UN Threatens to Blacklist Bezeq Phone Company, Bezeq CEO Calls Them Out
The UNHRC blacklist letter to Bezeq is on display at the end of this article.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has threatened to blacklist Bezeq, Israel’s most prominent telecommunications corporation, because the company provides services to Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
In their letter to Bezeq, the UNHRC wrote that Bezeq could keep their response confidential, but Bezeq CEO Stella Handler chose to play no part in the UNHRC’s anti-Semitic game and publicized the UNHRC letter as well as her response on Facebook.
In her Facebook post on Monday, Handler said the company would not collaborate with what which she called “nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda.”
“Bezeq will continue to protect the rights of all our customers without discrimination. We will continue to provide service to all Israeli citizens without respect to religion, race or gender and we respect their right to choose to live in any part of this land – be it Raanana, Jerusalem, Ariel, Sakhnin or Ma’aleh Adumim.”
Handler said attempts to blacklist Israeli companies were nothing than “illegitimate pressure to ‘head-butt’ Israel.”
My message to Iran's foreign minister: Delete your account pic.twitter.com/i0Ca57uc4u
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 16, 2017
When a Jewish laborer took on 20,000 US Nazis in Madison Square Garden
A new short documentary compiles archived footage to recall an event held in New York on the eve of World War II in which tens of thousands of people gathered at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden venue to cheer on US Nazis at what was billed as a “pro-American rally.”
Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry’s latest work includes the moments when a Jewish man was beaten to the floor as he tried to rush past dozens of uniformed Nazis on the stage in a failed attempt to disrupt the main speaker.
The seven-minute “A Night at the Garden” is made up of various clips showing the drama on the night of February 20, 1939, when 20,000 people packed into Madison Square Garden for a rally organized by the German American Bund, a Nazi movement led by German-American Fritz Julius Kuhn.
The film was recently screened at 22 US cinemas in the Alamo theater chain.
Curry made the film for the documentary unit Field of Vision after learning about the history of the rally a year ago.
In Nazi-occupied Britain, graves at Alderney’s ‘Little Auschwitz’ may be defiled
‘Up to 40,000 slave laborers died on Alderney’How WW II American Leaders in North Africa Learned to Disregard the Interests of Jews
Kemp and Weigold argue at least 40,000 slave laborers died on Alderney during the war. Their estimate is based on evidence of the actual size of the slave labor workforce, the amount of work done in fortifying the island and the probable attrition rate based on witness reports and accounts of similar construction work elsewhere in Europe.
The Nazi effort on Alderney, in particular the highly secretive work carried out by the SS, is explained, Kemp and Weigold believe, by the fact that the Germans were planning to site V1 rockets, tipped with chemical weapons, on the island. Launched at the south coast of England, the weapons were intended to disrupt the Allied invasion of mainland Europe.
Roberts agrees that “common sense alone shows that 3,000 men could not have constructed the hundreds of concrete structures across the island.”
He believes that the prisoner workforce probably exceeded 30,000 and that the number of camps on the island was not four, but may have reached 13 (although some of these were temporary). He also dismisses Pantcheff’s “improbably low” death rate of 13 percent. Official French records show that the death rate at camps in the Nord Pas de Calais, which were linked to those in Alderney, were 85%.
Historically, the presence of Jews on the island during the occupation has also been downplayed, with their numbers counted in the hundreds. Roberts, however, believes that 9,000 may be a more realistic figure. At least at some points in the island’s penal history, British military intelligence reports suggested, Jews may actually have constituted a majority of the prisoner population.
While researching and writing my recent book, Ike’s Gamble, which tracks the evolution of President Eisenhower’s Middle East policy, a question nagged at me. What enduring lessons did Eisenhower, as the commander of the North Africa campaign (1942-1943) in World War II, learn from this, his first experience of the Arab world? By the time it came to sending the book off to the publisher, I still hadn’t found an answer. Robert Satloff, I can jealously say, has now given us one.When Hitler sent his minions to LA: The true-life Nazi plot against Hollywood
Satloff’s essay in Mosaic, “The Jews Will Have to Wait,” represents countless hours of research in primary sources in several languages, not to mention interviews conducted halfway around the globe. It shines a bright light on a little-known episode, which, Satloff claims, was far more consequential than we have realized. And his core conclusions are persuasive. Yes, we should indeed consider Operation Torch, the November 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa, to be the beginning of the story of American engagement in the Middle East. And yes, views about the Middle East that crystallized in the minds of American officials at that time did indeed influence United States foreign policy for years thereafter.
