I couldn’t scream for help. I couldn’t beg for my mother. I couldn’t even whisper the words “I’m sorry.” I had tried begging them to stop. I had tried staying silent and emotionless. I had tried showing my 
humanity, pain and fear. All of those encouraged the guards to beat me harder. I knew some of them were enraged when I showed no pain or fear. I knew others were enraged when I showed “weakness” by crying or wincing. I had witnesses the guards getting aroused by begging and pleading for mercy, and the thought of being raped by a guard was more terrifying than dying. After months of being beaten three times per day, at nearly every shift change, I had learned a lesson that profoundly impacted my ability to survive fife years in hell: the only thing that bullies truly fear is someone crazy enough to enjoy being bullied. It takes all of their power away, all of their control.
I started taunting the guards, and later the inmates who picked fights with me: “Is that the best you can do? Please sir, can I have some more?”. Other times, I would encourage them to keep going. “Let it out, hit me again, please, it will make you feel better.” And later, I would taunt while insulting, “Is that the best you can do? My grandmother hit me harder than that for eating her chocolate covered prunes!”
I learned very quickly that asking them for more derailed them. Mentally, they could not comprehend it, and as a result it scared them. What kind of freak was I? Telling them to take out their anger one me derailed them because it made them feel guilty, cognitive dissonance of them knowing that it would not make them feel better, or so I told myself. Maybe they just thought I was deranged. With the inmates, it derailed them because I was laughing at them instead of cowering in fear. That lack of fear in the face of pain or danger was unfamiliar to them, and thus it terrified them.
Underneath the bravado and nonchalance, I was dying inside. I had given up hope months prior, long before I figured out how to shorten the length or intensity of the beatings. I was hoping that they would kill me by accident. Eventually they put Ben in the room with me, and I had Ben kill me. I was dead for nearly 5 minutes before some asshole in a white dress with a beard decided it was not my time. I really do not know what God was wearing but I knew he was an asshole for sending me back to suffer more. Be careful what you speak into existence, right?
I was being starved, tortured, demeaned, dehumanized, abused, and forced to do things that were unspeakable. This went on for a year. After the year of physical beatings and torture, four more years of torture were to follow, although they were to be less predictable, more psychological, and I would never know who the enemy was. So how did I survive? Where did I find my resilience? Where did I find hope? I am supposed to talk about the moments of hope, strength, and determination that kept me going in the darkest of times, but there was no hope. Not until nearly a year AFTER I was released. I never found hope. But I did survive.
The strength was simple: if my 4’2” tall, gentle, pacifist grandmother could survive years in the ghettos followed by years in the Nazi concentration camps all before she was 20 years old, how could I quit when what I was enduring couldn’t ever be as terrible, and could never have required even a fraction of the strength she had? The determination came from somewhere much darker. The determination came from a need for vengeance, a need for revenge. I was determined that I would leave a mark on them just as deep as the ones they left on my mind and my soul. Five years later, I still have terrible scars on my mind, as well as on my body. I was determined to get out, set up a charity event get the media to publicly invite them to come in a manner they could not refuse because it was for charity, they would be forced by public opinion and possibly by their employer to come, sign a waiver, and get in the ring with me for “free Krav Maga and Jujitsu” lessons. I was determined to get revenge in a manner that allowed me to legally do to them what they did to me, publicly, and in a manner that made me look like the guy. That was the determination that kept me going.
I am also supposed to talk about lessons learned and personal growth, and the personal growth that I experienced as a result of my time asking to suffer more is this: by the time I had the money, resources, connections, and ability to actually get my revenge, I no longer wanted it. Along the way to get established enough to make that happen, I became a business owner, a pillar of my community, a husband, and a father. I could argue that they were all steps towards having the reach needed to make it happen, and that would be true.
But equally true would be that I have found something that matters more and has inspired me more than anything else in my life combined-love. Becoming a dad has taught me the three greatest lessons in life: how to love, how to forgive, and how to not do stupid shit because I have to set a healthy example for my daughter. My time with my little girl is more precious to me and more healing than any revenge will ever be.
They may never experience me punching them in the face, but they will have to live with the fact that I survived, I have an abundance of love in my life, and I forgive them. That is the best revenge I can ever have.
Find the Author
Privilege Lost
Many nice young upper-middle class white boys have dreamed about being the ultimate bad-ass. Few have been forced to prove it. For straight-A student and suburban Jewish boy Joshua Elyashiv, the dream of being tough and invincible, like his heroes Jason Bourne and Bruce Lee to name just a few, was so overwhelming that he convinced his parents to put him through military school where he became a decorated martial arts pro.
Then, through a fluke chain of events that Joshua never could have predicted, he was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison for a clerical error. After a brutal confrontation with a violent guard, the sentence was extended to five years, hard time. Worst of all, his father cut off all contact.
For five relentless years, Joshua was forced to defend himself against some of the toughest, most ruthless men in the world. Incredibly, he survived-and never gave up the desperate fight to prove to his father that he was innocent. Even more incredibly, along the way, Joshua learned the true meaning of strength-inner and spiritual-and discovered that empathy, compassion, and knowing when to walk away from a conflict is the purest form of strength.
PRIVILEGE LOST is the true first-hand account of an “everyday nice guy” who had to fight for his life among some of the most violent and dangerous men alive, in some of the grimmest cages in the world. This gripping memoir explores the horrific violence he endured, traversing the bridge between adrenaline-pumping life and death moments and those deeply introspective agonies where Joshua came face to face with the reality behind his fantasies.
Along the way, he learned that true kindness can come from the most broken souls, and that so much of what we call justice is really just smoke and mirrors to protect those with power and privilege. With humor and pathos, PRIVILEGE LOST looks across economic, cultural, racial, and religious boundaries with wide open eyes, confronting the harsh realities of a criminal justice system in deep need of reform.
Like Piper Kerman’s Orange is the New Black, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl Interrupted, and Avi Steinberg’s Running the Books, PRIVILEGE LOST is a deeply personal memoir, with a message of survival and growth that so many can relate to.
