With your knapsack and a walking stick, you set out to walk to Israel. Heading south, you pass the Russian cities of Minsk and Zhitomir. After a very long and tiring trip, you pass through the city of Kishinev, where sixty years before, terrible pogroms ravaged the Jewish residents, during a dark night, you pay a boatman to take you across the Dniester River to Roumania.
Because Roumania has good relations with Israel, it is not difficult to arrange passage on a boat from that country to the Israeli port of Haifa. Haifa is beautiful, but you are not satisfied. Every day in your prayers, you have asked God for the privilege of seeing Jerusalem. This where you must live.
After reaching and settling in Jerusalem, you begin to tour the city. When you arrive at Yad Vashem, you walk slowly through the building. Later, with tears streaming down your face, you sit on a bench among the trees honoring Righteous Gentiles, non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews. You realize that the Jewish world remembers what you and other resisters have done; your life is honored by this memorial, and even the loss of your leg seems less important.
You retire in Israel with a pension provided by the government and with an inner sense of satisfaction and self-respect.
END