TEL AVIV – With the Nazis murdering Jews and ransacking their property outside on the infamous nights of Kristallnacht in 1938, 13-year-old David Toren sat in the sunroom of his wealthy great-uncle in Germany admiring a favorite painting depicting two men on horseback on a beach.
Within a year, Toren would be smuggled out in one of the final Kindertransports, a series of rescues for Jewish children organized by several European countries.
Left behind, his family would perish in the death camps and their vast art collection would be seized by Nazis and later traded by unscrupulous dealers.
Toren would serve in the Israeli pre-state militia before moving to America with less than $100 to his name. He went on to build a successful law practice