I believe, however, that Satloff slightly exaggerates the degree of influence exercised specifically by this campaign on the broader history of American Middle East foreign policy. To my mind, other factors, pointing in the same direction as Torch, were at least as decisive if not more so.
It reads like a scene from a nightmare Hollywood script: Nazis in Los Angeles plan to kill some of the most beloved names in show business — including Charlie Chaplin and Busby Berkeley — and use the mass execution to launch pogroms against Jews in the US.Israel to set up parliamentary probe into foreign gov’t funding of rights groups
But this nefarious scheme and others like it were all too real in LA during the 1930s and 1940s. And they were all thwarted thanks to a spy ring run by Leon Lewis, a founder of the Anti-Defamation League.
Lewis and his network are the subjects of a new book, “Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America,” by University of Southern California professor of history Steven J. Ross.
The book, which will be released by Bloomsbury Press on October 24, illustrates how Nazi agents operated in LA — beginning shortly after Hitler became Reichschancellor in January 1933 and continuing through World War II. The agents’ goal in the early 1930s was chillingly clear.
“Hitler and the Brownshirts, in the 1920s, got disgruntled veterans of World War I to join their organization,” Ross explained. “If they could get Americans who could attract other Americans, all military men, they would train other Americans for the day there would be a putsch in America.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he intends to establish a parliamentary committee to investigate the funding Israeli NGOs receive from foreign governments.Israeli judokas barred from competing under country's flag in Abu Dhabi
Netanyahu told a gathering of Christian journalists at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem that the committee will probe “organizations that operate against” Israeli soldiers.
The IDF is the most moral army there is, Netanyahu declared, and vowed to put an end to the phenomenon of NGOs that harass IDF soldiers.
According to a report from the Haaretz daily, the decision to set up the committee was taken earlier in the day at a meeting of coalition party chiefs.
At the meeting, Netanyahu stressed the need to check the involvement of foreign governments in internal Israeli politics.
Israel's representatives to the judo Grand Slam event in Abu Dhabi have been told that they will once more not be allowed to compete under their country's flag.IsraellyCool: Hater Admits SJP Only “Pretends” To Object to Idea Israel Has No Right to Exist
The blue-and-white delegation to the final Grand Slam competition of the year is set to include 12 athletes, but Israel Judo Association chairman Moshe Ponte was informed by the organizers that they won't be able to have the Israel flag on their judo uniform, as they do in every other event across the world. Instead of having ISR (Israel) by their names on the scoreboard and on their backs, they will have to take part in the contest as representatives of the IJF (International Judo Federation). The national anthem will also not be played, should an Israeli win a gold medal.
Among Israel's representatives to the event, which will be held between October 26-28, is Rio Olympics bronze medalist, Ori Sasson.
Ponte spoke with Minister of Culture and Sport Miri Regev and offered to withdraw from the event. Regev, who was considering attending the competition, told him not to do so and sent a letter to International Judo Federation president Marius Vizer.
It started with me discovering this piece by one Amena Elashkar, lamenting the fact her fellow Israel haters at Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) object to her consorting with a known antisemite or stating that Israel has no right to exist.California School Officials Refuse to Fight Antisemitism
Oh, the inhumanity!
What surprised us, however, was that some of the groups calling themselves “Students for Justice in Palestine” would also challenge us. The first was at Stanford University last year, where they expressed a concern that Alison Weir had come with us to hear our talk, and where I was told that I should not say that “Israel” has no right to exist (which is not part of our presentation, but which is a view held by millions of Palestinians).
This earned us a reputation as “anti-Semites” in some circles, despite the fact that no one has shown anything anti-Semitic in any of our presentations. Some groups also object to statements made by some of the people in our organizing committee, composed of Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the International Solidarity Movement – Northern California and the Free Palestine Movement. But no one has produced any anti-Semitic statements from any of these groups, either. Most recently, we were informed by the SJP group at George Washington University in Washington, DC that our October 19 talk would be cancelled because we were “anti-Semitic”.
