The Jewish Mother Who Defeated Emperor Charles V

A Jewish mother will do everything for her children, but in this case – "everything" included taking on the Holy Roman Emperor himself and building a web of intrigue that spanned continents and several royal and noble houses. This is the story of Gracia Mendes Nasi, otherwise known as Dona Gracia.

דונה גרציה

Portrait of Dona Gracia

Gracia Mendes Nasi – also known as Dona Gracia, Hannah Nasi or by her Christianized name, Beatriz de Luna Miques – was considered the richest woman in the world in the 16th century. The Mendes bank which she led traded in goods, including diamonds and black pepper – then more valuable than gold. But Beatriz had a dangerous secret: She and her family were conversos – Jews forced to publicly convert to Christianity, in order to avoid expulsion from Portugal. Behind closed doors, they continued practicing their Jewish faith.

Due to the persecutions of the Inquisition and the Catholic Church, many conversos moved to the city of Antwerp in modern day Belgium, and from there sought to illegally make their way to the Ottoman Empire so they could practice Judaism freely again. Dona Gracia, who had always sought to be rid of the facade and to live openly as a Jew, moved from Portugal to Antwerp with the aim of continuing onto Turkey. But this left her with a problem:

Her public status as a “Christian” woman of great wealth led kings, dukes and other nobles to be interested in her only daughter Reyna (whom they called Ana at home).

One of the most stubborn matchmakers was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.

הקיסר קרל החמישי, על ידי חואן פנטוחה דה לה קרוס, שמן על בד.
Emperor Charles V, by Juan Pantoja de La Cruz, oil on canvas

Emperor Charles V, or Karl V, ruled over large sections of Europe and the New World, an “empire on which the sun never sets.” As a result, his forces were constantly involved in wars and he was always short of cash. At one point, seeking a way to to refill his coffers, he wrote to his sister Mary, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, who also governed the Netherlands and was close to Dona Gracia.

He told her of his proposal to marry off the 15-year-old Reyna to Duke Fernando de Aragón. The marital arrangement was meant to serve a number of purposes. The first was financial – even before Dona Gracia had given her consent, the Emperor and Duke had already divided up the spoils they would receive, with the Duke promising a generous portion of Reyna’s dowry to the Emperor.

The other purpose was to keep an eye on this family of “New Christians,” as the Duke was a particularly zealous and loyal supporter of the Church who could personally devote his attention to keeping the suspect Mendes family in line. Finally, the proposed marriage was also designed to benefit Dona Gracia, as a one-way ticket from the merchant class into the aristocracy.

Emperor Charles pushed his sister Mary to convince Dona Gracia, and did not rule out the idea of forcing the match. He also proposed looking into the possibility of marrying off Dona Gracia’s five-year-old niece, also named Beatriz (she was called “La Chica” in order to distinguish her from her aunt), with betrothals of small children being common practice in Flanders at that time.

Queen Mary opposed forcing the marriage on the family, since the merchant class, unlike the aristocracy, tended to oppose outside intervention in marital and family arrangements. Queen Mary feared that doing so with Dona Gracia’s family would serve as a precedent and frighten the merchants.

Mary repeatedly invited Dona Gracia to her royal court, but Dona Gracia, who was well aware of the plans for her daughter, managed to get out of it time and again with excuses of illness and weakness. When she did finally make it to Queen Mary’s royal court, she declared that she preferred her daughter die than be married to a man she described as “lazy, old, and ugly.”

המלכה מרי מהונגריה ושליטת ארצות השפלה, צויירה על ידי הנס מאלר צו שוואץ, שמן על בד,  1520.
Mary, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, governor of the Netherlands, painted by Hans Maler zu Schwaz, oil on canvas

Mary, who began to despair at the possibility of receiving the mother’s consent, hinted that if the marriage was not arranged soon, a new investigation might be opened into suspicions that the Mendes family was guilty of desecrating the Christian religion and practicing Judaism. Now in danger, Dona Gracia sought a way to escape.

