When my eldest son, Moshe, completed his military service and his studies at Tel Aviv University and joined the management of the company’s businesses, I was free to turn to public activities, the main focus of which was commemorating my family, my hometown, the Holocaust, and the connection to Czechoslovakia and the Czech people — in addition to my personal sense of obligation for their attitude toward me, toward the Jewish people, and for their assistance in the War of Independence.

I celebrated my first birthday as a free man on February 4, 1946, in Czechoslovakia, in the city of Ústí nad Labem, part of the Sudetenland that was returned to Czechoslovakia after the war.
Most of the residents of this region were German, and they were forced to vacate their homes and were expelled to Germany.
Holocaust survivors were entitled to receive apartments left behind by these departing Germans and to play a key role in interrogating them about the crimes of the regime during the war.

After I arrived in Israel, we used to celebrate birthdays at the company offices and with my friends at the Friday table, on the Fridays closest to the date.
I also celebrated milestone birthday decades in Israel, and my 65th birthday at the Kruševo winter sports resort, together with my family and friends.

My eightieth birthday was celebrated at the Air Force House in Herzliya, attended by family members and friends from Israel and abroad. On the occasion of the event, my family was also memorialized on the memorial wall of the house, and the film “Alive from the Ashes,” produced and directed by my late friend Yitzhak Kol, was screened.

In May 2010, ahead of the celebrations marking 65 years since the end of World War II, I was invited together with a number of friends from the pilots’ course in Olomouc in 1948, as guests of the Czech government, to Prague. We were hosted by the Czech Minister of Defense. We were received in festive ceremonies by the Speaker of Parliament, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Defense. We laid a wreath at the memorial site for the fallen of the war against the Nazis.

In May 2014, Pope Francis made a historic visit to Israel, and among other events a reception was held for him at Yad Vashem. I was invited to be one of six Holocaust survivors whose hands he shook in a ceremony at Yad Vashem.