Below our tiny house, on the soccer field, my sons, Ari and Hanan, are kicking a ball. They aren't bad, especially Hanan, who is five. Ari is a year younger, thinner, shyer. He doesn't seem to like the body contact as much.

I'll have to work with them. Teach them the moves, how to pass off, to feint, how to "head" the ball.

Watching them, I'm reminded of the way my brother Karl and I used to play in the little park opposite our home in Berlin. Our home was also my father's medical office. Sometimes my father's patients would stop under the shade trees and watch us.

I can still hear their voices--maybe Mr. Lowy, who was his patient for as long as I can remember--talking about us. Dr. Weiss' kids. See the little guy? Rudi Weiss? He'll be a professional someday.

Karl was three years older than I. Thin, quiet, never an athlete. He'd get tired. Or he'd want to finish a painting or read. I guess we both disappointed our father, Dr. Josef Weiss. But he was a gentle and thoughtful man. And he loved us too much to ever let us know.

All ended. All over. Karl and my parents and all of my family died in what is now called the holocaust. A fancy name for mass murder. I survived. And today, seated in this cinderblock bungalow above the Galilee--I see its dark-blue waters in the distance beyond the fields and peach orchards--I finish this chronicle of the family Weiss. In some ways, it is a chronicle of what happened to millions of the Jews of Europe--the six million victims, the handful who survived, those who fought back.

My wife, Tamar, an Israel-born sabra, helped me prepare this document. She is far better educated than I am. I barely finished high school in Berlin, being too busy playing soccer, or tennis, or roaming the streets with my friends.

Tamar attended the University of Michigan in the United States. She is a child psychologist and is fluent in five languages. I still have difficulty with Hebrew. But I am no longer a European. Israel is my country. I fought for her liberty in 1947, and I will fight again, and again, and whenever I am asked to. In my days as a partisan in the Ukraine, I learned that it is better to die with a gun in one's hand than to submit to the murderer. I have taught this to Ari and Hanan, and, young as they are, they understand. Why should they not? Several times a week Syrian artillery from across the Jordan drops shells on Kibbutz Agam, or on some of our neighbors. Fifty meters from our little house there is an underground shelter, complete with beds, water, food, toilets. At least once a month the bombardments become sufficiently strong so that we must spend the night there.

My sons, Tamar and I sometimes watch our soldiers moving our own guns across the dusty roads below, to pay the Syrians in kind. More than once, my own unit has been called up to assist in "neutralizing" the enemy artillery. I find no pleasure in these duties, but I do them willingly. Nor am I overjoyed at the necessity of teaching small children, infants, about the need to battle for one's life. But I have learned a great deal about survival and I would be less than a good father if I did not impart this knowledge to them early. Already they know not to yield, not to bow one's head.

The information I collected for this narrative about my family came from many sources. Twice during my summer vacations I visited Europe. (I'm employed as athletic director at the local high school, and like all members of the Agam community I am required to turn my entire salary over to the kibbutz; however, special grants of funds are sometimes made, and Tamar's parents helped me.) I corresponded with many people who knew my parents, my brother Karl, and my Uncle Moses. I have met scores of survivors of the camps here in Israel, people from the Warsaw ghetto. Tamar assisted me in translating most of the material, and with much of the writing.

A major source for information on my brother Karl came from his widow, a Christian woman named Inga Helms Weiss, who is now living in England.

Approximately a year ago, hearing about my search for the story of my family, a man named Kurt Dorf wrote to me. He was a German civilian engineer attached to the German army, and he had been a prominent witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. He had located the diaries of his nephew, an SS officer named Erik Dorf. Kurt Dorf was kind enough to send me a copy of his nephew's lengthy, detailed account. These diaries are of a fragmented and desultory nature. Oftentimes, Erik Dorf did not even date his entries, but fortunately he did mention enough places and dates in his rambling account so that I have been able to determine at least the month for each entry. There is a gap between the years 1935 and 1938. The material from this period has apparently been lost or destroyed.

I have interspersed sections of these diaries with the account of my family's destruction. It seems to me (and Tamar) that the motives of the murderers are of as great importance to us as the fate of the victims.

I never knew Major Erik Dorf, but in one of those crazy coincidences with which those dreadful years are filled, he and his wife had at one time been my father's patients in Berlin. Three years after my father had taken care of him and his family, this same Erik Dorf was signing orders and establishing procedures that would lead to the murder of Karl, my parents, my Uncle Moses--and six million other innocents.

It seems unbelievable that it is only seven years since the nightmare ended, since we were delivered from the murky hell of Nazi Europe. Tamar says that actually we are never delivered from this tragedy. Our children, and our children's children, must be told about it. And so must the children of the world.

Forgive, Ben-Gurion once said, but never forget. I am not quite ready for forgiveness. Perhaps I never will be.