Josef Mikhelashvili was born in the settlement of Kulashi (western Georgia) in 1919. His father, Moshe, was killed when Josef was only 1.5 months old, leaving him to be raised by his mother Simha and his elder brother and sister. Kulashi, known as a Jewish community, was often referred to as "Little Jerusalem," boasting twelve synagogues and a sizeable Jewish community. The family scrupulously observed the Jewish traditions.
Josef, who did not attend school, began to learn the trade of shoemaking at the age of twelve to support his family. Simultaneously, he studied the Torah with a local religious teacher. He began to attend a night school, combining it with his day job, and eventually completed his schooling. In 1939, Josef was called up to serve in the Red Army, but was initially rejected because of his low weight and short stature. A year later, he volunteered to serve, and was accepted. Josef was sent to Vladimir-Volynski in the recently annexed Western Ukraine, where he enrolled in military courses. He was there when the Soviet-German War broke out.
Assigned to an aircraft unit guarding an airfield, Josef and his comrades faced a Nazi attack on the very first day of the war (June 22, 1941), and were forced to retreat. During this retreat, they were captured by the Germans near Kiev and taken to an open-air POW camp. Josef and several of his fellow prisoners managed to kill their German guard and escape. However, they were recaptured, as they were still wearing their Soviet military uniforms.
Josef spent the next month at a concentration camp in Krivoi Rog. He took extreme measures to conceal his Jewish identity, destroying his papers and adopting a Muslim alias, to explain the fact of his circumcision. All of his fellow inmates helped him keep up his cover story. Forced to work in coal mines, he made a second daring escape, while the Nazis believed that he had died in the mine, like many other prisoners.
Josef found refuge in a Ukrainian village near the camp. He was taken in by a local Ukrainian family, and began to work on a farm. In 1943, while trying to rejoin the advancing Red Army in the region, Josef was captured and imprisoned yet again. However, as the Nazis needed a cobbler to repair their boots, Josef was allowed to work in his profession. Aware that the Nazis intended to eliminate him before retreating, Josef killed his captors, hid away, and waited until Soviet troops liberated the village.
Enlisting in the infantry, Josef took part in various military operations, including the crossing of the Dniester, the Red Army offensive in Bessarabia, the assault on Warsaw, the crossing of the Oder, and the Battle of Berlin.
Following the German surrender, Josef was part of the guard of honor at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. He then took a month-long furlough to visit his relatives in Kulashi, before returning to Germany, where he served until his discharge in 1947.
After returning to Kulashi for good, Josef married a Jewish girl named Miriam, and they went on to have three children. He worked as a shoemaker at a local kolkhoz, making enough money to keep his family well-off. At the same time, he observed the Jewish traditions, which was rather uncommon in the postwar USSR, with its intensifying antisemitism.
In 1967, Josef's sister and her family received permission to leave the USSR for Israel. Two years later, Josef's family also managed to move there. They settled in the city of Lod, where he found work at an aviation plant.
