My father, Eugene Elsner, celebrated his 90th birthday last week. Some readers will know of his amazing story of survival in World War II from my book, "Guarded by Angels." To give a sense of who he is, I'm posting here his speech from his birthday party.
Happy Birthday Daddy and Many More!

There are many answers you’ll get when you ask different people what they know about the older generation. Some will tell you they know all there is to know about them. On the whole they will tell you the oldies are doing alright They queue up early every month to collect their old age pensions . Then they get back home to doze off in their armchairs. They also get reduced entry charges to national parks. and to some cinemas And if they happen to live in England they don’t have to pay any bus fares after 9 o’clock in the morning. So they haven’t got much to complain about, but very often they do...
Other people will tell you, old folks live in the past They bury themselves in their memories, judge everything by the standards of yesterday and just let the real world pass them by.
Maybe all that is true to some extent of some older people in this and also in some other countries. But for most of us living in Israel that kind of thinking is not an option. Too much is going on., Here miracles occur on a regular basis. We can never doze off or relax for too long in case we miss one..
And there is nothing wrong with memories. Young or old we all have them. We may have them as pleasant dreams or as nightmares, but quite often they help us to avoid errors we have made in the past.
And sometimes memories intrude on us unexpectedly. This happened to me only a few days ago as I was thinking of our coming get- together tonight.
Without any warning I found myself trying to imagine what my late parents would think of their sons, Mark and me and their children and grandchildren if they could see us all tonight. They would be proud and happy and love them all, I was certain. But then very quickly it came to me, that when the clock stopped for our mother and father on that fatal day in 1943 they were only 47 and 49 years old .Young people really. Much, much too young to perish.. It made me as sad as always when they enter my memory.
Fortunately not all the trips into the past are so sad or depressing. Some are just unforgettable. So on this occasion I hope you will allow me to reminisce just a little You know of the events I am going to tell you from films or history books. But it’s different when one almost witnessed them. This one happened on 29th November 1947 just two years after the end of the second world war. It was two o’clock in the morning and I listened on the radio as the 58 states of the United Nations were taking a vote on partitioning Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state. The tension was unbearable. Apart from worrying about the fate of the yishuv I had many olim friends there, whose future and maybe life depended on the outcome of that vote.
My London landlady was greatly alarmed when she was woken up by my shouting and hurrahs and dancing round the room, when the result was announced What followed that vote after a bitter struggle, was the miracle of Eretz Israel whose 60th anniversary we are celebrating this month.
Many events happened or had their beginnings in the month of May , my birth included. In May 1967 the celebration of my birthday was forgotten by the enormous worry about the events in Israel. In the last two weeks of May the situation has changed from dangerous to alarming. Our enemies and many others were proclaiming that Israel’s days were numbered Each days news was more ominous than the previous one and the various experts in the English media, and many others around the world came to conclusion that the forces gathered against it were so overwhelming that Israel could not be expected to survive for longer than perhaps one, two or three weeks at most. Its fate was sealed. Obituaries were being prepared.
What happened in the Six Day War was a miracle that in my eyes beats the biblical story which tells us how God parted the Red Sea so that His Chosen People the slaves of the Egyptian Pharaoh could escape and his armies to drown.
Only this time around in June 1967, as everybody knows the modern Israelites did it all by themselves with perhaps, and only if you are a believer just a little help from above.
But let’s come back to the present. The reality of the present is that we have a marvelous little country which in spite of all the various blemishes that we hear so much about, we can all be proud of and that Helen and I, Alan and Shula Gill and Ralph have children and grandchildren any family would cherish and be proud of and no matter what the defeatists are trying to tell you. our country and our children have a future of great achievements in front of them So let’s lift our glasses and drink to it. L’Haim!