At 102, D-Day veteran looks forward to a long-delayed bar mitzvah
Delray Beach, Florida – Harold Terens fought during the Second World War. He lived almost 102 years old, celebrating his birthday a few weeks earlier with his family and friends in Florida. But he has something more to hope.
His Mitzvah bar.
Terens said during his birthday celebration on Saturday that his brother had obtained the traditional Jewish ceremony marking the beginning of adulthood when they were children living in New York, but he did not do it.
“My mother came from Poland. My father came from Russia. And my mother was a religious Jew. And my father was anti-religious. They therefore had two sons. And a son, they compromised. A son obtained the Mitzvahed bar, the other son did not,” he said.
At the beginning of next year, Terens said that he would finally appreciate this ceremony. At Pentagon outside Washington, no less. Terens said it happened when he spoke with Wolf Blitzer from CNN on a television panel and a rabbi heard the conversation.
“I mentioned that I would like to be Bar Mitzvahed at 103 and that it is the rabbi of the Pentagon, so it’s my next list of buckets. I’m going to be Bar Mitzvahed in the Pentagon,” said Terens.
Terens will have 102 on August 6. Saturday’s party was therefore a little early.
D -Day – June 6, 1944 – Terens helped repair the return aircraft from France so that they can join the battle. He said half of his business pilots died that day. Terens went to France 12 days later, helping to transport freshly captured Germans and American prisoners of war who will just return to England.
Terens was honored in June 2024 by the French as part of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of their country of the Nazis. But that’s not all that happened on these Normandy beaches.
He married Jeanne Swerlin, now 97.
“I thought that my marriage in Normandy last year was the culmination of my life. Number of all the moments of my life. You know, it is the saying, that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that cut our breath,” said Terens.
He survived the World War, was involved in a secret mission in Iran, another time by barely escaping a German rocket after leaving a London pub just before destroying it.
“My life was a huge fairy tale, especially with this new woman that I have. Who I like deeply and who I will spend the rest of my life until death separates us, as the mayor told us in Normandy,” said Terens.
After the German surrender in 1945, Terens helped the transportation to release allied prisoners in England before returning to the United States a month later.
He married his wife Thelma in 1948 and had two daughters and a son. He has become an American vice-president for a British conglomerate. They moved from New York to Florida in 2006 after Thelma withdrew as a French teacher; She died in 2018 after 70 years of marriage. He has eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Terens is much questioned about his secret of longevity.
“I think that if you can learn to minimize stress, you go a long way. You will add at least 10 years to your life. So it’s number one. And 90% is lucky,” he said.
