Natan Zohar
NZ: March 2024
NZ: Natan's wife Ruth on their wedding day in April 1957 in Israel
NZ: March 2024
NZ: Eileen Hookway
NZ: Page in mother's Austrian passport
NZ: HEMED
NZ: PM Ben-Gurion invited NZ's department to his place Sde Boker
NZ: Ruth's mother and her brother Izak
NZ: With his wife Ruth in Haifa before they got married
NZ: Parents Rifka and Israel Sonnenschein
NZ: In back on the left is his brother Jacki Sonnenschein; sitting in front of him is NZ's foster brother Moshe (one of the co founders of Kibbutz Kfar HaNassi) and his wife and children; NZ kneeling on the right in Kfar HaNassi in the late 1950s
NZ: Photo of IDF High Command (Jerusalem 1967)
NZ: Austrian passport
NZ: Membership card Makkabi Vienna 1939
NZ: School friends in Manchester
NZ: Vienna 1938 fragment of a larger picture
NZ: Natan's first Israeli identity card
NZ: Mother's Austrian passport 1939 which includes Natan (Otto Sonnenschein)
NZ: Austrian passport
NZ: Correspondence Natan received from his wife
NZ: Membership card Makkabi Vienna 1939
NZ: With his future wife Ruth on the balcony of a house on top of Mount Carmel
NZ: This photo was taken in Sommerset when Natan was evacuated and taken in by George and Eileen Hookway and their son John. He loved the spaniel called Queenie.
NZ: Command car
NZ: Page in mother's Austrian passport
NZ: Natan's postcard to his parents posted while travelling on the Kindertransport 1939; his father carried it with him until the met again after the war.
NZ: Natan in 1948 serving in the Haganah
NZ: Close friend Erich who also came to England with a Kindertransport. They served together in the War of Independence in Israel. This photo taken in Tel Aviv in 1948 when they were both on leave.
NZ: Natan who was then called Otto Sonnenschein in Vienna 1931
NZ: This photo was sent by Natan's father to a friend in London in order to find foster parents for Natan (Otto).
NZ: Natan who was then called Otto Sonnenschein Vienna 1938
NZ: Science corps HEMED visiting Be'er Sheva
NZ: One of the self-addressed and stamped cards his father gave him before Natan left Vienna on the Kindertransport in 1939
Natan Zohar
Born: 1931
Place of Birth: Vienna
Arrived in Britain: 01/07/1939
Interview Summary
Date of interview: 21/02/2024
Natan Zohar was born in February 1931 in Vienna as Otto Sonnenschein. He remembers a happy childhood in Vienna’s third district with outings in the Prater and looking up to his brother Jakob “Jackie” who was nine years older.
During the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) his father was taken to Dachau but his mother bribed someone at the Gestapo Headquarters and he was released. At this point they realised that the family had to get out of Austria. His father sent a photo of Natan to a business contact in London in order to find a foster home for him. The Tober family in Bow, London, who already had five children decided to take him in. Natan arrived on 6 July 1939 in London on a Kindertransport. He remembers saying goodbye to distraught parents at Vienna’s main station and despite his young age having to look after an even younger boy during the voyage. His father gave him pre-paid postcards to post on his voyage and Natan shows one of these during the interview which was mailed from Frankfurt.
His foster family was very welcoming and Natan settled in quickly. At the beginning of the Blitz, Natan was evacuated to Burlescombe in Sommerset and taken in by the Hookway family. Again, he found a welcoming and nurturing family whose only son treated him like a younger brother. In the meantime, his own brother Jackie illegally immigrated to Mandate Palestine with his Betar group from Vienna and joined the Jewish Brigade. His parents were not able to enter Palestine. Having arrived from Vienna on a ship in Haifa, at arrival they were interned by the British in Atlit and then deported to Mauritius and detained until the end of the war.
When Natan was getting closer to Bar Mitzvah age, it was decided that he should rejoin his Jewish foster family in Manchester where they had evacuated to after their house in Bow was destroyed in the Blitz. In 1945 he returned with the Tober family to London and remembers celebrating VE day. When he learnt what had happened to his parents, the Jewish Agency organised his immigration to Palestine in 1946 to rejoin them. As he was too young to join the IDF, he started working with HEMED, the Haganh Science Corps. Later, he fought in the War of Independence and changed his name from Otto Sonnenschein to Natan Zohar.
He met his wife Ruth who was born in Kovno, Lithuania, they got married in 1957 and came to London for Ruth to finish her studies at St. Martin’s School of Art. Natan started working for an engineering firm as a sales technical engineer. He is looking back on a long life with gratitude to all the wonderful people who crossed his paths, in particular Ruth.
Key words: Sonnenschein. Vienna. Betar. Maccabi. Kindertransport. Tober. Synagoge Seitenstettengasse. Anschluss. Habonim. Hashomer Hatzair. Illegal immigration to Palestine. British Internment in Mauritius. Haganah. Palmach. War of Independence. Safed. Tzfat. Palestine. Youth Alyiah. Alyat HaNoar. HEMED. Mauritius. Hookway. Burlescombe Somerset.