Moritz Zebrak

Moritz Zebrak, first child from the marriage of Josef Zebrak and Jenny Zebrak, née Slon, was born on March 26, 1923 in Augsburg, Mendelssohnstr. 1.¹ In 1936, his bar mitzvah was recorded in the Augsburg Jewish Civil Register (No. 12).² According to information given by himself, he went to elementary school in Augsburg.³ He attended the neighboring elementary school in Kriegshaber, from the school year 1935/36 to the school year 1936/37 he was listed there. As a teenager he was put into a barrel by young Nazis and rolled down a hill - an early traumatic experience according to his niece Sara, daughter of Ludwig Zebrak, who met him often in Israel.⁴

In the compensation files, Moritz further reported attending vocational school and learning the plumbing trade. Due to the political situation, he had to discontinue his training after one year. The Jewish Community of Augsburg, organized for him to be sent to a Jewish agricultural school in Schnielinchen (sic) near Sommerfeld (probably meaning the Hachschara camp Schniebinchen near Sommerfeld in Lower Lusatia, today in Poland) in preparation for his emigration. All of those students emigrated to Palestine in July 1939. Moritz went as a volunteer to the Jewish battalion of the British Army and was a truck driver in the Jewish Brigade in Europe during the war.⁵

Fr. Liese Fischer née Einstein remembers that she knew Moritz Zebrak. She knows that he had emigrated to Palestine and had fought in the British Army in Italy as a member of a Jewish troop from Palestine. He had received her address in Britain and had written her a letter during the war. Then she never heard from him again.⁶

After the end of the war, Moritz Zebrak spent three days in Augsburg, where he searched in vain for his family. He then returned to Israel in 1945, participated in the War of Independence in 1948, and was slightly wounded near Tel Aviv. He fought against Egypt, was injured and became a prisoner of war in Egypt. In 1953 he returned to Israel and then lived in Altacco 12/62. After a nervous breakdown he was hospitalized in a mental hospital near Akko and stayed there for 2 years. Later Chana/Hanna Zebrak (wife of Ludwig Zebrak, grandmother of Assaf Levitin) helped him find a job in construction and an apartment. He was never married and was a heavy smoker.⁷

In 1956, he traveled from Haifa to his uncle Abraham Slon, resident in Lyon, Villeurbanne, to prepare for a return to Germany. He led an "unsteady, vagabond" life and was hospitalized in Strasbourg in 1965 for nervous disorders, then several times in the neuropsychiatric department of the Lyon University Hospital. His uncle Abraham Slon applied for a compensation payment/pension for his nephew, which was ultimately rejected. In 1968, Moritz Zebrak returned to Israel and lived in Tel Aviv, 48 Nachmani St. (the place of residence of his brother Ludwig Arie Zebrak), then in 1975 in the Jehuda Abarbanel State Hospital in Bat-Yam, Israel.⁸ Sara, Ludwig Zebrak's daughter, worked in this psychiatric institution and often met him there for coffee. He helped out in the hospital's pharmacy, since he could read the Latin script. He was never flamboyant, never violent, cleanly dressed, but unable to care for himself alone. Ludwig Zebrak visited Moritz from time to time. He had a strong personality and had difficulties with his weakened half-brother, who was 15 years younger. Eventually, Moritz was placed in a nursing home for the mentally exhausted in Nes Ziona, where he died between 1981 and 1990. His grave is not located in Nes Ziona.⁹

Claudia Huber – translated by Wolfgang Poeppel