Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Yona Tiefenbrunner was one of eight siblings.

Maurice 'Monju' Tiefenbrunner cites: "During the 1930s when the Nazis came to power, they held meetings in large town halls. Yoine and I decided to attend one such meeting as something to boast about to our friends. There were about 100 Germans in the hall. They talked of destroying Jewish businesses and attacking Jews. Suddenly a school-friend recognised and introduced us. Immediately they realised we were Jewish. They threw us out and bashed us up. We were badly bruised and hurt, but very proud that we'd attended a Nazi Party meeting."

In 1938, the German government had decided that all Jews of Polish nationality residing in Germany, were to be deported back to Poland.
In November, 1938, the Tiefenbrunner family were all taken to the railway station, escorting police took put them into the train carriages, and they were expelled to Poland.
The train left Wiesbaden, stopped in Mainz, Frankfurt and several other places, where more Jewish families boarded the train.
The train went as far as Beuthen, on the border of Germany and Poland, where all the passengers got out.
The Tiefenbrunner family boarded a train for Krakow, to Yaakov Tiefenbrunner's house.
Phillip Tiefenbrunner left home to work in Antwerpen.
Yona 'Yoine' Tiefenbrunner escaped to Belgium, joining his brother, Phillip, in Antwerpen.

Yona Tiefenbrunner founded a youth home and yeshiva for religious boys, aged 15 to 17 years, who had come to Belgium on a Kindertransport.

Both Ruth and Yona Tiefenbrunner were detained as Enemy Aliens, but were quickly released.
The children at Jonas' home had dispersed, and Jonas immediately set out by bicycle to find them. He reestablished his school on the General Drubbelstraat, in what had been an old age home.
At one point, the Nazis considered deporting the children, but pleas from the Catholic Church and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, compelled the to formalize a policy that Jews under the age of sixteen and the elderly would be allowed to remain in Belgium, and to house these homeless Jews, a series of orphanages and old-age homes were organized.
In late 1941, funding for Chez Tiefenbrunner House was underwritten by the Association des Juifs en Belgique AJB, was officially renamed Orphelinat Israelite de Bruxelles. and moved to rue Patriotes in Bruxelles.

After the war, Yona Tiefenbrunner started a new children's home in Mariaburg, for children who had been interned in concentration camps and orphans who had been in hiding.
He continued to direct the home until 1960.