MAIL: mailto: stav_harel10@walla.co.il
Survivor Code: RelatioNet WE LE 31 KO GE
Family Name: Levin
Previous Family Name: Lewen
First Name: Avner
Previous Name: Werner
Mother's Name: Vera
Date of birth: 1931

Country of birth: Germany

City of Birth: Kaliningrad

Interview with Avner Levin

Avner Levin was born in 1931 in Konigsberg but today it is called Kalninigrad. Most of the time he lived in a smaller city called Gilgenborg but today it is part of Poland and called Dovno. His family lived there for 600 years. This city was small and served the towns around. The city had a synagogue and his family was the last Jewish family in the town.

His father died of cancer when he was 4 months old and Avner's mother remarried a man who divorced his wife ,which wasn’t common in the past. That's why Avner's family and his father's family were never in contact. After his father died, his mother went to her brother's house with Avner and lived there.

His mother was called Vera Levinstein and his father's name was German Levin. Vera was the "manager of the house" and her brothers were responsible for the family's store. The store was big and they had construction materials, garden agronomy and cigarettes. On Sundays, all the people in the area came to buy drinks and salty fish. The store was in front of the municipality, so when Hitler and the Nazis controlled the government, they were going on Sundays outside and singing "If Jewish blood will be spilt, our lives will be better" or "Jude dies Germany flowers".

The kids were evil in their behavior towards the Jews.

The little children who saw Avner walking in the street or at school shouted "Jude Jude" and if Avner didn’t run away the evil children took his belongings and hit him. He couldn’t have complained to anybody because he didn’t have any rights, he was nothing and it was a terrible feeling.

His family had been living for a long time in Konigsberg for generations. It was hard for them to move to a new place and his uncle didn’t want to move to Israel. They wanted to move to Australia, New Zealand or Canada. But the authorities in those places didn’t let the Jews come in. So they stayed in their town and he still got beaten but everybody commented that they couldn't do anything and still he was beaten.

His beautiful mother was blond and tall, she went to the municipality and when he was 6 she organized that he won't go to school because of the children, she knew the kids in school would kill him.They thought of sending Avner back to Konigsberg (the town he was born) to an orphanage, which  took more than a day away by train. He was there alone with other Jewish children who were beaten and called "Jewes Jewes" . They started to see places that the entery for Jews and dogs was forbidden. One day the circus came to town, and all the children from the orphanage went to see it. They really wanted to get in,but when they got there, they saw a big sign "The entry for dogs and Jews is forbidden". In the enterance, a Nazis from the S.A  was standing ,  asking the children "Who are you?" They answered they were from the orphanage and the Nazi said that Jewish could not come in. 
However, life mostly was sufferable.

Then came the first of November – "kristallnacht".

The orphanage was near the school and the synagogue. In the Kristallnacht the Nazis burned the synagogue and the orphanage. The children got out quickly they couldn’t take anything with them so they ran out with their pygmies. They heard screams and the Nazis voices calling "Jew, Jew death for the Jews".

All the children stood in line and then came two young ladies who were part of the leaders in the "Hitler yugand". The two women saw the little children freezing, crying and miserable because they didn’t understand what happened.

After the Holocaust Avner immigrate to Israel. He married a woman called Ruth and they have one girl called Vered.

Today Avner lives with a woman called Haya in Kfer Saba and he has two grandchildren called Gon and Stav.  

Kaliningrad – Avner's Birth Town

Originally named Konigsberg in German, the town was founded in 1255 by the order of the Teutonic Knights in honor of the Czech king Premysl Otakar II and was part of Prussia and then of Germany until 1945, but was largely destroyed during World War II. Its ruins were occupied by the Red Army in 1945 and its German population forced out. It was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 in honor of Mikhail Kalinin.

At the end of World War II in 1945, the city became part of the Soviet Union pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement (as part of the Russian SFSR) as agreed upon by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference.

Konigsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 after the death of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin, one of the original Bolsheviks. The survivors of the German population were expelled and the city was repopulated with Soviet citizens. The city was rebuilt, and went through industrialization and modernization. As the westernmost territory of the USSR, the Kaliningrad Oblast became a strategically important area during the Cold War. The Soviet Baltic Fleet was headquartered in the city in the 1950s. Because of its strategic importance, Kaliningrad was closed to foreign visitors.

In 1957 an agreement was signed and later came into force which delimited the border between Poland and the Soviet Union.

Today Kaliningrad has a cityscape like parks, museums, theater and more.