Abba Naor is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was born in Lithuania on March 21, 1928. At the age of thirteen, he was sent to the Kaunas ghetto together with his parents and two brothers. His older brother was shot in Fort IX while searching for food.
The family was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp and was separated there. His mother and younger brother were subsequently murdered at Auschwitz. Abba Naor and his father were then transported to various subcamps of Dachau concentration camp and were eventually separated as well, both being forced to perform extremely hard labor.
In the spring of 1945, he was sent on a death march.
After being liberated by the US army, he first reached a Displaced Person’s camp near Munich and met his father again. After staying in Lodz, Poland for a while, Abba Naor emigrated to pre-state Israel, where he met his wife and had children. There he worked for the Israeli secret service, among others.
Today, he divides his time between Munich and Tel-Aviv, visiting schools as a contemporary witness and campaigning against forgetting Nazi crimes. He has supported the LediZ project for many years.
Naor, Abba/Zeller, Helmut (2018): I sang for the SS. My path from the ghetto to the Israeli secret service. Munich: C.H. Beck
Sample Questions
The following questions were asked frequently during Abba Naor’s conversations with students and visitors and may also be of interest to you. These are questions about his experience of being persecuted, his private life, and his personal views.
- What is your name?
- Which of your family members survived?
- What was your worst experience?
- Did you return to Lithuania after the Holocaust?
- What is your favorite childhood memory?
- How many children do you have?
- Why do you tell your story?
- Should perpetrators be put on trial despite their advanced age?
- What does it mean to you to be a Jew?
- Do you have a message for young people today?