Rachel & Zvi

 


We met through an Israeli’s website called Nifgashim. Our first phone call was on Monday, February 27, 2012. At the end of this phone call, Racheli invited Zvika to meet on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 in her apartment in Tel Aviv. After the first meeting, we decided to meet again on Friday, March 3, Friday evening we drove to a quiet Italian restaurant called Francesca near beach in Rishon-Lezion where we can have a pleasant conversation and get to know each other better. We sat down and We talked about our lives. Zvika talked about his early life. Racheli was engaged and touched by his story. In this evening we formed the initial emotional bond and decided to continue to meet. We went to the movie on Saturday evening and then met on the following Tuesday. Then we decided to take our first trip to nature, something we both love to do and still doing until this day. On the following Saturday, we drove to the Besor River, which is near Ber-Shev. We found a green quiet patch sat down with a picnic basket and enjoyed each other company and the nature surrounding us. We spoke in more details about our lives and our expectations from our unfolding relationship at this stage of lives. We felt that we are attracted to each other and had a taste of more… We continued to meet every Tuesday evening and weekends and our relationship deepened and evolved and was full with exciting adventures. It became clear that we were both interested in developing our relationship into a long-life journey with the understanding that we both wish and can share our lives between Israel, where Zvika had his children and grandchildren and California, where Rachel has her married son and still worked. Racheli was due to leave for California at the end of June. We both agreed that it will be wise to live together before we undertake to travel together to Los Angeles and spend the summer in Rachel’s home there. So in mid-May we moved to live together in Rachel’s apartment in Zidon 5, Tel Aviv. On June 25, we travelled to London to spend few days with our friend Dorothy who invited us to stay in her beautiful home. We had a lovely time with friends and family, touring London and going to shows. On June 29 we flew to Los Angeles and spent the summer in Los Angeles, a period we consider as our honeymoon!

I was Born on April 29, 1944 In Bucharest, Romania. on March 15, 1949 we Immigrated to Israel there we spent the first four months in a transit camp called Ma’abara. In this time, we are Naturalize as an Israeli citizenship and moved to a village called Kfar-yona. In the village I started studying in elementary school from first grade to fourth grade. in August 1954 we moved to Tel Aviv, and we lived in a neighborhood called Shabazi a neighborhood of extremely poor families, the neighborhood is in the south of the city, crime and violence was a daily thing, most of the residents immigrated to Israel from Arab countries, the customs they lived there brought to Israel, their nickname was “Mizrahim” which means Orientals, we came from Europe and our nickname was “Ashkenazim,” which means Jewish person of central or eastern European descent, we were not accustomed to such customs. In April 1957, in a synagogue not far from our neighborhood, of course, an Ashkenazi synagogue where the middle-class Europeans lived and thanks to the Rabbi who prepared me for a bar mitzvah, they allowed me to read the Torah in their synagogue. at the neighborhood synagogue, I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah and read in the Torah. we celebrated at home with some family members a very modest celebration, my uncle Moritz who later I will tell how he saved my life brought me a pendant gift with a Star of David made of gold, another uncle bought me a real watch My parents were afraid that I would wear the watch and the pendant when I was walking around the neighborhood. They asked me to leave the watch and the pendant at home until I grew up and could protect it from the boys on the street. It was the first time in my life that my grandfather approached me and said nicely you read the Torah and left, I do not know if he even knows that my name is Zvi, yes, his father was called Zvi.

This was the age when the boys in the neighborhood were exposed to sex, between the boys there was physical violence in the relationship which boy would choose between the girls with whom he wanted to have sex and hold chose the sexiest girl

We became tough and daring boys and I was good at them smart, strong, and intelligent. Studies were not in our minds girls and sex was the center of our lives and then came the drugs the older guys in the neighborhood who demanded that the girls have sex with us started using us to deliver drugs to their clients

I am a Holocaust survivor who was in a Gestapo DP camp in Germany, I saw severe and cruel violence against Jews probably the sights I saw affected me and the transition to violence against boys who provoked me was instinctive because I thought my life was in danger. I refrained from participating as a messenger, but I was more intelligent and smarter than the other boys I was tasked with planning to evade from police and uniformed policemen who hunted drug distributors very quickly I climbed the archaic ladder in the gang and controlled an exceptionally large area that included other neighborhoods, and as head of the area the sexiest girl in the neighborhood became my girl.

My parents were very frightened when neighbors told them to pay attention to Zvika. There are rumors that he connected with drug dealers and very soon he will find himself under police investigation. Keep him extremely far from the neighborhood

My uncle Moritz lived in Jaffa at the time. My parents transferred me to live with him until he was drafted into the army. At that time, my uncle told me the whole story.

May 1962, I joined the army as a fighter, participated in combat as a fighter, completed the combat officer course, and commanded a combat company.