This trip has been very special in many aspects. Besides showing our documentation movie „Survival – three Jewish generations“, was our focus the deepening of relations to our Jewish friends.
We felt that we had arrived and become a part of their families! We had the privilege to stay most of the time with our longtime friends Avishay und Chava in Haifa. Avishay made every day worthwhile. A wonderful concert of the Israeli project 929 (every day they people of Israel read a chapter of the Tanach) in which they set various psalms with a choir and symphony orchestra in music. Along with Ruth, Heleni and Yona we travelled through the upper Galilee to the Kibbutz Kfar Blum in the Hula Valley. There we visited family Dahadi, the son in law, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of Stefanie Seliger. In Kfar Blum as well as in Omer and Sde Boqer we showed our movie. Many of the viewers were moved and said that we needed to add Hebrew subtitles. Tess Glik from Sde Boqer made the Hebrew subtitles and our Cutter Tom Chapman added them in the movie. In this way it will be more likely that our movie will be broadcasted in television or shown at a film festival in Israel. After many years we visited Hebron Machpela (the tomb of the patriarchs), Avraham Avinu (the Jewish part of Hebron), the tombs of Jesse and Ruth as well as Hadassa, a museum about Hebron. An orthodox Jewish lady talked full of passion and concernment about this city. Her grandmother survived here the massacre of 1929 and her father was killed in 1995 by a bullet of a Palestinian sniper.
We enjoyed our time with our grandchildren and children. On the Jerusalem day we participated alongside with our children and grandchildren at the ‘march of life’ of the TOS Tübingen. This was a very moving experience. A big surprise was the flight with a hot-air balloon on Ascension Day over the Jezreel Valley, which was organized from our children. To see Israel from above is amazing.
At the end of our journey Yona told at the age of 82 for the first time his whole story to Maria and our son Benjamin. His family didn’t know all the details and he said that a big burden has been taken from him and finally he can see also the positive aspects of his childhood.
