The gift of gratitude on a cruise - The Jewish Chronicle

When I boarded the Royal Caribbean ship this past summer for its first-ever embarkation from Haifa, Israel, I was excited at the prospect of spending a week with my extended family sailing around Greece.

But the highlight of my trip was unexpected. It was not the Acropolis in Athens, scenic Santorini or magical Mykonos, nor the amazing weather, food, music and great summer vibe that would have been more than enough to make for a truly exceptional experience.

Instead, what captivated my attention was meeting an extraordinary couple, Alex and Zipora Speiser, who live in Tel Aviv. On the third day of the trip I was introduced to Alex, a sturdy gentleman with bright blue eyes, and he greeted me with a wide smile. He is a 93-year-old survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, who arrived in Israel in 1949, pioneering the Israeli army’s first computer programme.

On the last day of the trip, when we were at sea, my family heard the couple’s extraordinary story of survival.

Alex was born in Nove Zamky, Czechoslovakia in 1928, the youngest of four sons in an Orthodox family. When he was 15 years old the Nazis rounded up the Jews in his hometown and deported Alex and his parents to a ghetto before sending them to Auschwitz in May 1944. At Auschwitz Alex and his father were separated from his mother.

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Alex Speiser

His mother’s last words to him was that he should promise to look after his father. She was gassed on arrival. Father and son were taken to the showers; Alex saw the box of Zyklon outside but didn’t know what it meant. On this occasion the gas failed and their lives were miraculously saved.

Then the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele divided the group into adults and children and Alex was separated from his father.

Not forgetting his promise to his mother, he managed to find his way back to his father’s group. But when the children’s count revealed that one person was missing Mengele discovered what Alex had done. He was stripped naked and beaten around 50 times until he fainted, and was thrown into a pit full of corpses, presumed dead.

“And then God woke me up around 3am. I woke up and crawled out of the dead and found my way back to my father,” he recounts.

From Auschwitz they were both deported to Dachau. Later Alex became a servant for the family of a camp leader. The Nazi three children adored blond-haired, blue-eyed teenager Alex. This relationship saved his life, because some time later when he was sentenced to death for an act of rebellion within the concentration camp, the children begged their father to save him.

Alex came to Israel in 1949 and he was drafted into the IDF air force aged 21. In the evenings he signed up at Technion University to do a first and second degree in engineering of industry and management. Recognising his skills, the army handpicked him to institute its first-ever computer system in 1959. He became a pioneer in programming developing systems around the world.

A committed Jew to this day, Alex believes everything is ordained from heaven.
“I was educated at home to give and to receive from God. Until this day it has worked,” he told us.

Alongside this belief, it was his promise to his mother that kept him alive in Auschwitz; he was one of just three out of a group of 1,200 who survived. “If I hadn’t had that mindset, they would have taken me to the gas within three days,” he said.

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The Speisers in their cruise cabin

His positive mindset is shared with his wife, Zipora, whom he met and married in Israel in 1962. She was born in Tarnopol, Poland in 1938 and during the war was in hiding in a house with her parents for two years, petrified of the Nazis finding them as they searched the area on 15 occasions.

Near the end of the war, aged seven, she distinctly remembers a terrifying episode, when, buried in dung in a vegetable storage hut, a grenade in hand, she expected to be caught as two Nazis searched the premises. “My mother took my hand and we knew that this was our last moment. I was frozen in time.”

A moment later the Nazis left, failing to detect the three bodies hidden by a black blanket.
She arrived in Israel in 1950, aged 12, determined to make the most of her new life.
“After so many years of living like a caged animal I wanted to be free, not to be humiliated. I wanted a fresh start.

"I saw Mount Carmel and thought this belongs to us. I decided I am a sabra and I have had enough of all the things I have experienced.” Indeed, she went on to get a doctorate in pharmacology, dedicating her life to this industry.

“If you are young, everything is possible,” says the 84-year-old grandmother of nine.

The stories Alex and Zipora Speiser told are, tragically, far from unique, but what stood out to me was their remarkable outlook on life given the horrors they had each endured.

Alex is an optimist who lives each day with gratitude. His story had particular resonance to me as my son shares his name.

My Alex, who is 17, had the good fortune to be born almost 77 years after survivor Alex.
I thought to myself how, when Alex Speiser turned 17, he had just been liberated from Dachau. He had seen so much death and yet was able to pick up the pieces of his broken existence with a determination to make a life for himself.

My son belongs to a privileged generation, who are living their best lives. He and his friends recently returned from a Chazak boys’ tour in Israel.

After school my son hopes to join the IDF, probably benefiting from the computerised infrastructure first created and developed by Alex Speiser.

The two distant worlds of the two Alexs, born 77 years apart yet connected through the IDF, was a poignant reminder for me of how the Holocaust survivors came to Israel in search of a Jewish homeland that still needs defending today.

Gratitude is a big concept used in today’s society, to promote a mindset whereby we acknowledge the blessings in our life.

As we are in a period of introspection, the Days of Awe, leading up to Yom Kippur, and reflecting on the past and future year, appreciation and gratitude are on my mind.

Expecting our children to acknowledge all that is good, when it’s so abundant is not easy for them to do in practice.

On the contrary, because of their lack of hardship and the times in which we live, they simply cannot internalise their good fortune, and instead can seem complacent, striving for more and more without taking stock of what they already have.

Technology has made matters worse in encouraging a really unhealthy attitude towards immediate gratification. Everything is on tap at the click of a button. Why have home-made dinner (which may be a day old) if Deliveroo can get you a fresh burger and chips within half an hour?

They say appreciation is the opposite of expectation. It is a great pity that in providing for our children’s every material need, making them yearn endlessly beyond what they already have, that we have taken away the priceless attribute of appreciation. Telling them to “be” grateful has little power if they simply have no reason to “feel” it.

And that I believe is the difference between Alex the survivor and my son’s generation.

Alex Speiser is grateful because of what he saw and suffered and so literally practises gratitude within every experience, every day of his life. For him, it was not about merely surviving but proactively thriving.

It is evidenced by a constant smile, which radiates from inside outwards. He is genuinely and authentically appreciative for every day of peace that he experiences, because he truly understands it is not a given but a gift.

I feel hugely privileged to have met this remarkable couple, lest I forget — when something trivial upsets me — how truly fortunate we are to live the life that we do.

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