Max Leibler

Max Leibler was born in Berlin on 1 June 1923. His parents were the merchant David Meir Leibler and his wife Malka, who had both moved to Berlin from Poland after World War I, where they met and married in 1922. Max had two younger sisters, Erna, born in 1926, and Rita, born in 1932. The family last lived in Gipsstraße in Berlin-Mitte, in a neighbourhood where many Jews lived.
Max grew up in a religious family where emigration to Israel was a frequently discussed topic, but did not seem realistic because of his father's poor health. From 1929 to 1937, Max attended a Jewish boys' school. He then attended a commercial school and trained as a carpenter.
The family's life changed dramatically in October 1938, when Jewish men with Polish citizenship were arrested and deported to Poland. When the father was arrested and taken to a camp, the mother immediately took the initiative and sent Max to Oswiecim / Auschwitz, where her family lived. The farewell to his parents and to Rita was a farewell for ever, as they were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. He saw his sister Erna again later in Israel. After their father's arrest and Max's departure, mother and sisters remained alone in Berlin for the time being; in the summer of 1939, they received entry visas for Poland and also moved to Oswiecim, where they saw their father again.
Max had already been in Bialystok in eastern Poland since May 1939, in a training camp that prepared Jewish youths for life in Palestine. When the occupation of Bialystok by German troops was imminent at the beginning of the war, the youths fled to Lithuania, where they waited in Vilnius for over a year for visas to Palestine. The group travelled via Moscow to Odessa, from where they went by ship to Istanbul and from there overland via Lebanon to Haifa. There Max met his uncle Meir Avramchik and his wife Rosa, who supported him in starting a new life.
Since 1941 Max lived in kibbutz Saad in the Negev region in Israel. Max passed away in July 1994 at the age of 71.