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Talya Narkis and her brother, Ziggy Meyer, picked up Martha, Lili and Gil in a small white van. It was a little over an hour’s drive, south along the Mediterranean Coast, to Kibbutz Nevo. The late-September weather was still very hot and dry. It would be another month or so until the cooler rainy season arrived. “I was surprised to be questioned so aggressively by Israeli security at Heathrow,” said Gil. “We all were. I got the feeling that they didn’t trust me because I’m not Jewish.”
“They don’t trust anyone, even if they are Jewish,” said Ziggy. “That’s their job.”
“Your father tried to have me killed,” said Martha. “Are we safe with you?”
“Our father is a very difficult man,” said Talya. “He has always lived in the world of spies and counter-spies, threats and counter-threats. He was taken away from his house a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s related to that, but he was often away all of our lives. We were not told anything. He doesn’t really know how to live his life since he was forced to retire a few years ago. He doesn’t know how to accept happiness.”
“Well, I hope he comes back, said Martha. “I want to give him a piece of my mind!”
“What is this?” asked Ziggy. “A piece of your mind?”
Martha laughed. “I want to yell some wisdom at his face.” They all laughed.
They pulled off the highway onto a dirt road and drove through the kibbutz gate. Ziggy and Talya helped them with their bags. Martha would stay with Talya and Lili and Gil would stay with Ziggy. Lili looked around. This is a tropical paradise!” There were flowering shrubs of all colors, palm trees, and twittering birds.
A strange-looking bird pecked at the ground. “That’s a hoopoe,” said Ziggy. “It’s named from the sound it makes.
There was a very loud squawk and Martha jumped. “What the hell was that?” A deep-blue peacock strutted into view.
“This was originally all desert here,” said Talya. “Our grandfather Fishel, Frieda’s brother, helped build this kibbutz from nothing. We’ll give you a little tour after you get settled.”
After Lili and Gil put their luggage into Ziggy’s house, they walked over to Talya’s house. “This is my mother Miriam, and this is my sister Leah.” They had a light lunch and got to know each other a little bit. Miriam had a sad look and didn’t say a word.
As they started their tour, they walked by an elementary school. They could see many children engaged in their lessons. “I see that the windows have metal shutters,” said Gil.
“The school is a bomb shelter,” said Ziggy. “If the siren goes off, we only have fifteen seconds to get into a bomb shelter. The bedrooms where you will be staying are our bomb shelters.”
“How safe are we here?” asked Lili.
“We’re pretty safe,” said Ziggy. Things have been very calm now for over a year. But we are ready, just in case.”
“Our kibbutz is really just a very big farm,” said Talya. “This building here is processing carrots that we grow here.” Machines were washing and packing hundreds of very large carrots. People were packing them into crates for shipment. “Over there are avocado trees and over there are date palms.” The farm fields and groves were vast. “This building is a greenhouse for growing amaryllis flowers. In this field, we are raising ostriches.” A flock of ostriches was milling about, kicking up some dust. “Over that way is a dairy farm. We won’t go there because it is very smelly.”
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THAT EVENING, THERE was a reception for them in the communal dining hall. Martha met more of her relatives, including her cousins Sarit and Rina and their children and grandchildren. Some of them came in from other parts of Israel, a few wore military uniforms. After dinner, Gil did his genealogy presentation, as he did in London. During the talk, a man asked, “So, how should we consider Martha, our cousin, if she is the daughter of a Nazi and a Jew who had a child with this Nazi?”
Rabbi Ari Landsman stood up and said, “I’ll speak about this.” He looked around the room for a few seconds. He spoke very loudly. “For all the Jews in Europe, the holocaust was a fight to survive, not only for our people as a group, but for every single individual. Two out of every three Jews in Europe were murdered! Every person ended up in a situation where they had to decide what they must do for themselves and for their families to survive. Most could not survive. Here was a sixteen year-old girl, stranded as a nanny in Paris, living in a city where she knew nobody and didn’t know the language. Her whole family in Berlin was taken away to the death camps. Jews in Paris were dragged from hiding and shot in the street or taken away. What should she do to survive?” You could hear a pin drop. Even the children were silent. The older children knew English.
“Frieda decided to stay hiding in the German officer’s apartment doing as he said. He wasn’t an evil man. He was a logistics officer who later deserted his army. This, she thought was her best chance for survival. There was nobody to help this girl decide what to do. She had a child with this officer, but she survived. The officer tried to send her to Brazil so he could meet up with her later. He cared for her. She decided instead that her best chance to live her life was to go to England. Can you imagine yourself making a decision like this as a teenager? She did this in Lisbon, a port full of Gestapo spies and people speaking Portuguese.”
“But, she did survive! Against great odds, she survived. Her innocent child survived. When she got to England, a country where she knew nobody and didn’t know the language, she still had to survive. She was seventeen years old. She decided that the best chance of survival for her and her baby was to give the baby up for adoption. They both survived!” The audience was still silent.
“So here we have Martha Eames, Frieda Meyer’s baby. Frieda was Jewish, so Martha is Jewish. That is our law. Martha didn’t know any of this until a few weeks ago! Is Martha a Nazi? No, Martha is as far from being a Nazi as any of us here. What’s for dessert?”