Israel’s 60th anniversary brings back special memories for Montrealer Oscar Ceausu, who, as a member of the Palmach, the elite fighting forces of the pre-state Jewish defence organization Haganah, fought during the War of Independence.

It was the thrill of his lifetime to return last year to the exact same spot in Rosh Hanikra, a town on the Lebanese border, where his brigade, called Iftah, marshalled before going off into battle.

Ceausu, who then used his birth name Barad, and a few of his mates were photographed relaxing on the day before being mobilized – to where, they did not know – in May 1948.

Ceausu, who has lived in Montreal for 47 years, went back to Israel to visit some of his 12 first cousins. They arranged to have six of Ceausu’s second cousins, all currently serving in the Israel Defence Forces, to have their photo taken with Ceausu at the same site where he, as a young soldier, was photographed six decades earlier.

“To think I survived and came back so many years later to the same place and to stand with these six young men in uniform was a tremendous feeling,” he said.

Born in Romania in 1932, Ceausu’s relatives changed the family name to a typically Romanian one during the Nazi period. Nevertheless, the family was deported to forced labour camps.

Twelve-year-old Oscar managed to escape and slip out of the country and, after a perilous journey, get to Italy with the help of the Aliyah Bet, which organized clandestine Jewish immigration into Palestine during the British Mandate. He was a member of the Betar Zionist youth group and grew up with the nationalist dreams of Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

“Even though I was so young, my mother begged me to make a run for it. She said, ‘We will never survive.’”

Ceausu quickly learned what he needed to do to stay alive. “I lied about my age, I stole and I walked behind fat people, knowing their bodies would shield me from any bullets.”

Once he arrived in Palestine, Ceausu, who had thought of becoming an actor, went on three underground missions for Aliyah Bet to Poland, posing as a non-Jew. He entered into fictitious marriages with at least five young Jewish women, all former concentration camp inmates. As the “wives” of a Palestinian national, they could enter the country legally.

O n h i s l a s t mission, he was c a u g h t b y t h e British en route and was sent to Cyprus, where he remained in detention with 11,000 other Jewish men, women and children for about a year. He was freed the day before the British left Palestine, and he immediately volunteered with the Palmach.

While in detention, many young men like Ceausu secretly continued their para-military training “in preparation for a war we never knew would come. Emotions were running very high.”

There were Zionist infiltrators in Cyprus who provided the detainees with their only news from the outside world.

Ceausu vividly remembers May 14, 1948, the day David Ben-Gurion declared the Jewish state’s independence. “He warned us we were going to be attacked by the Arabs, that our enemies wanted to destroy us, but said that we are strong and will survive.”

Tel Aviv erupted. “There were thousands in the streets of Tel Aviv celebrating. Shoshana Daman was singing a song of liberation. Everyone was screaming. There were tears of joy like you wouldn’t believe. All the cafes and restaurants were not charging. The owners urged us to eat, drink,” he said.

“This was the realization of my vision, which I had inherited from my mother, that the Jewish people would be revived in their homeland after thousands of years, out of the ashes, just as our national poet [Chaim Nachman] Bialik had predicted. He was a prophet who inspired us.”

The euphoria was short-lived, as everyone knew it would be. But the new nation was resigned. “We had a saying – there’s no choice,” he said. “Two or three hours later, Syrian and Egyptian warplanes attacked.”

From the Lebanese border, he was sent south to the Negev and participated in the liberation of Be’er Sheva.

After the war, Ceausu became a professional stage actor with the Ohel Theatre in Tel Aviv, which was affiliated with the Histadrut labour federation. The performed for about 15 years under the name Or Shamir.

He appeared in such Israeli plays as Moshe Shamir’s All for the Best and a Hebrew version of American writer Sylvia Regan’s Morning Star, and still has a cherished scrapbook full of the reviews and playbills of that time.

Ceausu said he likely would have stayed in Israel for the rest of his life, but his parents and younger sister – who survived the Holocaust – had emigrated to Montreal after living a short time in Israel. His father was a furrier, and it was a logical destination.

In 1961, when his mother was ill, he visited them. He intended to remain only a couple of weeks, but then he met the woman who would become his wife, Sema, who passed away in 1992.

Ceausu also left behind his acting career and instead went to work for his father-in-law, a manufacturer of lamps.

He returned to Israel many times over the years and still keeps his Israeli passport.

“It is my most treasured possession,” he said.