Of course, we expect such talk from our Zionist enemies, and we give it little importance. But to hear it from a group that claims to be standing for justice in Palestine? Do these groups really expect to have any credibility among Palestinians when they do this?
This led to me doing some Googling and discovering this video of her making the same complaints back in April 2016. Only she gives away a lot more in this video – such as the reason SJP objects to the antisemitism and genocidal statements. Clue: not because such things are wrong or evil.
For years, Jewish college students across the country have been harassed and intimidated. Frighteningly, this ugly problem is seeping into our high schools and even our middle and elementary schools.Colorado State Students March Against Antisemitism After Spate of Hateful Incidents
In Alameda, California, middle and elementary schools have been defaced with swastikas and a Jewish elementary school student reportedly received a death threat. Under pressure from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and the parents of Natasha Waldorf — who received multiple antisemitic threats at Alameda High School — Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) officials are finally admitting that antisemitism is a problem and that they’ve made mistakes in how they’ve responded to it. But they are still not doing what’s needed.
The AUSD must implement a prevention, protection and proscription plan. Prevention means educating students and families about antisemitism and making it clear that harassing Jewish students won’t be tolerated. Protection means adequately training staff to recognize, stop and report antisemitism. Proscription means effectively responding to antisemitism, including by publicly condemning it, appropriately disciplining wrongdoers, and ensuring that targeted students are protected.
AUSD’s current protocols have failed. School officials never asked Natasha to formally report any of the antisemitic threats she endured from classmates last year, even though California law requires districts to have a process to receive and investigate harassment complaints.
Jewish community members and their allies at Colorado State University (CSU) marched against antisemitism last week, after a Jewish student was targeted with Nazi messages and a wireless network was given an antisemitic name.YOUNG LABOUR: LEAVE NATO, ABOLISH THE CITY AND REJECT TWO-STATE SOLUTION
CSU freshman Hannah Kramer, who lives in a residence hall at Laurel Village, wrote a note about the Jewish New Year on her dorm door’s whiteboard before someone anonymously added the message, “Heil Hitler,” the school’s student newspaper reported.
“I did not expect anything like that when I got up to campus,” Kramer said. “I don’t like the fact that I may or may not be living in a hall with someone who wants me dead. I just went into my room and cried.”
Also this semester, a personal server in the residential Durward Hall was renamed “F*** Jews,” while a paper noose was found in a residence hall right before classes began.
CSU’s chapter of the Jewish campus group Hillel responded by organizing the march that was attended by students and faculty members, including CSU’s assistant dean of students, John Henderson.
Young Labour’s weekend conference gave us a taste of what things will be like in the People’s Republic of England in 2048. The cream of the party’s future gathered in Warwick to call for the introduction of capital controls, a ban on NATO and an end to the commitment to a two state solution in Israel-Palestine. Insiders say the group is still split between Corbynistas and moderates. No doubt who is winning judging by the motions that passed…Ken Loach 'clarifies' comments on Holocaust denial
On the other hand, a motion calling for the mutual recognition of Israel and Palestine and committing to a two-state solution was rejected.
He decried that there could be antisemitism within the UK Labour Party and then, a minute later, refused to condemn Holocaust denial. Now, several weeks later, British director Ken Loach has claimed that his words were twisted and he never intended to deny the Holocaust. In a BBC interview at the end of September, Loach said that accusations of antisemitism within Labour were aimed simply at destabilizing Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Then BBC interviewer Jo Coburn asked Loach if Holocaust denial, as had reportedly occurred at a fringe Labour Party conference that week, was acceptable.IsraellyCool: WATCH: “Anti-Zionists” Doing Terrible Job of Hiding their Jew Hatred
His response? “History is for all of us to discuss,” he replied. “All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze, the founding of the State of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing, is there for us to discuss... so don’t try to subvert that by false stories of antisemitism.”
