Monty Goldstein celebrated his 102nd birthday with a family tea party surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - a moment of joy that is a great gift for someone who has seen sights that many of our contemporaries do not know.
But this joy is mixed with a heavy sadness. More than eight decades after donning the British army uniform and defending it from Nazi attacks, Goldstein finds himself looking around him with deep anxiety in the face of the wave of hate crimes and anti-Semitism that is rising in the United Kingdom.
"What have I done to bring this about?" Goldstein asks with obvious pain in an interview he gave to the British news agency PA.
According to him, today's England is no longer the same country he knew as a child in East London - an area where he had to deal with the tense atmosphere of the fascists led by Oswald Mosley in his youth.
"What happens overseas is not my fault, and I can't help it. But there is so much antisemitism, especially in the Golders Green area, that some people are afraid to walk the streets. That's why I say England is not the same England anymore."
Goldstein, a full-blooded Englishman, was drafted into the British Army in 1943 when he was just 18. He served in an anti-tank unit tasked with defending the capital from the Nazi German air force.
Although he had expected to be sent to France following the Normandy invasion, his company was left in Britain because of the critical importance of defending the home front. Since the end of the war, he has been a member of the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen (AJEX) and has never missed a single commemoration.
Today, when he looks at the reality in which some members of the community are afraid to declare their Jewishness on the streets or to wave the country's flag with pride, he sees this as a historical injustice.
"Jews try to be exemplary citizens, to uphold the law, pay taxes and help others, and yet they are treated as second-class citizens," he says, warning that instead of moving forward, society is going backwards - to the point that some members of the community are considering changing their ways and leaving the country.
According to him, the education system must take responsibility and act firmly against the phenomena of hatred in schools, as the younger generation absorbs hostility towards Jews even before it has learned to know them.
Despite the deep disappointment with the changes that Britain is going through, he chooses to remain true to his values: "Britain is my country, I know nothing else."
Regarding the secret of longevity that brought him to the exciting age of 102, he summarizes simply: "Every morning when a person opens his eyes, he should say 'thank you G-d,' because life at such an age is a gift."