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An endless escape from the clutches of the Nazis to choose from Israel today

2021-04-08T13:04:55.388Z


Ephraim Segal was 9 years old when the war broke out and 17 years old when he came to Israel • Everything he experienced he expressed in his paintings, which he abandoned to dine with his wife | art


Ephraim Segal was nine years old when the war broke out and 17 years old when he finally managed to reach Eretz Israel. • Everything he experienced, saw and felt, he expressed in his paintings, which he abandoned to dine with his wife, and while fleeing the corona and loneliness - he returned to painting

  • Ephraim Segal and his paintings

    Photo: 

    Courtesy of the family

On the eve of World War II, Romania has the third largest Jewish community in Europe, after Poland and Russia, which numbered about 850,000 Jews, half of whom were murdered in the Holocaust.

Romania, one of the allies of Nazi Germany, "volunteered" to carry out a "Holocaust of its own" among local Jews, beginning in 1940, in a wave of anti-Jewish legislation.

Continuation of severe pogroms that took place in Bucharest (January 41) and Iasi (June 41), in which thousands were massacred.

In October 1941, the deportation of Jews from Serbia and the Bukovina region to Transnistria began - the place that became the valley of the killing of Romanian Jewry.

In the years 41-44, more than 280,000 Jews were murdered there.

Ephraim Segal was a nine-year-old Romanian Jewish boy when World War II broke out.

Towards the end of the war, when he was about 15, he left with his older brother the parents' house and the three brothers who remained in Bucharest, Romania, and the two embarked on an escape journey, during which they crossed the borders of Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria and the Italian Alps. in Italy.

"We were in an endless escape from the clutches of the Nazis, Germans and Romanians, who murdered many of the Jews. We were miserable, we had no food and water, and there was no place we could go so we could rest from the Nazi persecution."

Come on, to Israel

The survival instinct of the brothers Robin and Ephraim Segal also helped them reach the refugee camp in Milan, and they made a living by selling cigarettes, tobacco that they filled and rolled on paper, until in November 1947 they boarded the illegal immigration ship "Kadima", which carried 947 Holocaust survivors to Israel.

"I did not know anyone in the country. I was deserted and lonely, until I met a group of boys who offered me to come with them to the kibbutz."

However, their journey to the Holy Land is not over.

Ten days later, the British took over the ship approaching the shores of Haifa, and exiled all its passengers to the detention camps in Cyprus.

"On the way we saw from the ship the shores of the country and Haifa," Ephraim recalled, "so Robin said excitedly that in Eretz Israel it was hot so we would not need coats. And so in the innocence of boys we threw our coats into the sea and froze in camps in Cyprus," he recalled.

About a month and a half after the refugees arrived at the detention camps in Cyprus, the British sent the children and boys under military age to Israel, including Ephraim Segal who was then about 17. Robin, the older brother, remained in the camp and immigrated about three years after his brother's separation.

Ephraim landed in Eretz Israel on December 31, 1947. "I did not know anyone in the country. I was deserted and lonely, until I met a group of boys who offered me to come with them to Kibbutz Gilad, and I willingly agreed. In the year I was in Gilad "I received fantastic help, I worked and also learned Hebrew. It helped me to be encouraged."

And he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof,

His stay in the kibbutz was interrupted, when the tuberculosis he contracted, apparently during its wanderings, erupted in full force.

"People think that tuberculosis only affects health, but it also penetrates the bones. The tuberculosis penetrated my spine and in an emergency operation I underwent a rib, half lung and cleaned my spine. "Later it became clear to me that my brother Robin also had tuberculosis," Ephraim recalls.

During his hospitalization, when he was cast and unable to move, no one visited him, except for a health insurance doctor who came every two or three months to monitor his condition. At the end of that year, Ephraim Segal was sent to a hospital in Safed to soak up clear, clean air. The words: "The cliché that 'there is no evil without good' has come true" - she means that when he was rehabilitated in the Galilee, he met who later became his wife Prima, also a Holocaust survivor from Romania, who recovered from tuberculosis.

