"I was on the second transport that came to Israel. I think it was on January 2, 1949. We came on a ship to Israel. The center in which they had assembled us before the journey was in Mikulov. From there, we departed via Bratislava, Budapest, Romania and to Constanta. From there, we set out on a ship to Israel. It took us about a week to get there. In the shipyard, the Israeli army already awaited us and we were assigned to various units. We came to Israel as Czechoslovak soldiers. At the time, arms shipments from Czechoslovakia were at their peak and we were even accompanied by three Czech officers who wanted to continue in Israel as instructors. However, they didn't receive a permit and so they had to go back to Czechoslovakia."
"When I arrived in Sachsenhausen, the first thing you did was to take a shower. Some young man, only slightly older than I was, came to me and asked me where I came from. I told him that I came from Bohemia. He didn't say a word and after I was done with the shower, he came to me again and brought me new clothes. The clothes he gave me didn't have the Jewish star on them but instead a 'Č' and a red triangle, which meant 'Czech political prisoner'. It must have been one of the students that had been arrested in 1939. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find him after the war. But he actually saved my life because he gave me a new identity. It was probably the clothes of someone who had died and I was lucky enough to get his clothes. Unfortunately, I haven't found him."
"I have Czech citizenship and a Czech passport. I tend to think of myself as of a split soul. I don't know where I belong. My heart has still remained in Bohemia. Of course my complete family is here in Israel. I have my sons here and my grandchildren. My granddaughter is 17 years old. Every time I see her, I have to teach her at least a couple of Czech words. Her mother is a doctor and she wants to become a doctor as well. I told her that she could study medicine in Bohemia."
"I stayed in Lípa until September 14, 1942. Do you want to know why I remember the date, September 14? It's because Masaryk died on September 14. They sent us to Theresienstadt and there, I was lucky again, because the chief of that agricultural department (Landwirtschaft) in the Theresienstadt ghetto was the same SS man who was in Lípa. We used to work together on the field in Lípa. He automatically took me with him to the department because he knew that I was a capable worker in agriculture. This protected me from the transports until October 1944. That was one of the last transports to Birkenau."
"Everything is nice and beautiful, my friends, my friends, but the only person you can rely on is yourself. Even if you have the best friends in the world, when a critical moment comes – and now I'm talking about Theresienstadt – you have to rely on yourself only. Your ego has to be strong and you have to believe in yourself: I have to survive, I have to come back home."
Menachem Tiben was born as Jiří Tieben in Dolce (the district of Plzeň-south), the youngest son of the Jewish farmer Alfréd Tieben. His mother died early on in his life and thus he grew up with his aunt in Prague, Vinohrady. In the beginning of the war, he was expelled from school for racial reasons. In 1942, he was sent to work at a farm. Since September 1942 till October 1944, he was in the Theresienstadt ghetto where he worked in agriculture (so-called „Landswirtschaft“). In October 1944, he was transferred to Auschwitz and later to a stone pit in Goleszów near the Czechoslovak border. In the winter of 1945, he left on a transport to Sachsenhausen. After the war, he completed his studies at a high school of chemistry and industry and got a job in Falknov (Sokolov). In January 1949, while he did his compulsory military service, he left with his unit to Israel as a tank-crew instructor. In Israel, he served in the army as a tank-crew member and a military meteorologist. He graduated from a university of chemistry and technology and worked as an engineer in the chemical industry. He spent most of his life in Beersheba in the south of Israel. In the end of his life he moved to Haifa, where he died on 10th of April 2016.
