people who didn't want to learn after all we'd been through. For our teacher, it was like Moses taking the Jews out of Egypt. We had to change our entire way of thinking and living."

The Haganah organized passage to Israel for the youngsters and they departed from France on the Exodus, which was crowded with 4,500 survivors trying to flee Europe. "The Haganah had it all planned," Baruch remembers. "We were to sail at normal speed in order not to attract attention. Then, when we were three miles from Haifa port, the boat would speed up toward shore. We would be dressed in swimming suits so we could disembark and mingle with the other bathers at the shore-and the British wouldn't know whom to arrest." But once the Exodus reached the open sea, the British tried to board and take over the ship. The passengers had been trained by the Haganah for such events and were able to resist for a while. Nevertheless the ship was overpowered by the British, who towed it to Israel with their warships.

"When we reached Haifa under British guard, we were sent on to Cyprus. But the DP camps there were filled to capacity, so the British authorities returned us to our point of departure in France."

But, with the eyes of the world upon them, the survivors refused to leave the ship. From June to September, most held firm, despite offers from the French prime minister of citizenship, housing and employment for anyone who would disembark. The passengers mounted a hunger strike and, as world opinion grew in their favor, the British brought the ship to Hamburg, where they had jurisdiction. "We were forced to leave the ship and they put us in former German army camps," Baruch says. "We stayed there for four weeks, with no one allowed in or out and then transferred to a more open camp in the north of Germany. The Haganah was able to smuggle us out and we were shipped to Israel once again."

This time, the mission was a success. The immigrants entered Israel in March 1948 with false passports, which they were soon able to exchange for authentic ones. Baruch was sent to Kibbutz Givat Brenner where he was cared for by a family that had come from Austria.

When he turned 18, Baruch joined a kibbutz in the north that was founded by Hungarians. Too young to fight in the War of Independence, he joined the army as a paratrooper in 1952 and married a female soldier of Kurdish background. "I didn't want to marry a survivor," he insists. "I wanted to create a normal Israeli family."

Baruch with his children in the 1960s

With four children and a successful career in the hotel business, Baruch was able to put the past behind him for almost four decades. And then Israel put John Demjanjuk on trial for war crimes, sentenced him to death-and let him go free on appeal. "I heard the news on the radio and I just fell apart," Baruch admits. "When the Eichman trial took place years earlier, it was different. The world learned about the unspeakable deeds of the Nazis and were able to understand what the survivors had gone through. And, of course, Eichmann was put to death. But here, with all of these terrible acts out in the open-the man could not be held legally responsible."

Baruch Today

Through the cloud of despair that enveloped him, Baruch heard telephone numbers for AMCHA broadcast on the radio-and called. The social worker talked him through the crisis and convinced him to come in and document his story on videotape. "AMCHA taught me that I should deal with the past instead of trying to suppress it, because it will always be part of me," Baruch says. "My life was saved physically during the Holocaust. Now AMCHA has saved it again-mentally."

	Menachem Perlmutter
	Miriam and Yehuda Goldman
	Amb. Benjamin Navon
	Prof. Zvi Eyal
	Shmuel Armal