HAGANAH APEX - Key Persons
Emil Kanarek (Mike Lee Kanarek's future adoped father) was a young teenager growing up in Austria during the dark era of the rise of Hitler. Part of his survival of the Holocaust is credited to a group of nuns who sheltered him in their convent so the Nazi's would not capture him and sends him to Auschwitz. At the end of this dark era, young Emil decided to journey to Israel and join the Haganah. He later became an officer in the Palmach unit, the strike force unit of the Haganah, what may have literally been the first Israeli Special Forces Unit in a Partisan formation. At the end of his stay at the convent, Emil asked the Mother Superior how he could ever repay them for the sanctuary they had provided in such dark times when all he had received from them was light during his entire stay. The Mother Superior just answered, "That is a simple question to answer. One day you must save a child like we have saved you and the circle will be closed." The era of the Holocaust was fading away and Eastern Europe was healing from the horrific genocide of the Jewish People. The dark cloud migrated to another part of the world for the cloud of war always lurks upon humanity.