Helene, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, became Leila

How Helene, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, became Leila, the matriarch of a Palestinian Muslim clan

UMM AL-FAHM, Israel — Leila Jabarin looked every inch the matriarch of the Muslim family that surrounded her on a recent morning, encircled by some of her 36 grandchildren in a living room rich with Arabic chatter and the scent of cardamom-
flavored coffee.

But Jabarin, her hair covered with a brown headscarf, was talking to visitors in Hebrew, not Arabic, and telling a story that not even her seven children knew until they were grown. She was born not Leila Jabarin, but Helene Berschatzky, not a Muslim but a Jew. Her history began not in this Arab community where she has made her life with the Palestinian man she fell in love with six decades ago, but in a Nazi concentration camp where her Jewish parents had to hide their newborn from the Nazis.

As world leaders — including U.S. Vice President Pence — gather in Jerusalem this week to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Jabarin was sharing a survivor’s memory unlike any other, a history of love and hate that exposes not just the power of transformation, but also the blindness of prejudice.

“First I was persecuted because I was a Jew, and now I am persecuted because I am a Muslim,” said Jabarin, who has watched the recent rise of both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia with alarm.

Jabarin took note of the massacre of 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and another 51 last year at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. She attributed to both killers the same motivation, a hatred of the other, and is telling her story to show that love for the other is possible as well.

“When I was in school, they taught us that Arabs had tails,” she said, looking around at her Arab husband and her Arab family, as the Muslim call to prayer sounded across the neighborhood outside. “Everyone should know what happened to the Jews because it could happen to the Arabs.”

Among those listening in her living room was Erez Kaganovitz, a Tel Aviv photographer who is crisscrossing Israel to document as many such stories and images he can from the rapidly dwindling number of living Holocaust survivors. Through histories like Jabarin’s, he hopes to keep the knowledge of those horrors from disappearing with those who endured them.

“Ten years from now, what will be the memory of the Holocaust when the last survivor is no longer with us?” asked Kaganovitz. “If well tell the human stories, not just what happened in the camps but how they lived after, they appeal to humans in the way that numbers cannot. Six million Jews killed; it’s too big.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/how-helene-a-jewish-holocaust-survivor-became-leila-the-matriarch-of-a-palestinian-muslim-clan/2020/01/21/69af7f0e-3916-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html?utm_campaign=post_most&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1