Late one afternoon in November, 90-year-old Gidon Lev virtually welcomed me into his apartment in Northern Israel with the warmth of a man who has lived many lives and refuses to be defined by only one of them. Gidon doesn’t do somber. He does laughter, he does family, he does dance — and he does it all with the kind of optimism that feels gloriously rebellious.
Gidon was born in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia in 1935, into what seemed an ordinary, innocent childhood. His parents were not observant Jews, and he recalls being unaware of his Jewish identity until the Nazis imposed it upon him. Karlovy Vary lay in the Sudetenland, annexed by Hitler in 1938 under the Munich Agreement when Lev was just 3 years old.
“Did I know what was happening? Of course not. Three‑year‑olds play,” he told me.
His grandfather and father ran a scrap‑iron business, but once the Germans imposed their rules, no one would buy from them or sell to them. Within a year, alongside the rest of the Jewish community of the Sudetenland, they fled to Prague, which was still part of Czechoslovakia, in the hope of safety.
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Lev remembers clutching a red tricycle at the train station, begging to take it with him. It had been a birthday gift, gleaming red with black handlebars. He tried to carry it onto the train, but his parents insisted he leave it. “They said no. It was left behind,” he said. “In the big picture, what’s a tricycle? But for me, it was everything.”
The realization of difference came soon after. “I only learned when the signs went up: Juden verboten,” he said. Suddenly, the playground he loved was forbidden. He recalled running to a swing shaped like a canoe, only to be stopped by his grandfather, who chased after him, yelling, “Nein, nein, nein!” Gidon remembers asking, bewildered, “But Grandpa, was I a bad boy?” His grandfather reassured him: “No, it’s not you. It’s the Nazis. They don’t allow Jews anymore.”
In December 1941, Gidon and his mother were deported to Terezin. “It’s called the Terezin Ghetto, but it was not a ghetto,” Gidon explained to me. “It was a camp with barbed wire, walls, German guards. Fear and hunger from morning to evening, evening to morning. All that I survived. I was there for four years.”
He was 6 years old when he arrived.
“Daily life in the camp was hunger, fear, survival. We pinched bread,” he said, “because stealing was for our very existence.” He recalls watching his father march past the barracks window, forbidden to look up. “I yelled, ‘Papa, Papa!’ but he didn’t look. If he had, he would have been hit with a rifle butt.” Gidon never saw his grandfather.
Of the 140,000 Jews imprisoned at Terezín, scarcely 17,000 survived to witness liberation on May 8, 1945. Around 33,000 perished within Terezín itself, while 90,000 were deported to extermination camps. Among the survivors was a severely malnourished Gidon and his mother. In 1948, they emigrated — first to New York City, and later to Canada.
After liberation, Gidon used to pray every day that his papa would come home, but the reunion he longed for never came. In time, he learned that his father, Ernst, died on an Auschwitz death march, one of the forced evacuations in which thousands of prisoners were forced westward under inhumane conditions, as the Nazis attempted to conceal their crimes.
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Survival in the camps, however, had not hardened Gidon. It gave him a creed. “We all have a right to exist,” he told me. “Black, white, male, female, straight, homosexual, Christian, Muslim, Jew. We can live together. Why not?”
Gidon’s life after the war was expansive. He emigrated to Israel, fought in the Six-Day War, became a dairy farmer, taught folk dancing, married and had six children, and is now the proud grandfather of 16 and great-grandfather of four. Twice, he survived cancer.
After his wife died, Gidon began writing his first book. That’s how he met Julie Gray, his late-in-life romance, partner and co-author.
“After my wife died, I started writing my history,” Gidon explained. “My friends had told me, ‘Sit down, write. You have time now. Write about your life. Write your story.’”
That book became “The True Adventures of Gidon Lev,” which was self-published, followed by “Let’s Make Things Better,” released in 2024. Together, Gidon and Julie brought his story to TikTok, where hundreds of thousands of young people encountered his Holocaust testimony in short, vivid bursts. Today, he’s something of an online sensation, with more than 87,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 460,000 on TikTok. Gidon credits Julie for this success.
“Julie is very good at this. Without her, I wouldn’t be on TikTok, I wouldn’t be on Instagram,” he said. “I’d just be sitting here like an old man, getting older by the minute.”
If your feed could do with a little sunshine (and honestly, whose couldn’t?), I’d suggest a wander through Gidon’s socials. They’re cheerful, full of bright, beautiful moments from Gidon and Julie. But woven through that brightness are facts and reminders of the Holocaust.
Though Gidon has a large, devoted fanbase, antisemitic comments are not uncommon. Gidon remembers one commenter on TikTok, a Holocaust denier, calling him a liar. His reply carried the weight of a lifetime: “Dear Sir, I wish it were a lie. If it had been, I would have had a childhood. I would have had a father, grandparents, cousins. I have none of those because this is truly the truth.”
For Gidon, the duality is not only natural but inevitable. His life, framed by loss and rebuilt through joy, is a testament to resilience. As he said to me: “Life goes on. And you, you are part of that story. You can make it better.”
