Gidon Lev, Holocaust survivor and TikTok star: “I was a prop for Elon Musk when he visited Auschwitz”
Born Peter Löw in 1935 in Karlovy Vary, Gidon Lev survived with his mother during the Shoah, after four years of internment in Terezín/Theresienstadt, while 26 members of his family were killed. After the war, he left Czechoslovakia in 1948, first to New York, then to Toronto and settled in Israel in the late 1950s. After he published two books with his partner Julie Gray about his story, Gidon Lev – who celebrates his 90th birthday on March 3 – became a phenomenon on social media, with almost half a million followers on TikTok.
Gidon Lev, thank you very much for being with us from Israel. We are here in Prague and actually, the building of the public radio, Český Rozhlas, is just one block away from number 7, Italská street, where there are stumbling stones, Stolpersteine, for members of your family killed during the Holocaust. How important for you was it to lay these Stolpersteine there?
“It was extremely moving, and more so than what I expected. And that was for a number of reasons. One of them being that three of my children came, two sons and my oldest daughter, who came all the way from California to be present. So we made, actually, quite a ceremony. So much so that the people from the municipality, when we first came, they said, Okay, so here you are, thank you for coming. We just want to make sure that everything is okay and we have to leave. But they didn't leave. They stayed all the way for the next 25 minutes. My daughter sang a song, my son wrote a poem. I also sang and told a little story. So it was actually very moving, and I'm very happy that we did it.”
A few meters away from there, there is Náměstí Míru. And that was your favorite playground at the time, when you arrived from Karlovy Vary, where you lived with your parents, to Prague, where your grandparents lived. And that's the first time you realized something's going wrong because there was a sign, "Juden verboten".
“First of all, in 1938, when Hitler took over the Sudetenland, three months later, in June, my family, my grandparents, and my parents - we must have lived nearby - moved to Prague, to Italská 7. And shortly after, you know, that Hitler took his army and marched from Karlovy Vary, straight road right into Prague, and declared, there's no more Czechoslovakia. It's the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
“I was very young. I was three and a half, four years old. So I really didn't know what was going on. But I felt the tension. And every other week, a new regulation was pronounced. Jews can't go into restaurants. Jews can't own bicycles. Jews can't have a radio or telephone or camera or anything. You know, every, all the time. So there was much tension.
“But my grandpa took me to this little park just around the corner, as it is today except it's not a playground anymore. And I would run to the swing, and I would swing, and they would push me. It was like a canoe. I loved it. Until, I think, half a year later, I'm not sure about the timing. One day, we came to the park. And as we come to the park and we enter, and I run to my favorite boat, climb in, and he comes. Ne, ne, ne. No, no, no. Peter, you can't do this. You can't go to the... And I felt bad. Why? What did I do? Was I a bad boy? And he took me in his arms, and he showed me the sign ‘Juden verboten’. Jews not allowed. You know, my understanding of Jews was not very great, because we were not religious Jews. I knew I was Jewish, but didn't necessarily try to explain. And I cried. He took me and so it was the end of my going to the park.”
You were born as Peter Wolfgang Löw in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia. Did your grandfather and did your parents speak to you in German and Czech? Or what was the language at home?
“Both, exactly. You see, my side of my father, my grandfather, Alfred, he spoke Czech. They were speaking Czech. But my grandfather, Fritz, on my mother's side, they spoke German more. So at home, we spoke both languages. And yes, you're right. My name was Peter Wolfgang Löw. Now, you have to ask yourself, from where comes Wolfgang? I even didn't know this until my mother died, and I saw my birth certificate. She died here in Israel in 2003. And then I remembered that she said to me that Grandpa Fritz played the viola. He had a viola, and he must have loved Mozart. He must have told my mother, you give him a middle name for Wolfgang. So that's my real birth name.”
And when you were recently in Prague, you also went back to Terezín. You spent there four years of your life, you are the only member of your family with your mother who survived there, one of the only few children who survived Theresienstadt. What did you feel when you went back there?
“That's a very big question. First of all, I've been there at least half a dozen times, every time under different circumstances. I can be a good guide for anybody to show Theresienstadt... You know, when you go to a place like that, where you spend more than four years, because from December 1941 to May, June 1945, it's a long time. And being a child, I arrived there when I was six years old. And it's hard to define Theresienstadt as a concentration camp. But it certainly wasn't a ghetto. Because a ghetto was usually a neighborhood in an existing city where many of the Jews lived. And those that didn't live there were sent there.
