Zvi in 1948

The many patients who owe their good health to Prof. Zvi Eyal, the recently- retired head of Surgery Department A at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, recognize the outstanding education and medical skills that he contributed to that world-class department. But few are aware of the obstacles that World War II hurled on the road to his career, or the enormous personal risks that characterized his life as a teenager during the Holocaust and soon afterward as a young fighter for Israel's independence.

Born in Holland in 1925, Zvi was 15 when the war broke out. His older brother, Manfred Klafter, a soldier in the Dutch army when the Germans invaded Holland, had joined the Dutch underground after Holland's capitulation, but Zvi and his mother were interred in the Westerbork transit camp in January, 1942 after having been caught trying to escape to England. Later, Manfred was captured and sent to the camp as well.

"From his experience in the underground, my brother understood that we had to get out of Vesterbrook, or we would be sent off to perish in the extermination camps," Eyal recalls. Indeed, their father was killed at Auschwitz and their mother sent to Thereisenstadt, where she managed to survive. On the night in September, 1944 before the deportation to Auschwitz, the two brothers planned a daring escape. "We took shears from a factory where shot-down allied planes were being stripped for scrap metal," the doctor continues. "During the daytime, I cut the wire fence of the camp and covered the hole with greenery. Then, at night after roll call, when the siren sounded for everyone to return to their barracks, we escaped."

The breakout was noticed immediately, but the brothers kept running as soldiers and dogs kept up the chase. When they felt they could go no further, they knocked in desperation at the door of a house along the way. Miraculously, they were received by a Dutch woman who risked her own life to take them in, feed them and help them continue until they finally reached Amsterdam where they went into hiding. "The people who helped us were later recognized by Yad Vashem as righteous gentiles," Eyal says.

An avid student, Eyal had studied with incarcerated professors during his imprisonment at Westerbork, and was even able, under false pretenses in surrealistic circumstances, to take his matriculation exams. Immediately after the war, he began university studies in Utrecht while continuing his pre-war activity in the Zionist Movement. In May, 1946, he came to Israel with a group of Jews taken out of Europe by the Jewish Brigade. "We were smuggled to Belgium, where we were joined by Jews from Germany and other countries," he explains.

"Then we were taken to various locations in France until we boarded a boat to Haifa. The British were notified, and we were forced to change boats in mid-sea. But fortunately, we arrived in Haifa before the British began sending refugees to Cyprus." Eyal was briefly interred at the Atlit detention camp and then released with the papers that would allow him to start life in Israel.

Zvi at the University

But his studies of biochemistry at Hebrew University were once more interrupted when he joined the Haganah. After learning how to handle weapons, Eyal was sent to Gush Etzion with a group of students whose mission was guarding the bloc against massive Arab attacks. "I participated in one of the crucial battles in January, 1948," he recalls. "We were able to hold our positions, and that is the reason that Gush Etzion did not fall at that time." But there was a terrible price to be paid: the murders of his friends, the 35 students killed in their attempt to bring supplies to the Gush. Eyal himself suffered serious injuries, but was undeterred in his dedication to the cause of independence. "When I recovered, I fought in many more battles in the Negev and the Galilee."

After he was released from the army in 1950, Eyal completed an M.A. in biochemistry, and, with his wife, Hefsiba, returned to Holland for medical school. He began his career at Hadassah as a surgeon, advancing through the ranks to become a full professor and head of Surgery Department A.

Zvi Today

Today, still affiliated with Hadassah as professor emeritus, Eyal serves on the executive board of AMCHA, Israel's organization for psychological and social services to Holocaust survivors. Founded by Eyal's brother, Manfred Klafter, ten years ago as a grass-roots, self-help association, AMCHA now reaches out to thousands of survivors from branches across Israel. "Countless survivors who reached Israel after enduring the horrors of the Shoah dedicated their lives to building and defending this country," he stresses. "Now, as many need help in coming to terms with the past, they deserve nothing less than the most compassionate and professional assistance available."

	Menachem Perlmutter
	Baruch Fettman
	Miriam and Yehuda Goldman
	Amb. Benjamin Navon
	Shmuel Armal