Tunisian-born Henry Ophir knew that this time, too, he would be as strong as he was as a child • Esther Koppelman, a native of Poland, survived the corona • Malka Yaron was not afraid to die of the disease after the horrors she survived • Valid
Henry Ophir, 83
Photo:
Michelle dot com
Ophir was born in 1938 in Tunis.
Two years later, France was occupied by Germany, and so the lives of Tunisian Jews changed and they were forced to live under Vichy rule.
In November 1942 German and Italian forces entered Tunisia, many members of the Jewish community were arrested and taken to unbearable forced labor or sent to concentration camps and murdered there.
In addition, some Tunisian Jews were killed in Allied bombing raids.
"I remember myself as a little boy, 6 or 7 years old," says Ofir, "above us were planes, sirens and shelling. My mother, who was a single parent, would take me and my sister to the nearby monastery, and we would hide there between the walls, just like in the movies. "Even then I knew that it was forbidden to complain, not to shout or to cry. It was repeated several times."
During the war it was also the first time his life was in immediate danger.
"While I was going to school the bomb started. I jumped into a ditch on the side of the road and got into a broken glass bottle on foot."
"I believed I would get good in return"
After the war, the family made the journey from Tunis to Marseilles, and from there immigrated to Israel in 1949.
Here in Israel, Ofir started a family and became a father.
About three years ago, his life was saved for the second time.
"I climbed a tree and fell. I was anesthetized and respirated in intensive care. My children had already been told to say goodbye to me, but in the end I won it too."
The third time his life was saved was when he contracted corona - and could have.
"I kept guarding and being careful, I wore a mask, and the truth is I do not know where I got infected. I felt something was wrong, but I did not have too many symptoms. I felt sick, and my son made me soup, but when I ate it, I felt like I was drinking poison. "I felt dizzy. I felt dizzy and was taken urgently to a hospital in critical condition. It took four days for my condition to stabilize. After ten days I started walking around the ward. I helped other people, made them tea, brought them drinks."
Ophir is convinced that his childhood forged him physically and mentally.
"Along with doing good over the years, I believed I was getting good back. God loved me and kept me alive three times."
For four days, Henry Ophir lay breathless at Bnei Zion Hospital in Haifa, but security did not leave him.
"For one moment I was not afraid to surrender to Corona," he recalls, "I was confident in myself that I was very strong, just as I was strong enough as a child. Something in childhood forged me."
"Always laughing, always smiling"
Esther Kopelman, 100, a resident of Amal Basharon sheltered housing in Raanana, was born on February 27, 1921, in Poland.
She was born as Esther Weinstock.
At the age of 14 she moved to Breslau, which was then part of Germany, and grew up there until the age of 14. Her father, who owned a fur factory, was forced to sew a uniform for the Nazi army.
She lived on a street called Adolf Hitler and one day passed a procession in his honor.
Esther's mother was not afraid and shouted contemptuously at Hitler.
One day, when her parents were not home, Nazis came and beat her.
One of her teachers at the school also hit her with a stick just because she was Jewish.
Her brother, who was upset by the incident, came home and took out the gun that had been removed from the house.
He followed the teacher and shot him to death.
He stood trial and somehow came out entitled.
He immigrated to Israel about a year before the rest of the family and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Gesher.
In Eretz Israel, he was killed by an Arab sniper.
The rest of Esther's family immigrated to Israel in 1936 with certificates (visas) on the ship "Theodor Herzl".
Another of Esther's brothers died of an illness when he was 3. She married Ephraim Koppelman in 1940. He immigrated alone at the age of 15 as a member of the Betar movement, joined the Irgun and served in the British Army in the Brigade between 1942 and 1945 in Egypt.
He died in 1979. Esther worked for almost thirty years, until the age of 86, at the "Mersand" cafe on Frishman Street in Tel Aviv.
She gave birth to five children, one of whom died about three years ago.
"She has 16 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren," says grandson Guy Dana, the son of daughter Nurit.
He recounts Grandma's corona disease: "She contracted corona in sheltered housing. God probably loves her so she was healed. She passed the disease easily because luckily she contracted it after being vaccinated a second time. She got sick but had almost no symptoms. It was positive, but fortunately it was easy. "
On February 27, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren celebrated her 100th birthday in Raanana Park.
"Two weeks before the birthday is the creation from the corona," says grandson Guy.
"She's clear sometimes. On the day we celebrated her she was just fine and was aware of the birthday celebration. She was happy and waving to everyone. She was always laughing, always smiling."
"The difficulty was quarantine at home and at heart"
Malka Yaron from Rehovot admits: She was not afraid of the corona.
"When I got the corona I knew it was the end. I already knew that a lot of older people my age did not survive the disease. But I was indifferent, I have no fear of death. I survived something more significant."
Indeed, like many of her generation, fate summoned her to a complex childhood.
She was born in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II.
When she was a child, Nazi soldiers came to Tunisia.
Her family life has been shocked and she says she still remembers her parents' frightened looks.
"It is impossible not to remember the things we went through there," says Malka, "for a long time I hardly left the house. When the Nazi soldiers came and raged, they would put us in hiding, in some alcove or under the bed. I would hear my mother's screams when they came in. I remember the planes. To this day when a plane passes at low altitude, I ask if anything happened. But most of all I remember the fear in Dad and Mom's eyes, it was a fear that is hard to describe. Even when I was a little girl, I saw the distress in the eyes and the helplessness. "We had no control over ourselves. The Germans controlled us."
At the age of 12, Malka immigrated to Israel, and after a few months in a transit camp, she moved to a kibbutz.
She is currently married to his uncle, a native of Egypt, and they have two children and six grandchildren.
"My computer is on the porch and there's a really big tree that leaves leaves, and when I was sitting there in the fall I would hear people stepping on the dried leaves - the steps would take me back, to childhood. It reminded me of the German steps I would hear when walking along the street, for a long time It did not leave me. "
Last September she contracted Corona.
"I slept a lot, I fell asleep due to the pain, I suffered from fever and muscle aches. Luckily I was not hospitalized, but for months I did not stop coughing and suffered. The disease and the corona brought me back to the war and the Holocaust, because of the closure. "It brought me back to the same situation, to the same inner fear and pain, as in Tunis."
Now that she has overcome the disease, Malka is already looking ahead.
"With all the hustle and bustle, I'm going to dance folk dances."