To this day, Ephraim keeps the first courtship letter he sent to Prima, and it has been crumpled for many years but his education is still preserved: "To number 18 Hello, we were happy to announce that I have arrived at the hospital and I immediately realized that I like you and I would be happy to meet you for friendship.

With great hope.

No. 37, Ephraim. "

"In a painting in which one character appears, she looks painful, sad, and the colors are dark and gloomy, while in a painting with several people the picture is bright and the characters are happy."

The note, you already understand, did its thing, and Ephraim and Prima Segal were married in Tel Aviv in 1955. "By the way, her last name was Segal, so she didn't have to change it with her marriage, she was Segal in the square," laughs Ephraim and his daughter Ofir.

"My wife said that fate brought us together. We loved each other very much and we really had an exceptionally happy life, until two years ago, when she passed away," Ephraim shares.

However, unlike his wife and the mother of his daughters Prima, who carried the horrors of the Holocaust within her as she was in Transnistria, Ephraim always preferred looking ahead to the future.

Later his surviving parents and brother also immigrated to Israel and Ephraim began to build his life.

He studied accounting, worked at the government printer in the Kirya, and later went on to work as an administrator at Assaf Harofeh Hospital and grew to be the emergency manager.

A work that relieves loneliness

Ephraim's optimism and ability to build his life and establish his family also stemmed from his artistic inclinations, and Segal invested his sensitive artist soul in painting.

He studied with many artists, specialized in painting techniques and styles as well as copper engravings.

He later became a full member of the Association of Artists, Painters and Miniatures, served as curator of the Yad LaBanim House in Ness Ziona, and participated in many individual and group exhibitions, when one of his exhibitions came on display in Japan.

"I remember Dad's studio being on the balcony of my sister's and mine. After a full day's work, he would obsessively paint until 3 at night," recalls daughter Ophir.

"Most of Dad's paintings are about people, and everything is his imagination. Characters who were a kind of friends he created on canvas, and they seemingly alleviated the pain of loneliness burned in it. It always worked, like an almost mathematical formula: in a painting where one character appears painful, sad, torn "And the colors in the painting are dark and gloomy, while in a painting with some people, the picture shines and the characters are happier."

"The characters I have drawn over the years are an integral part of my personality. Characters that are deeply absorbed in my mind. These are characters that connect to each other in a kind of human mosaic that does not need special interpretation. I paint from an inner emotion, and not to impress the viewer," Ephraim testifies.

Over the years, Ephraim has rarely painted his personal portrait and that of his family members.

"The only painting Dad painted for me was a portrait with a cat. We also did not ask him to paint us. I remember a case where I came as a girl to Dad's exhibition and saw a red sticker on one of the paintings, which indicated that the painting was sold, and I burst into bitter tears because I wanted the painting. Dad apologized and said "If he can't sell the painting. This is the painting that still hangs in my house to this day," Ofir reveals.

For 45 years, and until 2015, painting was an integral part of Ephraim Segal's life, until the Alzheimer's disease in which his wife Prima suffered and his eternal lover cut off his passion for painting, and the fountain of his work dried up at once.

He devoted all his time and energy to supporting her.

Every day he would come to be with her in the nursing ward and stay with her for long hours, until her death in 2019.

But it was the loneliness that forced the death of his beloved wife on him, and immediately after the eruption of the corona and with it the closures and isolation, brought Ephraim back at the age of 90 to paint again, even though his powers had dwindled over the years.

"We bought him notebooks and he fills them with drawings and drawings with a black marker. The tremor in his hands has surprisingly helped him develop a new drawing technique. He often draws many people in his paintings, and I interpret this as his optimistic solution to the loneliness imposed on him," says the daughter. With a smile and says: "We call my latest drawings 'Corona style'".

Source: israelhayom

All life articles on 2021-04-08

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