Local and foreign journalists who gathered this week around the large dining room table of Holocaust survivor Rena Quint to hear her story may not have paid much attention to the young Indian woman, Hetal Vanraj, who served them coffee one at a time, quietly and unobtrusively making her way from the kitchen and back.
Before coming to Israel, Hetal had never heard of the Holocaust, but she is now very familiar with Quint’s story and its wider dimensions. She is sure that no one in her village knows about the Holocaust, though on a recent trip back to India for a family wedding, she was plied with questions about life in Israel and whether or not it was dangerous.
Quint, who is extraordinarily active for a woman of 89, hosts frequent meetings in her home for Jewish and non-Jewish groups who do not always come specifically to meet a Holocaust survivor or to hear about the Holocaust, but more often than not, it is injected into the conversation.
The groups come from Israel and abroad. Quint also speaks to groups at Yad Vashem and has a very busy social life. Hetal accompanies her almost everywhere she goes and doesn’t wait outside.
She is treated as an equal and as an extension of Quint’s large family. In fact, they joke that she has been elevated from the position of caregiver to that of personal assistant. While she was away, she telephoned Quint daily and returned with gifts for her and some of her granddaughters.
Hetal’s husband also calls Quint frequently from India to make sure that she feels well and is taking her medication. He addresses her as Ima (mother in Hebrew), and is very appreciative of the salary she pays Hetal, most of which is forwarded to him automatically by a bank in Israel and has enabled significant improvements in the couple’s home.
This is the case with many foreign caregivers who come from low-income environments. The money they earn improves the quality of life for their families back home.
Based on what she has learned about the Holocaust since coming to work in Israel as a caregiver, Hetal is seriously considering telling Quint’s story in Hindi on her next trip home.
As for Quint herself, she often speaks to Germans and harbors no hatred toward the present generations because they are not responsible for the deeds of their forebears. She is also essentially a happy person because she has always been surrounded by love.
Even in the brutal confines of the concentration camps – where different women looked after her during her childhood, inspiring the book she wrote with Barbara Sofer, A Daughter of Many Mothers – she realized that people cared.
Later, after coming to America, where she was adopted by a childless couple, she was raised with love and given a good life. Her late husband, Rabbi Emanuel Quint, wrote her love notes throughout their 60 years of married life, and she is loved by her children and grandchildren, – and now, her great-grandchildren.
“I’m very lucky,” she says.
At the Zikaron Basalon (Remembrance in the Living Room) gathering this week that was jointly organized with the Jerusalem Press Club, there was a preponderance of journalists working for German media outlets among the foreign journalists who attended.
All were familiar with Holocaust history. Asked why it was important for them to come, they all said that hearing from Holocaust survivors about their experiences was different and more meaningful than reading a text in a book.
Throughout her childhood, Quint, who was the sole survivor of her immediate family, had to change her identity several times – first from a girl to a boy and then back to a girl, eventually assuming the identity of a living girl, and later a deceased one – using the papers of the deceased to immigrate to America.
To some extent, the horrors of October 7 and the suffering of the hostages, have heightened Holocaust awareness in Israel, particularly because the brutality of the massacre and the sadism that the hostages have endured and continue to endure have been compared that of Holocaust victims, and also because some Hamas victims come from Holocaust survivors.
Even after the Zikaron Basalon meeting in Quint’s home was officially concluded, some of her guests stayed behind for brief one-on-one conversations. Like many other Holocaust survivors, Quint has family members among the soldiers and reservists who were called to fight during the past year and a half.
At one stage, she had 12 members of her family on combat duty.
While Israel has benefited greatly from foreign caregivers, especially those from the Philippines and India, more attention should be paid to using them as unofficial ambassadors for Israel. Most are quick learners who come to Israel with no knowledge of Hebrew, don’t go to ulpan, yet pick up the language very quickly.
They also learn about Jewish and Israeli traditions, and those who work for religiously observant employers familiarize themselves with the kosher dietary laws in next-to-no time. For Hetal, this was relatively easy, as she is a vegan by religion.
