In 1919, during the short rule of Béla Kún, Joseph’s father was a member of the Supreme “Soviet”. At a young age Joseph joined the “Dror” movement and was active in the fields of culture and scouting. He was sent to country towns in order to enlist new members to the movement. After the Germans invaded Hungary on 19.3.1944, Joseph was enlisted in a forced labor unit. After a short period of time he escaped and integrated the underground work. He was sent to Romania within the framework of the tiyul but was caught and incarcerated in the Kistarcsa detention camp. Joseph escaped from the camp by hiding in a dirty laundry cart. He returned to Budapest and the underground activities and hid in the bunker on Hungary Boulevard. In the middle of December the bunker was discovered and its occupants were taken to the prison on Margit Boulevard where Joseph was interrogated, tortured but eventually liberated with a group of friends in a daring operation of underground activists of the Zionist youth movements, on 25.12.1944.
After the liberation, he gave assistance to orphaned Jewish children in the children’s houses and dealt with aliya. In 1949 he made aliya himself and joined Kibbutz Parod. He was a youth educator and active with the leftwing movements, the “Sneh” group and the Israeli Communist Party. He had to leave his kibbutz and moved to Holon with his family.