But in a letter to the editor in The New York Times on Friday, Loach sought to clarify his controversial comments. "In a confused BBC interview, where question and answer overlapped," he wrote, "my words were twisted to give a meaning contrary to that intended. The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged." But Loach - obviously unfamiliar with irony - wasn't quite done, and returned to proclaim that there was no antisemitism in the Labour Party, rather a conspiracy to bring down Corbyn. "Exaggerated or false charges of antisemitism have coincided with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader," he wrote. "Discredit his supporters, and you weaken his leadership... we will not be intimidated." In the interview, Coburn clearly asked Loach if he thought it was "unacceptable" to discuss Holocaust denial. He responded "I think history is for us all to discuss, wouldn't you?" Coburn requested he repeat himself, and he did. There was no overlap of question and answer.
Many, if not all, of the numbskulls filmed in this video seem the type to complain about “Islamophobia.”
And for sure would not be able to spell that.
Richard Millett: Guardian’s Donald Macintyre waves Hamas flag by sneakily quoting from his own book.
It seems the Guardian is resorting to favouriting its own journalism. Maybe there aren’t many objective commentators who will do it for them?BBC promotes context-free report on injured Gazans
First, it endorses its own anti-Israel play My Name is Rachel Corrie. Now Donald Macintyre is heavily plugging his own forthcoming book in the Guardian. In this latest article by him, in which he is waving the flag of Hamas (metaphorically speaking), he quotes sources from his own book without telling us he’s the book’s author.
This latest anti-Israel activism journalism centres on how he thinks everything for Gazans could have been so much better if only Hamas had been treated with more respect. In one hilarious comment (hilarious if only it wasn’t so tragic) Macintyre quotes from Whitehall documents of 2006 which stated that instead of ostracising Hamas after their election win in 2005:
“ultimately Hamas’s participation in the realities of political responsibility might bring about Hamas’s transformation to a political rather than terrorist organisation”.
Hamas’ desire to give up their ultimate goal of destroying the only Jewish state and in the meantime killing as many Jews as possible (all explicitly stated in their own words in their 1988 Charter) is as likely as Islamic State dropping their desire for a caliphate and donning tweed suits instead.
October 13th 2017 saw the appearance of a filmed report titled “Gaza amputees explain their unique friendship” on the BBC News website’s Middle East page. A slightly different version of the same video was also posted on the BBC Arabic website the following day.Swastika and ‘Kikes’ spray painted at UK synagogue
“After suffering injuries in Israeli air strikes, Mansour and Adly formed a special friendship.”
The subtitles to the video tell BBC audiences:
“My name is Mansour Gurn. I’m 24. My name is Adly Obaid. I’m 25.
Mansour lost his leg in August 2011 after an Israeli airstrike. Adly lost his leg 7 months later in March 2012 in a similar attack.”
Seeing as the video is uncredited it is unclear how the BBC came across this story or why it decided to produce a filmed report at this particular time. However, this is not the first time that the two friends from the Shuja’iya district of Gaza have told their story to various outlets.
The Hamas-linked UK-based outlet ‘MEMO‘ promoted the story in February 2016, naming the men as Adli Obeid and Mansour Al-Qurm and stating that Obeid (Obaid) was injured in March 2011.
In January 2017 a similar article appeared on the anti-Israel website ‘Electronic Intifada’ but there the friends are named as Adli Ibeid and Mansour al Qirim. That article likewise states that Ibeid/Obaid was injured in March 2011 – a year before the date given in the BBC report.
An anti-Semitic slur and a swastika were spray painted overnight Tuesday-Wednesday on a sign outside the Etz Chaim synagogue in the city of Leeds, England, according to local police.Uruguayan Holocaust memorial vandalized with anti-Semitic slurs
Authorities were treating the act of vandalism as a hate crime and police increased the number of patrols in the area in response, Israel’s Channel 10 reported.
Witnesses said racist slogans were found scribbled on a sidewalk near the Jewish house of worship as well, according to the BBC.
Following the incident, Leeds North East Member of Parliament Fabian Hamilton, who is Jewish, said that the act of vandalism was an “attack on the entire community.”
A Uruguayan Holocaust memorial rededicated last year was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti minimizing the Holocaust.IsraellyCool: Latest Holocaust Chic: The Anne Frank Costume for Girls
“They have vandalized us again. What’s going on?” Montevideo Mayor Carlos Varela tweeted along with photos of the vandalized memorial. “We call for sanity, tolerance and peace.”
