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Anna Grinis, 75, right,
was chosen Israel’s fifth
Miss Holocaust Survivor.
Choosing Life
Israeli seniors compete for
Miss Holocaust Survivor.
Sara Netanyahu,
center, with
some of the
contestants and
choir members
Israeli Wire Reports
A
75-year-old Russian-born
Israeli woman on Sunday in
Haifa was crowned the coun-
try’s fifth “Miss Holocaust Survivor”
in an unconventional beauty pageant
dedicated to women who survived the
horrors of World War II.
Anna Grinis, who was just two days
old when the war broke out, escaped
Nazi-occupied Europe with her mother
as a young girl.
“I have no words to describe how
excited I am,” Grinis said after her
crowning, according to the Walla news
website.
Nearly 300 Israeli Holocaust survivors
registered for the competition; contes-
tants were whittled down to the 14 final-
ists who competed Sunday.
Walking along to tunes like “Pretty
Woman,” the participants included
German-born Malka Gorka, 73, who
came to Israel in 1948 with her parents,
and Hungarian-born Carmela Ben
Yehuda, 89, who arrived in British-run
Palestine in 1945 after surviving the Nazi
German Auschwitz death camp.
The annual competition is organized
by Yad Ezer L’Haver, or Helping Hand, an
organization dedicated to assisting needy
Holocaust survivors in Israel.
The event last Sunday included a lav-
ish dinner and music at a Haifa recep-
tion hall. About 1,000 people attended,
including Knesset members, Haifa
Mayor Yona Yahav and Sara Netanyahu,
wife of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
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“You all have endured the darkest
period in history and, despite everything,
you chose life. You chose to raise fami-
lies, to work, to create and to continue
living. You won,” Netanyahu said at the
crowning.
Sunday’s pageant was also host to
the first performance of a new women’s
choir made up of Holocaust survivors.
The troupe, whose members have an
average age of 91, sang songs about sur-
viving the ghettos of Europe during the
Holocaust.
According to Helping Hand director
Simon Sabag, the choir is the oldest sing-
ing ensemble known in the world. He
called their performance “a very moving
moment for me.”
“Tonight we’re letting some women
who survived the Holocaust have
something that was robbed from them
in their youth,” David Parsons of the
International Christian Embassy in
Jerusalem, a sponsor of the Helping
Hand group that organized the event,
told Ynet News. “We want to give some-
thing back to them tonight. It’s for them
to enjoy.”
Nazi Germany’s slaughter of 6 mil-
lion European Jews during World War
II plays a unique role in Israeli society.
Israel gained independence in the wake
of the Holocaust, serving as a refuge
for hundreds of thousands of Jews who
survived the Nazi genocide. Today, some
200,000 aging Holocaust survivors live in
Israel.
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