But a woman as rich as Dona Gracia, with all the property she owned, could not just disappear overnight. Moreover, if they fled Antwerp and were caught, such behavior would be considered a confession of guilt. She therefore came up with a sophisticated plan, composed of a number of stages.

In the first stage, her nephew and right-hand man João Micas (who would receive the name Joseph Nasi when he later publicly embraced his Judaism) returned from his university studies in Lyon to the family home. Almost immediately after his arrival, he suddenly left Antwerp in the company of his cousin Reyna, the object of Charles V’s financial desires. They turned towards Venice and disappeared into the night.

The next morning, Dona Gracia, in a show of great anguish and despair, declared that her daughter Reyna had been kidnapped by her cousin who had fallen in love with her and could not control his passions. According to Dona Gracia, her nephew had abducted the young lady and run off with her.

During this historical period, the abduction of women for purposes of marriage was a fairly common occurrence, meant to force marital arrangements on unwilling parents. Such an incident would typically harm the maiden’s reputation and honor, making her “damaged goods.” Instead of punishing the kidnapper, the authorities often preferred to allow him to legitimately marry the abductee, rather than leaving her in a state of indignity in which few would seek her hand. Here, Dona Gracia and João used this well-known trick to arrange a de-facto betrothal for Reyna, therefore making her a much less attractive prospect for marriage into the aristocracy.

The rumors of the kidnapping spread quickly, and no-one questioned the desire of the worried mother to follow her daughter and her scoundrel kidnapper, in order to save Reyna from such a dubious marriage.

No-one that is, except Queen Mary, who easily understood the real reasons behind this over-the-top Mendes family drama. But Mary was unable to summon Dona Gracia to her castle to provide answers, as a few weeks earlier Dona Gracia had requested and received transit papers and a passport from the Queen to visit the hot springs in Aix-la-Chapelle, which could help soothe the suffering caused by her many illnesses. Thus was Dona Gracia able to travel overland from Antwerp to Venice at the head of a large convoy, with official permission granted by Queen Mary herself.

תצלום רפרודוקציה של מדליה אשר הונפקה לכבוד נישואיה של דונה גרציה נשיא הצעירה (אחייניתה של דונה גרציה) שכונתה לה-צ'יקה.
Photo, reproduction of a medal produced in honor of Dona Gracia Nasi the Younger (niece of Dona Gracia, known as “La Chica”

When the Emperor and the Queen understood that these precious birds had flown the cage, they abandoned all pretense and started working directly to get their hands on the Mendes fortune. This was the beginning of a legal saga which stretched on for some five years, in which the monarchs tried to confiscate and expropriate Dona Gracia’s property, with the very same João accused of taking his cousin’s innocence returning to Antwerp to defend his aunt’s rights in court.

Dona Gracia herself would never set foot again in Antwerp for fear of being arrested and put on trial. Instead, João engaged in a deliberate war of legal attrition, parrying the monarchs with a variety of creative arguments. For instance, he argued that the property actually belonged to Reyna and La Chica who had inherited it from their deceased fathers, and that Dona Gracia was merely the custodian managing it all. Therefore, even if Dona Gracia was thinking about returning to Judaism, that had nothing to with the “innocent” minors and therefore the authorities had no right to touch the property. While the gears of justice ground on slowly, João took advantage of the respite to smuggle more and more of the Mendes fortune out of Antwerp.

Another method Dona Gracia used to save her property could be seen as an early form of insurance. She deposited chests of diamonds and precious stones with important merchants in the city in exchange for a promise from them to pay her exorbitant sums if they didn’t return the chests. When the Emperor and his sister tried to get ahold of them, the merchants so feared the costs of paying Dona Gracia that there was a real fear that they would flee the city and collapse its economy.

This legal-religious-romantic saga finally came to a close when Dona Gracia agreed to compensate Emperor Charles V by granting him an interest-free loan for two years and another extension on the many debts and loans he already owed to the Mendes bank.