Unveiled in 1994, the site in the country’s capital Montevideo has been hit several times in recent years by anti-Semitic vandalism, but this time has been the most severe with the graffiti taking up a larger area of the memorial, reported El Pais newspaper.
Vandals used black paint to write slurs including “The Holocaust of the Jewish people is the biggest lie in history,” “Only 300,000 Jews died from typhus” and “Gas chambers were a fraud.”
In 2016, the Israelite Central Committee, the country’s umbrella Jewish organization, funded the latest restoration, which included lights and staircases.
In the latest example of vile Holocaust chic, an online store called Halloween Costumes has been selling an Anne Frank costume.Ireland’s Jewish population rose by nearly 29% in 5 years
Following a social media outcry, it has been removed, and PR Specialist at Fun.com, Ross Walker Smith, issued this statement via Twitter.
“We sell costumes not only for Halloween, but for many uses outside of the Halloween season, such as school projects and plays,” Walker Smith said on Twitter. “We have passed along the feedback regarding this costume, and it has been removed from the website at this time.”
He should have just apologized and left it at that. The “school projects and plays” excuse might have almost been credible, had he not worked for an outfit called Fun.com. The girl smiling as she poses as Anne Frank is not a good look either.
While I am glad the costume was pulled, it worries me that someone thought this was a good idea to begin with. Worries me, but does not surprise me.
The Jewish population of Ireland rose by 573 people to 2,557 since 2011, according to the 2016 census, the Irish Times reported on Friday.Israeli Hospital, Syrian Victims: HR FieldTrip October 2017
Some 56 percent of the Jews of Ireland, or 1,439, live in Dublin.
The population of Jews in Ireland had been steadily falling since the 1940s, according to the newspaper. There was a high of 3,907 Jews in Ireland in 1946.
According to the newspaper, Irish-born Jews are an aging population. The increased numbers of Jews are believed to be part of a new influx of employees of hi-tech US multinational companies. Most are thought to be secular and non-practicing, the newspaper reported.
Many of us know that Israeli hospitals are treating victims of Syrian civil war. But how many people actually meet them face to face?'I tell them in Arabic, we're here to help you'
On Sunday October 15, HonestReporting took a group of 40 supporters on an amazing HR Field Trip to Ziv Hospital in the north of Israel.
It was both illuminating and emotionally touching to talk directly (through Arabic translators) with Syrian patients, as well as the doctors and Arabic speaking social workers who help provide care. This is a highly unusual privilege: due to security concerns, visitors are almost never permitted to directly meet the Syrian patients themselves, much less to speak with them at length.
After generations of enmity and incitement by their government, many Syrians are now developing a whole new understanding of Israel: as an open, accepting society, a neighbor, and even a potential friend. Syrian patients (as well as HonestReporting participants) saw Jewish and Arab doctors working side by side, to help human beings in need.
A Druze staff sergeant from the southernmost tip of Israel is saving wounded civilians from Syria as well as wounded and injured IDF comrades.Is this huge inscription our missing link to the biblical ‘Sea Peoples’?
Staff Sgt. A., 21, is deployed in the Golan Heights as a medic with the 77th medical platoon in the IDF's Armored Corps.
The eldest of five children, A. is the first to serve in the Armored Corps. He started his medical training just as his younger brother enlisted in the Armored Corps.
"It makes you a different person, being in the TAGAD (battalion aid station). Helping people makes serving here really meaningful, and it's fun to help people," A. says.
"At home, I don't talk much about what I do, but my family is very proud. But still, there's nothing like hearing 'Thank you very much' in Hebrew and in Arabic. There are mothers who actually cry over the help their children get because they're so moved and appreciative."
Before becoming a medic, A. dreamed of serving in tanks. Today, he declares that "there's no way I'm leaving," despite the difficulty of dealing with wounded from the bloody Syrian civil war, which appears to be far from over.
It’s either an intricate forgery, or the archaeological find of the decade. A team of scholars of the ancient Luwian language have deciphered a 29-meter-long hieroglyphic inscription from the Late Bronze Age more than 3,000 years ago, which is the only contemporary account of the fall of the Hittite Empire and the rapacious conquering of the biblical “Sea Peoples” as far south as Ashkelon.PM: World's Christian communities are Israel's best friend
And the back story of what may prove to be a missing link in the understanding of Levantine civilization is equally interesting.