“Theresienstadt was a military town with half a dozen barracks, three storeys high. They were from before World War I. And the little streets, it's hard to imagine how it crowded into that place. Sometimes 35,000 people. And the thing about Theresienstadt, it was a transit camp. It wasn't a death camp. Even though 35,000 people did die in four years in Theresienstadt. But they died from hunger, overwork, disease, age, you know. And over all of this, the atmosphere was one of total fear. You never knew what will bring the next minute, the next hour, the next night, the next day, the next month. Today you may be participating in a choir with children singing, performing. And the next day you may receive a notification to report to the train station.”
Were you participating or involved with some other youngsters?
“No, I wasn't. I fell between the bricks, as they say, because I wasn't old enough. The younger children from zero to 10 were living with their mothers in Dresden barracks. And the children there, they weren't organized. We did things together. I remember playing football, but we didn't have a ball. So we ripped clothing into strips and rolled it into a ball. And for 15, 20 minutes, we had a ball played till it fell apart. That was the end of the game.”
Do you remember some names of the guys you were playing with?
“No. I have one story I can tell you that's very, very moving and very sad. We were all, most of the time, living in rooms with another person. Four, sometimes five mothers and children. So in a room that should have two people or four people the most, it had 12 people. So it was all very crowded. But for one period of time, and I don't know exactly why and how that happened, my mother and I and another young woman and her little daughter. Her little daughter was, I think, a year older than me. Her name was Liska. Lise. She was very sweet. And our mothers at six o'clock in the morning would march to work. We stayed and played. And I was in love with her. I loved her. She was so pretty. And she knew how to do acrobatics. Stand on her head and stand on her hands. The somersaults and all kinds of tricks. Until one day, her mother and my mother came home from work. And their mother said to us, Ah, so we're going to the east. Tomorrow morning I have to report to the train station. And I was so upset. I remember the feeling to this very day…”
We're talking about the Dresdner Kaserne, the Dresden barracks. In such a state now, they are collapsing...
“I was there just a little while ago. They're beginning to fix it up. They said they're going to start to work. They already fixed one part of the roof.
“Exactly. These barracks are famous also because the Nazis shot their propaganda film inside. Do you remember this infamous football game? I know you've experienced some terrible stuff there, like public hanging of some young guys. And also torture you could hear from the cellars…
“Yes. You know what the torture was like? They used cigarettes, smoking cigarettes, and then put it on the person's body. It's terrible pain. Terrible. Yes, the public hanging was in the first couple of months, I think, when they had not allowed to send any mail out, only a printed postcard, where Jews were supposed to write ‘everything is fine, we're good. Bye. Bye’. But some young people wanted to send letters that describe what the situation is…
“There were two main things about Theresienstadt. The fear of being sent to the east - and we didn't know there were gas chambers; we didn't know there were firing squads - and hunger. Hunger morning, evening, and night. Those were the two worst things that I suffered.”
And the coming of the Red Cross. Do you have a clear memory of all this?
“Yes, I definitely do. I remember that one day, when the word went around, the Red Cross is coming. So we saw a whole street being painted and fixed, and a couple of stores being opened, one with clothing on shelves that were those from people who had just arrived. They took it from the suitcases and put it on the shelves. And they even printed money, like Monopoly, you know. The value of the money was like the value of Monopoly money. A complete lie. Everything was a lie. You never knew when, what. And that was the time. The terror of that. Not knowing. Today you may be playing the violin, tomorrow you're on the train to Auschwitz or Treblinka.”
And you remember these people from the Red Cross taking pictures or watching?
“Yes, I remember the Germans sending a truck or two to the Dresdner Kaserne, and they called the kids who were playing something in the courtyard and said, Get in there, get in the back into the truck. And when German soldiers tell you to do that, you don't say, no, I can't. You run and go.
“And then they took us to this park that they had fixed up with swings and slides and all kinds of games. And they let us out. We were totally shocked. And they said ‘You can play’. They tell seven, eight, nine-year-old kids to play. Well, we played. And I remember, a hundred meters away, Red Cross people with cameras taking pictures of us playing. Look how wonderful the Germans are treating these kids.
“All a lie, all that. I have pictures of me standing in the little fortress at the sign, ‘Arbeit macht frei’. I hate that sign. It is so cynical. What frei? The only frei that Arbeit made was death. True, when you die, you're free. They can't do anything to you anymore.”