ציור של טבריה העתיקה, מסוף מאה שבע-עשרה, מבט לצפון מזרח. בציור נראית החומה שהוקמה במצוות דונה גרציה ודון יוסף נשיא.
A painting of the city of Tiberias in the Holy Land in the late 17th century, as seen from the northeast. The painting shows the wall established at the order and expense of Dona Gracia Nasi and Don Joseph Nasi.

The Mendes family underwent many trials and tribulations, but when they fled to the city of Ferrara in Italy, Dona Gracia returned to practicing Judaism openly. Although there were other suitors who sought Reyna’s hand, including the son of the Ottoman Sultan’s Jewish doctor, the family considered her to be the “betrothed” of her cousin João.

Upon reaching the age of 18, Reyna demanded that Dona marry her off to João, which was highly irregular in those days, since parents usually arranged their children’s marriage based on financial interests, regardless of the desires of the bride and groom.

Reyna’s close circle of friends opposed the marriage, as João had a reputation as a womanizer who secretly provided the Sultan with alcohol and attended his lavish parties.

Dona Gracia nevertheless agreed to the match, since it kept the wealth within the family. But she presented João with a condition – that he openly return to Judaism and be circumcised. While doing so, he returned to the Jewish name he received from his parents – Joseph Nasi. Reyna and Joseph were married, and we know they had only one daughter who appears to have died before her parents.

Reyna Nasi’s story may have ended here, but the Mendes family continued to have an impact on Jewish history: Dona Gracia was behind an effort to establish a Jewish autonomy in Tiberias, in what might be seen as an early precursor to Zionism, to serve as a shelter for Jews from persecution around the world.

בול עם דיוקנה של דונה גרציה נשיא בשנת 2010, לציון 500 שנה להולדתה. הבול הונפק במסגרת סדרת "אישים בישראל".
Stamp with the image of Dona Gracia, 2010, marking 500 years since her birth, issued as part of the “People in Israel” series

As part of Dona Gracia’s efforts on behalf of the conversos of Spain, she ransomed captives and intervened on behalf of those who caught by the authorities, but she also saw to their spiritual and religious needs. Over time, many conversos forgot their Hebrew, and the Christian scriptures were only available in Latin. A real need therefore arose to translate the Hebrew Bible into Spanish.

Dona Gracia donated a significant sum of money to fund the efforts of Abraham Usque and Yom Tob Atias, who sought to print a converso bible. Usque was a converso who printed Latin books in Portugal and escaped to Ferrara after suspicions arose that he was practicing Judaism. Atias was a Jewish converso from Spain. The Ferrara Bible stood out in its adherence to Hebrew grammar in Spanish, leading to a strange form of Spanish featuring no conjunctions. Their work also elegantly avoided interpretive translation which could be seen as supporting Christian understandings of the Bible.

The Ferrara Bible includes an illustrious dedication to Dona Gracia in unique, poetic language, thanking her for her support for the project. Copies of the Ferrara Bible can still be found around the world; the National Library has a copy of the second edition of this rare and wonderful book.

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The Ferrara Bible will temporarily be displayed to the broader public, as part of a special tour at the National Library of Israel celebrating Sephardic Jewish heritage and culture – from treasures of the Sephardic Golden Age to items from the Library’s Islam collection to remnants of the crisis which befell Spanish Jewry following the expulsion and dispersal across the globe.

This special Sephardic tour, telling the story of Spanish Jewry, is one of the Library’s thematic tours. Other examples include our Green Building and Sustainability Tour, the Art and Architecture Tour, a tour accessible to the deaf and more. Find more details on all our special tours, here.