She and Quint dine out a lot together and always go to dairy or vegan restaurants where there are sufficient options for people who are not only non-carnivorous but also exclude dairy foods from their diets.
Belarus Ambassador announces resumption of Israel flights
When presenting his credentials to President Isaac Herzog this week, Yuri Yaroshevich, the new ambassador of Belarus, announced that his country’s national airline, Belavia, would resume direct flights to and from Israel on June 1.
In a little brinkmanship from that part of the world, Uzbekistan’s Centrum Air made its inaugural flight to Israel this week.
Aminov Jakhongir Davlatovich, Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Israel, was at Ben-Gurion Airport together with a delegation from his embassy to greet the plane’s arrival and to participate in an inauguration ceremony together with Andrey Osintsev, deputy CEO of Centrum Air, and Yariv Abramovich, commercial director of APG Israel, the company representing the airline in Israel.
As part of the celebration, 180 excited passengers received traditional Uzbek sweets before boarding the flight, a warm gesture reflecting Uzbekistan’s renowned hospitality.
Ada Karmi-Melamede, the lesser known architect of Israel's Supreme Court
Unless they are very famous – like Moshe Safdie, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, or Erich Mendelsohn – the monumental works of some of the other great but lesser-known architects are unlikely to be recognized as theirs.
For instance, stop someone at random in Israel and ask them who designed the magnificent Supreme Court. Some might hazard a guess, but few would actually know.
This annoyed filmmaker and former architect, Yael Melamede, who believes that her mother ought to be more widely known.
To promote this concept, she directed a documentary film, Ada: My Mother the Architect, dedicated to Ada Karmi-Melamede, who together with her late brother Ram Karmi, in 1985 won a competition for the design of the building.
Each was later the recipient of the Israel Prize for architecture.
Karmi-Melamede is one of the most accomplished female architects in the world, yet her work remains largely unrecognized beyond architectural circles.
In the 1970s, she moved to New York from Israel, following her husband’s rising career, and spent the next 15 years balancing academia, large-scale public projects, and motherhood.
While teaching at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, she contributed to major urban initiatives, including a master plan for Con Edison, a study for mixed-use development along the proposed Second Avenue Subway, and a 1978 housing competition on Roosevelt Island – all while raising three young children.
But in the early 1980s, after being denied tenure at Columbia, Karmi-Melamede made a bold decision to leave New York and her family for the opportunity of a lifetime – the design of the new Supreme Court of Israel.
While her career flourished, personal sacrifices mounted as she remained far from her family.
Karmi-Melamede’s work gave physical form to some of Israel’s highest democratic ideals, shaping landmarks such as the Supreme Court Building, the Open University, the Israel Institute for Democracy, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, among many other civic institutions.
The film made by her daughter explores the profound tension between career and motherhood, and a unique mother-daughter bond. It will be released in New York City cinemas during the Mother’s Day weekend beginning May 9 and in Los Angeles on May 15.
Treatment of Bedouin devoid of humanity
Bedouin serving in the IDF were among those murdered by Hamas and were also among soldiers who lost their lives in the defense of Israel. Yet the treatment accorded to Bedouin living in unrecognized villages is totally disgusting and devoid of humanity.
Haaretz recently published an article about the state ignoring a court order in which it was instructed to provide alternate accommodation for Hitam Abu Asa – a single mother of five children who is also a survivor of domestic violence – before destroying her home.
Three of her children have special needs. The family said it had received no advance warning about the demolition, and the article included two photographs of some of her children sitting by the ruins of what had been their home in Wadi al-Khalil.
Where is humanity on the part of the authorities? If a court order was ignored in this case, what can we expect in the future? Instead of progressing, we are regressing.
Surely the time has come to legalize all Bedouin villages. The residents are, after all, citizens of the state, and unlike many other members of Arab society or haredim (ultra-Orthodox), they serve in the IDF.