You were mentioning hunger, of course. One way you found out was to work, to find some jobs, any kind of job, including and a job with horses, horses of the German SS soldiers. Were you also communicating with some Czech guards there? How did you communicate with these people?
“You know, to be honest, I don't remember. I spoke Czech, so I could. And I spoke German, so I could. And one way that I managed to stay alive was to find jobs, work. Because with work came opportunities, maybe to filch something, to find something. And for example, with the horses, cleaning the horses of an officer, if you did a good job, maybe he’d put a piece of bread on a window and you could have it, or maybe a piece of apple or something.”
What do you think should be done with the Dresdner Kaserne, which now carries the name of Jan Žižka?
“I don't know. I think because I spent so much time there, I guess I would like it to be preserved, if that's possible. I really think having survived for four years in this place is somewhat of a miracle. And partly it's also my mother. She must have worked very hard because she worked on splitting, cutting mica into thin slices so the Germans could use it for insulating electronic machinery. And I guess what the Germans did was some ‘Stichprobe’ from time to time: they would weigh the amount that each woman did, and if it was according to the expected amount, she stayed. If not, she got her notice. The next day, you were on the transport to Auschwitz.”
Also, your family doctor from Karlovy Vary helped you to not to be sent in a transport. What was his name?
“Oh, yes, you're right. It's actually not only my family doctor, but my birth doctor. I think Dr. Fleischer was the name. Yes, he was there. And my mother was sick. She had gotten an abscess above her left breast. And he had to open it up and clean it. And a couple of times she was on a list to be sent to Auschwitz. And he removed her. Of course, the sad part of that is that somebody else had to replace her…”
I mentioned 26 members of your family were killed during the Shoah, including your old great-grandmother, Růžena Samischová, born in 1859.
“She was 83 when she was sent to Treblinka!”
You were still a young boy, but it's also connected to horses, once again, when the Soviet army liberated Theresienstadt. And you do remember Ukrainian soldiers, who came with horses, right?
“It was Ukrainian soldiers that rode on horses. Yeah, Ukrainians, and then they left to... They didn't need the horses in the country. They were just, you know, making order a little bit, helping out. So we boys, we would run after the horses and climb on top and ride them. That was the feeling of freedom.”
Was it? It must have been very tough also with the epidemic, typhoid and all around…
“It was all... It was all strange. It was a strange world. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.”
Do you remember the day you left with your mom from Theresienstadt?
“The exact date, I do not remember. And my mother is not around anymore, so I can't ask. But they freed us on, I think, on May 5. I think it took a few weeks till the things got a little bit organized. You're right, there was typhus because they had brought very sick people from other concentration camps. It was pretty hard. It was pretty difficult.”
You arrived in Prague. You were waiting, potentially waiting, for some members of your family that never came back. They had all been killed. Did you come back to this Italská 7 when you were in Prague?
‘I don't think so. And I can't tell you where we lived. I don't remember. But I think there were other people living in Italská 7.”
When did you go back to Karlovy Vary after that?
“A few months later. I don't remember how much later, but it was a matter of months. My mother said we were going back to Karlovy Vary because she said nobody's coming back. I remember I prayed for my father to come back, dear God, please, bring my dad home. And then I stopped praying and I stopped believing in God.”
You started to go to school in Karlovy Vary when you got back home. I'm quite curious about the atmosphere in this town. Do you remember if there were still some Germans living there?
“There were still some Germans. And they feared the Russians. They truly feared them. And rightly so. Many of the Russian soldiers were young kids, 18, 19 years old, maybe sometimes even less. And what they loved was watches. And I remember watching the Russian soldiers stop Germans on the street, on the sidewalk and asking, ‘Davai, davai, give me your watch. Let's see. Oh, this one is good. Give it to me’. They‘d give the watch and ran as fast as they could. And then soldiers would trade between themselves like kids. Young kids that were the soldiers of the Red Army.”
Have you witnessed some violence during that time after the war?
‘Not really. I remember one time some Russian soldiers took me and a friend, his name was Michael, to show them where to get to a certain place. And we got in a car together with them. There was a big curve, and I remember we had an accident with a bicycle. The bicycle was finished, but the guy was okay.”
I guess you stopped talking German by that time. You were speaking only Czech then?
‘No, I think I continued speaking both languages.’