Dan Hadani, a 100-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor, Still Remembers

Dunek Zloczewski lost everything he had in the Holocaust: his daily routine, his entire family, and his faith in humanity. Along the way, he survived Auschwitz, Mengele's selections, harsh labor, and a death march. He built a new life for himself in Israel as Dan Hadani - a photographer and journalist with an important role in documenting the country's history. For decades, he repressed his memories of the Holocaust and only began telling the story of that part of his life at the age of 92.

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Left: Dunek Zloczewski during his youth in the Lodz Ghetto around 1941. Right: Dan Hadani during a visit to the National Library of Israel, 2024. Photo: David Peretz

Not long ago, Dan Hadani, a veteran journalist and photographer came to visit the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, the new home of the enormous collection of photographs he amassed over his long career. The Dan Hadani Collection is a photographic archive that covers almost every event in the history of the State of Israel during a critical period – from the late 1960s until the year 2000. The archive was handed over to the Library in a meticulously organized state. This was his life’s work, and to maintain its relevance as well as the photos themselves, Hadani decided to transfer the archive in its entirety to the National Library, where the majority of the photos would be made accessible digitally on the NLI website.

In August 2024, Hadani celebrated his 100th birthday. He is sharp, his stories are fascinating, and he has many to tell. He’s had a successful career as a photographer and journalist, but his life story is extraordinary, even aside from that: It includes a happy childhood, as well as years spent in a ghetto, in labor camps, and in an extermination camp, before later creating a new life in Israel, where he reinvented himself more than once. Hadani is a special man. You would never know he was 100 years old from his sharp thinking and eloquence. He has a realistic outlook and doesn’t waste time on regrets or asking questions about the past.

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Dan Hadani at the National Library of Israel, 2024. Photo: David Peretz

What Might Have Been

Twice, Dan Hadani’s family found themselves en route to the Land of Israel, equipped with the necessary certificates granting entry. In 1925, when Dan was still a baby, his family was on its way to a ship bound for Mandatory Palestine. At the port, they happened to meet a good friend of his father’s who had fled there previously and returned. He told them about pogroms by Arabs against the Jews settling in the Promised Land. He made them swear they’d return to Poland and not risk their lives, and that’s exactly what they did. The second time was in 1936. Once all their belongings were finally packed up, Dan’s father Kalman contracted a serious gallbladder infection and their trip was canceled.

We asked Hadani how he felt about his family nearly saving themselves from the awful fate of European Jewry during World War II, and whether he felt sad or angry that in the end, this did not come to pass. He responded decisively, “That was our fate.”

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The only family photo Dan Hadani has with his parents and sister. The photo was taken from a copy of the certificate they were given to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine. His mother sent it to her friend already living there, and that is how it was saved and reached Hadani years after it was photographed

Dan Hadani was born just over a hundred years ago, in 1924, as Dunek Zloczewski, in Lodz, Poland. His nuclear family comprised four people – himself, his sister, and their parents. His father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress. “I grew up in a Jewish and very Zionist home. My father, Kalman, was active in the Poale Tzion party, and as a child, I often went with him to training sessions for groups that were headed to Israel,” he recalls. His mother, Lea, had come from a German-speaking family. Dan and his sister Sabina, who was three years older, knew German fluently, a fact that would save their lives on more than one occasion later on. At the center of their home was a large sewing table where both parents, experts in the craft, used to work. From them, Dan learned about the integrity, professionalism, and love that were part of the work and atmosphere in the home where he grew up. It was a home full of life, warmth and love. When he reminisces about life before the war, he pictures his mother, who used to wait for him every day as he returned from school. They used to prepare lunch together. He learned how to cook by watching what she used to do. To this day, every time Hadani cooks, he is reminded of his mother.

His father Kalman was a special man: an expert craftsman, an active Zionist, and a volunteer for the “Linat Hatzedek” organization which offered first aid to the needy, particularly during nighttime hours. The organization’s offices were housed in their local synagogue. Together, Hadani and his father collected stamps and cultivated an extensive collection that included stamps from all over Europe, including Nazi Germany. The magnificent collection was left behind in Auschwitz along with the rest of the family’s belongings that had been packed in suitcases and confiscated when they were taken from the ghetto in 1944.

