Source : TimesofIsrael
Moshe (born Mojžíš Weiner) was born in 1928 in Behynka in the Nitra district in Slovakia. As the Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Slovaks declared its independence and founded the Slovak State, a client state of Nazi Germany. Moshe was deported already in 1939 to Nisko, in Poland, in one of the first transports of Jews from Czechoslovakia. Together with his father, he ran away and ended up in Soviet Union. In 1942, at the age of 14, he joined the Czechoslovak military unit in Buzuluk, in the USSR, led by General Svoboda. He participated in many key battles on the Eastern Front till the liberation of Czechoslovakia. After the war, Moshe studied for two years at the technical school for aircraft mechanics in Liberec. He joined the group of Jewish volunteers and started to prepare for his departure to Palestine, which he reached illegally in 1947. He was drafted into the IDF in May 1948 and as a professional aviation mechanic, he joined the air force. He served in a famous Israel’s first fighter “101 Squadron,” where he was working on Avia S-199 Fighters delivered to Israel from Czechoslovakia. To help to assemble those planes, Czechoslovakia sent to Israel its technicians and Moshe met again some of his colleagues from the technical school in Liberec. After he left the army, Moshe started to work for the Israel Aircraft Industry as a head of the department of aircraft mechanics. In the end of 1980s, he joined the commerce department at the Ministry of Defense.