 Naftaniel's father was immediately interned in Westerbork - in 1938 a refugee camp where Jews from Germany who had fled Nazi Germany were brought to - after crossing the border with the Netherlands.During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he succeeded in preventing his own deportation to the death camps in occupied Poland.He was liberated by Canadian forces in 1945 while still being held in Westerbork, which had been transformed into a transit camp for more than 100,000 Dutch Jews to Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt by the Nazis.