The Pogroms Were Just the Beginning

When Hadani tells the story of his childhood in Poland, antisemitism is an inseparable part of it. One example took place one Saturday, during the family’s usual walk to the large public park where he used to play chess. A pogrom broke out suddenly, instigated by Polish hooligans targeting local Jews. Many of those who weren’t killed or injured by the rioters were crushed in the panic as a mass of people rushed toward the park’s exit gate. Hadani and his family weren’t targeted directly because they didn’t appear visibly Jewish, but they were nearly trampled by the fearful mob, managing to get away by the skin of their teeth.

“There was a great deal of antisemitism everywhere,” he says. “More than once, I was accused of killing Jesus, as if thousands of years hadn’t passed.” Growing up in a home that was a place for social, business, and political gatherings, he heard stories of exploitation and fraud that some Jews bragged about. He remembers one story about a tailor who was proud of how he managed to sell a suit he was eager to be rid of to a Polish man. The suit was several sizes too large for him. Every time the Pole looked in the mirror, the tailor pulled the suit in a different direction. Hadani’s parents condemned that sort of behavior, and he developed an aversion to any type of dishonesty.

The Early Days of World War II

Ten days after Poland was conquered by the German army, the Nazis reached Lodz and word spread that they would kill all Jewish men of certain ages. That day is burned into Hadani’s memory. Together with his family, he tried to flee toward Warsaw, along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews, without success. The Germans quickly took control over the masses of people trying to flee. Hadani’s family were not visibly Jewish and spoke excellent German, and so they managed to escape the abuses, but that was the first time Hadani witnessed the Nazi barbarism, which still haunts his nightmares to this day: “They undressed elderly Jews, left them with only their tzitzit and beat them in their private parts. They killed people indiscriminately on the sides of the roads,” he recalls, “In my mind I can still see one incident that took place there – a group of three Germans was standing around one Jew, and with tweezers, they removed the hears on his head one by one so that all that remained was the shape of a swastika. It was total sadism and it was there I understood – people are animals.”

For Hadani’s parents, who had great appreciation for German culture, it was extremely difficult to cope with the actions of the Germans, whom they had always seen as a cultured and civilized people. What they saw in those days broke their hearts. Hadani’s father, Kalman, was never himself again and he ultimately died of that heartbreak in 1942, as he lay starving and ill in the Lodz Ghetto.

Hadani doesn’t remember much from the family’s four long years in the Lodz Ghetto, aside from how his father wasted away and died. “We were in survival mode, every man for himself,” he says. “When I moved to Israel, they asked me why we didn’t do anything. How can you explain that you were on an island, cut off ftrom the world?! The Germans slowly got us used to the fact that this was our reality.”

He remembers suffering from hunger in the ghetto, though his family tried to discreetly grow some vegetables on their improvised patio. Food rations were meager – one slice of bread for breakfast and one for dinner. “I am sure my parents took food from their allowance and gave it to me and my sister. I have no proof of this, but I felt it.” He also cannot forget those who took their own lives by throwing themselves on the ghetto’s electric fence. Like most residents of the Lodz Ghetto, he and his sister needed to work for the German army. The only pictures he has from those years are from the factory where they worked making boots for the German soldiers.

Holocaust Ghetto Lodz
Dunek Zloczewski on the left, in the factory where he made boots for the German army in the Lodz Ghetto, circa 1941
Holocaust Ghetto Lodz
A photo taken in the boot manufacturing plant in the Lodz Ghetto, circa 1941. On the far left with the yellow patch is the night shift manager. Above him is Hadani’s sister Sabina Zloczewski, and above her is Dunek Zloczewski (today, Dan Hadani)

Dr. Mengele’s Selections

Hadani has written extensively about the nightmarish journey from the ghetto to Auschwitz, on a website that he himself set up: “I didn’t want to write a book because I think more people will read it this way,” he explains. Until that moment, throughout all their time in the ghetto, his mother and sister were never apart from him. In the utter chaos upon the train’s arrival at the platform, he was immediately separated from them. His mother was murdered that day. As far as he was able to clarify, his sister was murdered a few months later in one of the labor camps. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the whole family and miss them. I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to my mother or sister.” Unlike his family, Hadani went through several different labor camps and survived. In each camp, he says miracles, coincidences, luck, and wits helped him stay alive.

