 Before World War II, he escaped Slovakia on a "Kindertransport", leaving his parents and family behind.He arrived with the "Kindertransport" at London after Shavuos in 1939, where he celebrated the "Shabbos" of his "bar mitzvah" at the home of a British woman who took him in.The only "sefer" he received for his "bar mitzvah" was a copy of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, which he studied many weeks until he mastered it.