Ben Goldwater was born in December 1938, in Brussels, Belgium. He was living in Mons, Belgium (17km from French border) when the war broke out in 1939. On May 10, 1940 the Nazis occupied his town. Ben’s father joined the Belgian underground against the Nazi war effort. Ben’s family lived under constant fear of denunciation as Jews. They fled their home twice as they escaped the local Gestapo. Ben’s parents soon decided that they needed to protect him and his sister, and through his father’s underground contacts were able to secure a hiding place with a local family, whom they paid. Ben, age 3, and his sister remained with the family for 14 months and were treated terribly – the family often stole their food rations and at one point decided to turn them in to the Gestapo. Realizing the poor conditions their children lived under, Ben’s parents took him and his sister and left for Messire, Belgium. They would live there under false identities until the end of the war.