After a few weeks in Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele conducted a selection. To prevent any chance of an uprising by the prisoners, the abuse began days before. “We were naked and needed to do frog jumps for hours. Whoever wasn’t up to it received fatal blows.” They were organized into groups of five for the selection by Dr. Mengele, who tended not to speak but merely lift his finger to point at whoever needed to leave the row and join those headed for immediate extermination. When he got to Hadani, Mengele pointed in his direction. Hadani asked in fluent German, “Do you mean me?” Mengele responded, “Keep standing, dog.” The man behind Hadani, the last in the group of five, was out of luck that day and murdered in that very same selection.

Whoever passed the selection was chosen for harsh labor at the factories at the Braunschweig camp, which were converted during the war to create German tanks. The cold temperatures during the winter of 1944 were so extreme that many people’s toes froze. “People would be woken in the night by rats biting them, which they only discovered when the rats moved from the frozen flesh to the living flesh, then the person would wake up screaming. It was awful,” Hadani describes. With luck and resourcefulness, he had found pieces of an empty cement bag made out of several layers of paper, and he used these to wrap his feet and protect them from the cold and the rats.

A few days later, he was transferred to a labor camp in a neighboring town. One of the managers there, Meister Haler, under whom Hadani worked, was a member of the Nazi party. Haler was known for his barbarism and even the other Germans feared him. “I worked on the night shift, from 6 PM till 6 AM, just like that Meister, and he showed me what I needed to do, how to raise a 42 kilo hunk of iron, bring it towards the lathe at a certain angle, and bind it to its place so that the lathe would process it to the desired size. I remembered how he held the iron at a special angle and I did it exactly the way he did.”

Thanks to his quick absorption, Hadani understood what was required of him. Even though he had never before worked in a technical profession, and he only weighed around 40 kilos at the time, within a few days he managed to produce quite a good yield. Because of his fluent German, the two were able to converse, and during his long night shifts, Meister would tell him about his life and how he ended up in the Nazi party. “Once, he even brought me a slice of bread. Who ever heard of such a thing? Or even some cocoa substitute that they had in the canteen, which they called Alsace-Cacao. It was unbelievable!” Small moments like that gave him strength and hope during the hardest days.

“I rejoiced but I didn’t know why”

Hadani was transferred to harsh labor in several different camps. On the way to one of them, he was forced to join in a death march, which he survived. Towards the end of the war, he was at the Ravensbrück concentration camp as part of a group that was to be exchanged, possibly with German prisoners of war. The SS officers forced the group to walk through the forest towards another camp. “I was sure that they’d murder us there,” he says, “but no, there were cabins that belonged to the League of Nations there where they handed us parcels of food and cigarettes. Here, too, the young man’s hard-earned wisdom saved his life. “You need to remember, we’re talking about people who had been starving for months and years. To suddenly stuff yourself with that kind of food could be dangerous. I understood that. I simply knew it to be true.” The other starved camp prisoners ate ravenously and suffered severe diarrhea. Some never recovered. “I knew, for example, that I should get rid of the canned meat and keep the dry biscuits, which I ate slowly.”

When he saw the American soldiers enter the camp gates to liberate him, he was too exhausted to stand up. “I rejoiced, but I didn’t know why,” he says. After a few days regaining his strength, he gradually began to understand that he was once again a free man. Yet with that understanding, and upon his return home to Lodz, he knew that he had no one left in the world. He was on his own.