You got involved in some Zionist youth organization, Dror HeHalutz Hatzair. Can you describe how it was at the time? Where were you meeting? You also went to summer camps in the Krkonoše mountains. Were there a lot of you?
“No, there were about 15 or 20 young people involved. And my friend Michael and I were the youngest. The others were a little older. And they were, you know, they weren't necessarily Czechs. They were from all over. And we met and we had discussions and we learned about Zionism and Israel. I went to summer camp, I went to winter camp. And it was fun. A whole new world opened up to me.”
Did you get the conviction at that time that you would that you would go to Israel?
‘Yes. I think the foundation of my conviction was made then and there. Until one day my mother said, ‘We're going to America’. Oh, I was so disappointed. This was 1947, 1948. We had an emissary from Kibbutz HaHotrim. His name was, I remember to this day, Zev Utich. And he said, ‘Don’t worry, you will find also the organization in America. You still can come to Israel’. I said, ‘Okay, I hope so, I want to’. And I did.”
You had a grand aunt in New York City who sent you an invitation.
“Yes. I had a great aunt in New York, in Brooklyn. And she was taking care of my cousin on my mother's side. We stayed with them for a whole year in Brooklyn. And, you know, that part of Brooklyn was all Jewish. Even the shoe shine boy was Jewish.”
We happen to speak today on February 25, which is the day of the coup by the communists orchestrated by Moscow in 1948. You left after this. Was there anything happening in Karlovy Vary during that time?
“I don't remember. I don't think so. I, you know, for the first time in my life, I was going to school right around the corner.”
How was it?
“It was very good. They put me in third grade.I should have been in the fifth grade, but I didn't know how to read and write enough because I only learned a little bit. My cousin in Terezín who was there for a while must have taught me basic reading and writing. So, I was put in third grade. And that was okay. Anyway, I was small for my age and even there, I was still smaller than the rest of the kids.”
“Something happened in that class. One day the teacher left the class for a moment and all of a sudden one of the boys, sort of a bully bigger than me comes up to me and he says to me ‘Blbej žid!’ [stupid Jew]. I was sitting and I jumped up and I boxed him.
“I hit his nose. He started bleeding. He went to the corner where there was a sink. Suddenly the teacher comes back and everybody runs back to their seat. I was sitting calmly and the teacher looks and he says, what happened here? Co to je? So one of the kids said, Petr gave Misha a punch. Petr gave Misha a box? Petr? When? Why? And I stood up and I said, he called me Blbej žid. Thank you Petr, he said, before he added ‘Misha, bring yourself up and go to your seat’. Nobody ever called me Blbej žid again!”
I noticed when you talk to a foreign audience, you describe the Czechs as being less or much less antisemitic than in neighboring countries?
“Yes. That's the way I felt. Is it really true? I cannot tell. I have the feeling Czechs were much less antisemitic. Maybe it's still the case today. I'm not sure."
Do you think it also explains the support of Israel by the Czech Republic in the recent years?
“Perhaps, yes. Look, the Czech Republic is the only republic that sent us weapons during the War of Independence. Right near here. The airfield is right here. Now, it's a big airfield. Back then it was a small little country airfield. But that's where the first rifles arrived. And those rifles were heavy. And they gave you a terrible hit on your shoulder when you shot them.”
You published already two books. And the reason why we wanted to talk to you is also, of course, because you are now a star of the social media, a TikTok star. You almost have half a million followers on TikTok. I know the idea came from your partner, Julie Gray, who co-wrote the books with you. Because this world of social media can be cruel and hardcore, was it difficult?
“Because my partner is so good at this, she made it fun. And I was playful. I said, why not? And that's it. And you're right. I wrote a book, and you know, the only thing I wondered was how come we don't have a Czech publisher? How can it be that I, a Czech citizen, write a book, which is translated and published in half a dozen of countries and it's selling, and the Czech Republic is left out. I really would like it to come out in Czech.”
You mentioned you're a Czech citizen. When did you get a Czech passport?
“I don't have a Czech passport, but I have Czech citizenship. My son, who lives right now in Brussels, has a Czech passport. I applied for the Czech citizenship a few years ago. He's a dancer choreographer, so he needed to travel to Europe. So we said, Oh, you're a Czech citizen, let's make use of it.”
How is it to be on TikTok? Is it a pleasure for you, a game?
