Bio's on our Brothers
meir kuzriel HHQ, C Company ---Aug 1971 to April 72
The story starts in 1943. My mother escaped a train from Westerborg, Holland to Auschwitz. She traveled through France to Morocco. There she made it to New York where I came into the world. My mother gave me to a lady to watch me while she worked. One day she collapsed and ended up in a long term hospital with TB. The lady I was given to used me to get support from soldiers and sailors. The investigation led me to an orphanage and several attempts to place me. I was adopted when I was 11 by William T. Pickett and his wife Elsie. When William returned to the active navy for Korea the two divorced. Elsie married Philip Hewett and he officially adopted me at the age of 14. Some how Pickett had met Philip's sister at Norfolk, Va and they married in 1954. I spent time with Elsie's parents and relatives - like Lt. Col George Pickett IV and Rev. McKay. I attended High School in California and College in Louisiana. Prior to my joining the army I found my real mother and fought to change my name back to the family name. I was refused. My first trip to the Nam was in 1968 with 5th Special Forces as a medical specialist. I was assigned to Ft. MacArthur, California because Father Hewett's house burnt down and my wife lost her baby. I was a pain because the hospital there had never had a special forces medic working there. I went back to the Nam and was told SF was closing down operations and was sent to C 2/5. Coming home, I was sent to Ft. Polk where I ran a dispensary and taught First Aid to Basic trainees. Then I went to Alaska in 1974. Then sent back to Nam for the evac. I returned to Alaska and came to join the joint US-Canadian expedition to Mt. Logan and Mt. McKinley. I left the Army in 1976 and took a scholarship to Canadian Rabbinical College (also McGill and Sir George Universities). In 1978 I went on scholarship to Israel. In Canada the court allowed the change of name. I also worked with an RCMP officer to watch a South Vietnamese General who suddenly became wealthy and an owner of a number of operations from Vancouver to Halifax that were suspicious. He had drug connections and was dealing in Human trafficking. He was moved to the States and died with Cancer. While I was working in Canada I met a lady that I married. Some how during a trip back to Poland to visit her family she and her parents were imprisoned as the counter- revolution move against communist party members. (Her father was a prosecutor in Nazi trials.) I was waiting for her in Israel. I was told she had died by people in Canada. So I went on to study and accepted an arranged marriage. I had 3 children and adopted 3 children with difficulties. In 1985 I graduated a course leading to a judgeship and representative to the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Israel. I was appointed in 1989 to the Rabbinical Court in Capetown, South Africa. In 1990 I returned to my former appointment as the secretary of the Supreme Rabbinical Court of America and its representative the Israeli Court. In 1992 I was appointed Chief Orthodox Rabbi of the West Bank. In 1999 I was returned to the States to work for the American Court and took on a position with a chemical company. In 2001, after I returned from a trip to Central America I had a TIA (stroke). My wife (the arranged one) decided to leave. I went to the 400th anniversary of the founding of the main Synagogue at Cape Town. On the flight back one of the congregates, who was living and teaching in Princeton, Introduced me to a book written by my Polish wife, who was now a professor here in Canada. I called to say Hi. I assumed she was married. We have been together now for 4 years. My children are married and living in Texas, Her son is just finishing College here.