In the house where they had lived in the Lodz Ghetto, there was a small storeroom where he found the few photographs he still has of himself and his family from their time there. These were photographed in secret, practically the only tangible reminder of his life back then. From there, he ended up in the displaced persons camps. He can’t forget the rivalry he witnessed between the various groups of survivors: “If there, in the camps, people from Poale Tzion couldn’t speak with people from Beitar, and there were so many arguments and so much tension, and we were all Holocaust survivors, how could we possibly run a country?”

Although he had other options, it was clear to Hadani that he would fulfill his parents’ unwritten will, realize their Zionist dreams, and go live in Israel. He was accepted to join a maritime training course taking place in Italy, without knowing a word of Italian or any of the other people. However, Hadani passed the course with flying colors, and the day after he landed in Israel, he enlisted in the newly formed Israeli Navy. “The hardest thing was the way we – the Holocaust survivors – were treated by the tsabarim [native-born Israelis]. They treated us like idiots, asking things like ‘Why didn’t you object?’ How can you possibly explain to well-fed people what it means to suffer years of starvation?”

מחברת של דן מלימודי הימאות באיטליה
Original notebook in Hadani’s handwriting, which he kept from his maritime course in Italy

In Israel, it took him some time to adjust to his new life. “Even when I was a soldier in the army, I was hungry. After all, I didn’t have a home to go to or anyone else in the world. I would stay on the army base even during vacations when I was on leave so that at least I had something to eat and somewhere to sleep.” Hadani served in the IDF until he was honorably discharged at forty years old, at the rank of major. He then he began a new career as a newspaper photographer, establishing the IPPA press agency and even writing news articles. For someone who had never learned Hebrew in any organized manner, he felt a sense of pride and triumph over the horrible circumstances of his early life.

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Dan Hadani during his years as an officer in the Israeli Navy. From a private album

“I am among the only ones who can still speak about it”

What was going through his mind at the end of World War II, when he was only 21 years old? What did he feel when he discovered that he was left all alone in the world without a single relative, with barely any mementos from before the war? Hadani has very few photographs in his possession from his childhood and youth, barely any souvenirs of all his family relatives who perished. Perhaps that’s why he became a such a curious documentarian and cataloger over the years, organized and meticulous, keeping records of everything that happened in the young country.

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Dan Hadani at work, during a visit to Egypt during the 1977 peace talks. From the Dan Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

For years, Hadani didn’t speak about what he went through during the Holocaust. “I didn’t want to reopen the wound. I occupied myself with surviving and was also embarrassed to speak about it, because of how the native Israelis treated me,” he explains. It was only once he turned 92 that he first agreed to return to Poland, and that was when the floodgates opened. Ever since, he has spoken to anyone willing to listen. He also made sure to upload his story from the Holocaust period to his website, which he built himself at the age of 99. “I understand that I need to speak about it and I am among the only ones who still can! Even if it isn’t easy for me. It takes me back to the past, and I have nightmares about it.”

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Dan Hadani at the National Library of Israel, 2024. Photograph by David Peretz

When Hadani is asked about October 7, he responds, “For me, that was a Holocaust day. One day! I woke up in the morning and listened to the radio, I heard what they were saying and immediately shut it off. I thought it couldn’t be. But then I was curious and turned it back on and remembered – this is how the Holocaust felt.”

Hadani came to tell his story as part of the Zikaron Ba’salon (“a memory in the living room”) Holocaust commemoration initiative, at the National Library, which houses his vast and monumental archive of photographs. At the Library and in its online catalog, the collection is accessible to all. “I get some satisfaction from knowing that the huge archive of photos that I worked on all my life is being kept safe at the National Library. It gives me pride to know that something will be left after me.”

Dan Hadani’s life arguably contains more than one life story, and he hopes that the country that he dreamed of and was so happy to serve and be part of will continue to be faithful to the same values that guided him throughout his life.