Only in June of this year, Swiss geoarcheologist Dr. Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwian Studies foundation, was made aware of a 15-centimeter stack of documents — illustrations and translation notes — about the limestone frieze which was originally found in 1878 in the village of Beyköy, approximately 34 kilometers north of Afyonkarahisar in modern Turkey.
The longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age has disappeared, however, and is said to be under lock and key in a Turkish national collection at an undisclosed location. What remains is an illustration copy created by the French archeologist Georges Perrot based on stones retrieved by local peasants during the 1878 dig. Subsequently, the villagers apparently used the stones as the foundation of their local mosque.
Israel has no better friend than the world's Christian communities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Christian media professionals in Jerusalem on Sunday.1.5 million people visit Western Wall over High Holidays
Netanyahu was speaking at the Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem, the first such event Israel has hosted. His comments and the event itself reflect Israel's close ties with evangelicals and their staunch support for Israel.
That support has been magnified by the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who counts white evangelists as among his strongest supporters. Trump has wooed them by repeatedly promising to protect the religious liberty of Christians and being strongly sympathetic toward Israel.
Attitudes in Israel toward evangelists are evolving, from skepticism about Christian Zionist motives to the realization that Israel cannot survive on the support of Diaspora Jewish communities alone.
Around 1.5 million people visited the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem over the High Holidays, in what the Western Wall Heritage Foundation called a "testimony to the deep connection" of the entire spectrum of Israeli society to the Western Wall and Jewish tradition.Massive section of Western Wall and Roman theater uncovered after 1,700 years
Tens of thousands of Jews from across Israel and the world attended Selichot penitential prayers ahead of Yom Kippur, the traditional priestly blessing called Birkat Cohanim ahead of the holiday of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) and the Second Hakafot at the conclusion of Simchat Torah. The mass prayers were also attended by Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch.
This was the first time the Second Hakafot celebrations were held at the Western Wall, in what was a show of solidarity with Diaspora Jews, who celebrate the Simchat Torah holiday for two days. Jews dance with Torah scrolls during Hakafot at the conclusion of Simchat Torah, which marks the completion of the annual cycle of Torah readings.
The Western Wall is sacred to Jews as the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples.
Archaeologists are one step closer to solving the riddle of what took place in Jerusalem following the destruction of the city by Romans in 70 CE.I Have a Message for You
Israel Antiquity Authority archaeologists announced Monday that for the past two years they have been excavating and exposing a massive eight-meter deep section of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, unseen for 1,700 years.
And in the course of their work, which has been quietly proceeding directly beneath Wilson’s Arch — the area immediately adjacent to the men’s section of the Western Wall — they unexpectedly discovered a small Roman theater. The dig has not encroached under the Temple Mount.
During the two years of excavations, a new reinforced floor was constructed so as not to interrupt daily worship at Judaism’s holiest site for prayer.
My grandmother Lea once told me a story about the woman who lived next door to her in Tel Aviv, of her capture by the Nazis in Belgium and of an unfathomable decision she had to take to save herself. I never forgot it, and am pleased to share it with you in this Op-Doc film.I have a Message for You video by Matan Rochlitz
Even as a teenager, I was familiar with stories from the Holocaust. My grandfather had survived the horrors of the camps himself, and his stories formed a large part of our family’s shared narrative.
But this woman’s story felt different. Her pain and horror were woven with love, loss, guilt and redemption — and the epilogue was truly extraordinary. Many years later, once I’d become a documentary filmmaker, I decided to find out whether the woman was still alive.
She was. Klara was 92 years old and still living in the same Tel Aviv apartment. I flew out to see her the following week and asked her to tell me the story I’d heard from my grandmother in her own words.
We sat in her living room, the camera started rolling, and she began. She was sharp, funny and generous, and when looking into the darkness and recalling that difficult time, she did not spare herself one bit. When finished she seemed emptied, for the first time looking as old as her age.
I was moved, even transformed, but told her how sorry I was for having stirred up her feelings and memories like that. I’m not sure she fully absolved me, but she did say she was happy I had come to see her.