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My aunt put me and my cousin, Sarah, her daughter,
into a convent in the vicinity of Florence.
Only the Mother Superior knew we were Jewish, but her instructions were very clear:
we were to receive a heavy dose of Christianity.
I was the daughter of a Rabbi, used to eating only kosher food, only at home –
suddenly here I was, making the sign of the cross, reciting their prayers.
When we were told to pray silently, I tried my best to recite to myself the few Jewish prayers
which a seven and a half year old girl, living in the diaspora, knew.
Sara was very young. In the evenings, I would leave my own bed,
get into hers, and together we would recite the evening Sh’ma.
And I would tell her, “Remember that your name is not Paula. It is Sara. And you’re Jewish."
"And this is a secret, and we cannot tell anyone – but one day, perhaps we will be able to.”
My father did not come back from the camps.
It seems he was killed on the death march.
My mother returned. She was liberated in Terezin, and she came to Israel.
A month before the declaration of independence, on the 13th of April, 1948,
a convoy was traveling to the enclave of Mount Scopus. It was attacked in Sheikh Jarrah.
78 people were murdered on their way to the mountain. My mother was among them.
And so we lost our mother a second time.
It is like a tree… If it has deep roots, very deeps ones,
you can chop off entire parts of it, and it will continue to renew itself.
I have been blessed, God has blessed me in this, that I have a large family.
And now my children have children too.
And this is really what gives one a sense of hope.
That life continues, despite the fact that they, the Nazis, wanted to cut down this tree altogether.
To pull it up from its roots. But they did not succeed.