“Well, a few things you have. First of all, we are now more active on Instagram than TikTok, because Instagram was less antisemitic. At a certain point, we stopped. After October 7, the Gaza war started. It became so nasty and terrible, we couldn't cope with it. So we said, Okay, you don't take care of us, we'll leave you. Now we've come back, but we are very active still on Instagram. And actually Julie, my partner, makes it fun. And in spite of my age, 90, I still manage to be playful.”
And to be playful, is it a way to touch the young people, and to also pass the knowledge about the Holocaust?
“Yes, I think it's good, because I tell them the individual episodes of my life. I don't talk about the shootings, the mass shootings, and the gas chambers and that they all know. Who can connect to that emotion? You can connect to somebody who says to you, ‘My parents wouldn't even let me take my tricycle. Imagine going to another city, from Karlovy Vary to Prague. I'm three years old. I love this tricycle. They wouldn't let me take it’. So young people can imagine themselves being children and how unimportant yet critical it is.”
Speaking of social media, you had some experience with the actual owner of one of the biggest social media nowadays. Elon Musk, took advantage of being with you in Auschwitz for some kind of photo-op, and I got the feeling that your partner, Julie, and you were not really impressed.
“No,I was not impressed. And I was not impressed because he didn't make the least attempt to make any personal connections. So, you know, like, Where were you, Gidon? What happened to your father? There was nothing. I was there as a decoration. It was the AJE, the Jewish Association, who wanted a Holocaust survivor to be photographed together with Elon Musk. So, I went along. I was sort of a prop, but it was freezing cold, and it was hard. And he was not connected. Not connected.”
On the cover of your first book, The True Adventures of Gidon Lev, it's written you're a ‘rascal, a Holocaust survivor, and an optimist’. Your second book is called Let's Make Things Better. You've mentioned October 7. I know you were a harsh critic of the Israeli government and you would still go demonstrate in the streets before the terrorists attacked. How much has been your life turned upside down since October 7?
“A great deal. It has affected us in a thousand ways. Sometimes we don't even realize. But, you know, because we are a small country, everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who is suffering because he's a captive in Gaza or because he died, because he's injured or, you know, it feels like a family. And we have an irresponsible government and we've got to make some changes. We’ve got to make some changes.”
How do you do that to keep optimistic in the actual world we live in now?
“Look, if you aren't optimistic when it's bad, how can you be optimistic when it's good? When it's good, you don't need optimism because it's good. The time to test your real optimism, your real belief, your real challenges, is when things are bad. That's when you're on the line.”
We talked about the Zionist youth organization you were involved in when you came back to Karlovy Vary after the war. Then you went to Canada from New York and in Toronto you were with the Hashomer Hatzair. Then, when you arrived in Israel, you went to the Kibbutz HaZore'a, which was founded by the Blau-Weiss organization. Did you find in this Kibbutz some other people who came from Czechoslovakia like you?
“No. The main body of settlers from HaZore'a were from Germany. They were Blau-Weiss. They didn't belong to Hashomer Hatzair. They joined. Then there were a whole group of Bulgarian new immigrants. And, you know, people from all over. There’s an Ulpan there. I met my first wife at the Ulpan. She was American. I met my second wife also at the Ulpan in Hazoera. It was a very cultural Kibbutz.”
A famous professor in Brno, Ivan Rektor, showed in his studies that the trauma of the Shoah, the trauma of the Holocaust, can reach three generations. You have now 16 grandchildren, also three great-grandchildren. How much do you think your own experience did impact your children?
“It's now part of our existence. They realize it. They are reading or have read my books. And I think they're very aware now. When they were growing up, not so much, it was not a topic of discussion. And this is probably because I wasn't ready to talk about it. You find that many Holocaust survivors, the first few years, they didn't want to talk about it. And my excuse was I'm concentrating on life, putting bread on the table, for my four, five, and then six kids. It wasn’t easy.”
What was your profession?
“I'm a dairyman. Cows, milking, taking care, going out to the field. Plowing the fields. Cutting the hay, baling, bringing it in. That was my life for a long time on the kibbutz. And also when I finally left the kibbutz, I actually continued what is called a health improvement program of the cattle. Every month, you test the milk of every cow. So I did it for another 15 years, all around the northern part of Israel.”
Do you have any opportunities to speak Czech sometimes?
“Very few, to my great sorrow. I really have forgotten my Czech. I forgot. I don't speak. [Says a few words in Czech]. Every time I go back to the Czech Republic, a few more words come back. It's all there. I would have to live in Prague or Karlovy Vary for two, three months. I'm sure it would all come back!”
