Holocaust exhibit honors survivors' lives in Israel
By Brenda Gazzar
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Sixty years after the founding of Israel, a new exhibit at its national Holocaust memorial tells the stories of 90 survivors of the Nazi genocide who helped shape the Jewish state.
The multimedia exhibit at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem tells the stories of the survivors of the Holocaust during World War Two who have made impressive contributions in fields such as art, literature, science and athletics.
Although the survivors lost homes and families in Europe, they planted new roots "in the most normal manner," says Yehudit Shendar, the exhibit's curator and deputy director of Yad Vashem's Museums Division.
"They were able to become part of society with a vivaciousness which is totally surprising. And this is what we'd like to record," Shendar said.
Today, some 250,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel -- about half the number that arrived in the country since its establishment in 1948. Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary next month.
Among those featured in the exhibit are writer-filmmaker Ephraim Kishon, Leah Gottlieb, founder of the Israeli swimsuit manufacturer Gottex, children's author Alona Frankel and abstract artist Moshe Kupferman.
Speaking at the opening of the exhibit on Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said not enough attention was paid in the past "to what the Holocaust survivors did in order to make the state of Israel what it is."
Yehudit Arnon, 81, a survivor whose life is featured through a film at the exhibit, attended the opening with two of her eight grandsons.
Arnon survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and went on to establish Israel's Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company.
She said was once asked to dance by Nazi guards, but refused, hoping in her despair that she would be killed. Punished by being forced to stand in the snow for hours, the young woman made a promise to herself.
"I decided when I survived from that hell, that all my life I would dance," she said.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Editing by Dominic Evans)
