On the book “The girl of Auntie Lola” by Tirza Devir


Yisca Harani, a lecturer on Christianity, writes to us about a new book that has just been published.

auntie_lola

My name is Yisca Harani and I teach Christianity to Israeli audiences. Her name is Tirza Devir and she is one of the Israelis who heard my lectures and she has now published a book about her life as a child in Poland during the war.

I am a Jew who teaches about Christianity and Christian faith but for Tirza Christianity is not simply an academic interest. Tirza received the gift of life from Jewish parents and then received that gift of life a second time when her mother announced to her one day that from now on they were Christians. I heard Tirza’s story for the first time partially when she came up to me during the course and told me that she had grown up as a Christian. I saw a photograph of Tirza as a girl in a white dress, a garland of flowers on her head and processing as a bride of Christ in the First Communion ceremony. I learned afterwards that she had been saved thanks to a forged certificate that gave her and her mother a new identity – another name, another religion: instead of “Olenka” she came to be called “Tereska” and instead of calling her mother “mother” she was forced to address her as Auntie Lola. At the end of the war, she made her aliyah to the Land of Israel and was obliged once again to change her identity: taking on another name and “another” religion. In the Land of Israel, it was decided that she should be called Tirza and “Auntie Lola” once again became her mother.

Last Thursday, November 21, 2013, an evening was organized in order to celebrate the publication of the book in our neighborhood library in Tel Aviv. Tens of invited guests crowded into the place – many of them Holocaust survivors and many of them Polish. The story and personality of Tirza were at the center of the experience: and both conquered all our hearts because both are innocent like that girl who tells the story. Tirza’s granddaughter read passages from the book. The illustrator Nurit Tsarfati explained her work and Hani Levana (a children’s author) animated very skillfully the evening and interviewed Tirza. I spoke about the ceremony of First Communion.

The story of this girl is such a human one, her directness and innocence are the key to this human greatness revealed here. It is a story of survival, in which the courage of the mother as well as the joy of the girl are at work. It is hard to understand that in my lectures there are those sitting opposite me who have lives that are entire books, stories that rage and storm. It is rare that I have the privilege of reading a few pages from these stories.

More than anything else, I met in this story the girl for whom Christianity became a needed disguise: the dream of being like everyone else – “a true Pole”! Christianity that was white and ceremonial, with a Christmas tree and church ritual’ with smells and glorious decoration – it was a Christianity that Tirza had to give up when she arrived on the shores of the Land of Israel and was absorbed in a kibbutz. I was astonished to discover a story within a story: the story of the price of freedom in the homeland = the price of losing the magic of Christianity.

In the course of the evening, Tirza answered a question regarding whether she was Jewish or Christian: “I am Israeli”, she said. “ Every time, I have the chance to enter a church – even if I do not believe in Jesus – I still feel as if I belong…”

Innocence is a great gift. Within it there is both simplicity and wonder. Who decided that one has to set up a wall and then choose “or this… or that”? This is holy simplicity where there is no stain.

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