Sometimes a person here in Czechoslovakia would tell me: ´You are a Jew, go to Palestine.´ Now the Arabs here tell us: ´Go to the Czech Republic.´

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Sinaj Adler was born July 11th 1928 in Prague in a rabbi’s family. He comes of a family of rabbis from the Šumava region from Dobrá Voda near Hartmanice; before the war he lived with his parents in Prague and in Zbraslav. In March 1943 the family was transported to Terezín; from May 1944 to January 1945 he was in Auschwitz, where his parents died. Afterward he was transported to camps in Gunskirchen and Mauthausen. After the war he spent several weeks in the Štiřín chateau in care of Přemysl Pitter, who was helping children who had been affected by war and imprisoned in concentration camps. During the summer of 1945 recorded his experiences from the concentrating camp. He wrote in Czech, his native language. Several months later, after his arrival to Palestine, when spoke Czech only rarely, Hebrew became his new native tongue; today he often struggles for words in Czech. Since February 1946 he has been living in Palestine (Israel). He studied at religious schools; he served as a rabbi in various places in Israel (for over 20 years in Ashdod in south Israel). For the last twenty years he has been living on the outskirts of Jerusalem in the town of Mevaseret Zion.