Grapevine: Remembering slavery and resistance

One such person is Klara Barkai, 82. At Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, she’s known as Savta Klara – Grandma Klara. In fact she’s a great grandmother, and a very familiar face in the maternity ward. She terms her forays there as a personal triumph. She moves among all the new mothers distributing colorful, hand-knitted sweaters for their babies. A survivor of Auschwitz, she doesn’t knit for her great grandchildren. She leaves that to her daughter-in-law. But whenever a great grandchild is born or has a birthday, Klara celebrates the occasion by distributing the sweaters she has knitted.

This time, it was a little more difficult than previously, because during the past year she was involved in a serious car accident and suffered injuries to her head. Nonetheless to celebrate the third birthday of a great grandchild, she forced herself to go to the hospital and was glad that she did. “I love knitting,” she says, “and nothing gives me more pleasure than giving a sweater to a baby at the very beginning of its life.”

As a teenager she was put in a work force that dug ditches as places from which the Nazis could shoot or hide in the face of oncoming tanks. She started to knit here when she was pregnant with her first child. It worked out well and she’s been knitting ever since. Ten years ago she started distributing sweaters to newborn babies, and all the nurses in the maternity ward adore her. Tammy Mor, the head nurse in the maternity ward, says that Klara’s warmth and generosity of spirit instantly convey themselves to new mothers who are thrilled to receive the sweaters – and of course the nurses are always delighted to see her.

Jakob is a pensioner, and the cost of registration will put a heavy financial strain on her. She was born into an affluent Czech Jewish family whose wealth and connections enabled them to get out of their town the day before it was invaded by the Nazis. Led by her father, Flora, her mother and siblings went deep into the forest. They had nothing other than the clothes on their backs. In the forest they learned of an underground bunker where 200 Jews were hidden and they joined them, emerging only at night to search for food. They ate tree bark and leaves, but Flora remembers being constantly hungry and thirsty. That feeling of hunger remains constant. When the Nazis discovered the bunker, Flora and her mother were sent to Theresienstadt. It was the first time in her young life that she’d been separated from her father who together with her brothers was sent to Buchenwald.

Miraculously they all survived and were reunited after the war. They even went back to their old home. But nothing was the same in Europe any more, and when Flora was 12, the family came here. To blot out the horrific memories of what she had endured, she took up sports, with cycling as her favorite. It was her way to conquer depression and to prove that the Nazis could not destroy her determination.

Cykiert spent most of his 83 years in Melbourne, Australia. He and his wife Margaret were not blessed with children, and the book is dedicated to “the children whose lives we can save” and in memory of “the children whose lives we could not save during the Holocaust.” Cykiert first visited Schneider in 2005 and was impressed. So he turned to Schneider and made a first donation of $7,000, $1,000 a year in memory of each of the seven members of his family who perished.

A year later, when Dr. Hannah Blau, head of Schneider’s Pulmonology Unit, was in Melbourne on a fund-raising mission, he met her and asked if she needed anything urgently. She told him that there was a need for equipment costing $165,000 for the pulmonary function test (mainly for youngsters with cystic fibrosis). Cykiert agreed to purchase it on condition that Schneider sign an agreement to accompany him on his final journey. He had purchased a plot at Har Hamenuhot cemetery in Jerusalem some 10 years earlier, and had the stone completed except for the date. Schneider sign, and when he died, a Schneider representative waited for the coffin at the airport, and attended the funeral. Another representative attended the consecration of the tombstone a month later.

The Pulmonary Unit was inaugurated in 2007, and Cykiert flew to Israel for the occasion. His book has been published by Schneider with some financial help from his niece Marsha Tauber and will be officially launched on April 14. It will be of special interest to survivors of the Lodz Ghetto as well as to second- and third-generation survivors and Holocaust historians.

Cohn, who likes to screen the Israeli premieres of his films for the benefit of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, did so for the 10th time last week, with the enormously sensitive film The Children of Hung Shi which is set against the backdrop of the 1937 Japanese invasion of China, and tells the true story of how a British journalist, an American nurse and a Chinese partisan took 60 orphan boys across war-torn China to freedom. Cohn even went to the trouble of tracing some of those orphans, now in their 80s, who remember the perilous trek in graphic detail.

In the audience was Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog, who made a point of attending because of his family’s long friendship with Cohn. Herzog said that Cohn’s fan club is so extensive that everyone eagerly awaits his next film, because he is always so innovative. Herzog also praised Shaare Zedek for being an outstanding hospital. Shaare Zedek director-general Jonathan Halevy said to Cohn: “You represent the art of filmmaking at its best and Shaare Zedek represents the art of medicine at its best.”

Cohn, who was extremely appreciative of Herzog’s presence, spoke warmly of his father, Israel’s sixth president Chaim Herzog, the 13th anniversary of whose death had been commemorated the previous day. Cohn referred to him as “my mentor.” Acknowledging the presence of Swiss Ambassador Walter Haffner, Cohn who is a Swiss national, said that he hoped that Haffner would be influential in helping to change his country’s attitude toward Israel.

Eyal Gabbai, director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, represented the government and noted some of the similarities between the Baha’i and Jewish faiths. “This is not a country of three religions, but of four,” he said, including Baha’i with Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Gabbai who came to his present position from the Israel justice system, praised Baha’i’s House of Justice “which defends the dignity of the human race.”

Mansour, who has lectured here and abroad on the importance of integrating minorities into mainstream society, will receive the prize in recognition of his lifelong contribution to cross-cultural and inter-communal integration.

Earlier this month, he brought a group of wonderful singers and actresses to Jerusalem for a special concert in the new premises of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI) held in honor of the major donors to the new premises, Max and Gianna Glassman of Canada, for whom the whole evening was a highly emotional experience. The concert recital was the first part of the program, and gave Ajzenstadt the opportunity to promote the opera’s upcoming production of La Juive.

The recital was followed by an address by Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, a native New Yorker who now lives in Beersheba. Hendel, who has the ability to laugh at himself, shared reminiscences of his own trials and tribulations in making aliya, especially his language difficulties which initially prompted him to look for another profession. The message for any new immigrant was to persevere, to be flexible, to be open to new ideas, but not to the extent of doing something you don’t want to do. Obviously popular in Beersheba, Hendel was heartened by the AACI delegation from there that came to give him moral support.

People from more than half a dozen other congregations crowded in to hear him talk about the need for the Orthodox (including haredi) community to be less isolationist and to find common ground with secular Jews before they assimilate to the extent that they will be entirely lost to Judaism. This was particularly vital with regard to Jerusalem, he emphasized, because if secular Jews are alienated by haredim instead of being welcomed, they will not identify with Jerusalem as their capital, but will see it as a haredi capital.