You can watch this special interview held with Dan Hadani in Hebrew at the National Library. Auto-generated English subtitles are available:

The Boy Whose Life Was Saved by Hannah Senesh

One of the heart-wrenching facts about Hannah Senesh, the paratrooper-poetess who died so tragically at the age of 23, is that she wasn't able carry out her mission. She received military training and was sent to Yugoslavia in an effort to save Jews from the Nazis – but she was ultimately caught at the border, imprisoned, and executed. Was her death in vain? The story of one little boy and his mother reveals something of Hannah's unique personality, as well as those she did manage to save, despite everything.

Hannah Senesh, aged 17 or 18, from the Senesh Family Archive, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, alongside an image of Baruch Galtstein, the boy born thanks to her. Photo courtesy of his family.

On the border between Slovakia and Hungary is a large forest, the kind that brings to mind the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, a forest so thick that when you enter it, the sun disappears, even in the middle of the day.

In 1942, this forest was infiltrated by a small group made up primarily of Jews trying to flee Nazi-occupied Slovakia, where the first train to Auschwitz had just left the station. They were attempting to escape to Hungary, which at the time was still relatively free.

This was not their first attempt; a few days earlier, they had reached the area with the aid of professional smugglers – who promptly betrayed them to soldiers stationed on the border. Most of the group were killed or caught by the Nazis, but under cover of darkness and in the chaos of the moment, some of them managed to run away to temporary safety. Now, they tried again to escape the country.

Among the fugitives were Matilda and Eliezer Galtstein, together with their two-year-old daughter Tova and Matilda’s sister Hilda. Their son Baruch, who would become one of the heroes of the amazing family story he would share with us more than eighty years later, had not yet been born.

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Right: The parents, Eliezer and Matilda, on their wedding day. Left: Tova, aged five. Photo courtesy of the family

This time they managed to make it into the forest before the shooting started, but the darkness and tangled overgrowth turned out to be a double-edged sword: The gunfire forced them to all disperse, and when they later regrouped deep inside the forest, they were horrified to learn that Tova wasn’t with any of them. What were the odds of a small girl, not even three years old, surviving in a terrifying forest, filled with monsters that were all too real?

For three days, they scoured the forest, calling their little daughter’s name, alternately shouting and whispering as they grew more and more desperate. Then, finally, they found her – frightened and exhausted but healthy and whole – waiting for them under one of the trees.

Was this miracle the end of their travails? Not really.

They arrived in Budapest with forged papers, mourning everything and everyone they’d lost and fearing what the future might bring (Matilda and Hilda’s parents had already been sent to Auschwitz and murdered there on the day they arrived). For two years, they lived in relative safety in the city, but then came the day they had feared the most: on March 19, 1944, German forces entered Hungary, bringing with them all the terror and horrors of the Holocaust.

For the sake of their own survival, Eliezer and Matilda decided to temporarily break up their small family. Tova, who was now almost five years old, was handed over to a convent which also served as an orphanage, while Eliezer and Matilda each lived in separate hiding places. Every so often they would meet at a predetermined location in one of the city’s public parks.

One day in July 1944, Matilda did not show up at their meeting place. Eliezer learned later that she’d been arrested a few days earlier. Her forged papers, combined with her broken Hungarian, marked her out as a foreigner trying to hide her own identity and therefore – a suspected spy. She was thrown in prison. Matilda was certain that her fate and that of her unborn child was sealed, but she hadn’t taken into account her new cellmate.

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[Hannah Senesh with her brother Giora (George) in Tel Aviv, shortly before leaving on the mission from which she would not return. Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel]
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Writing behind the picture (above). Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel

The 23-year-old young Jewish woman who welcomed her introduced herself as “Aniko, or Hannah.” She was younger than Matilda, but had spent more time in prison – she’d arrived a month and a half earlier – and had received training for dealing with such situations. She extended a hand to Matilda and quickly became her support.

The woman’s full name, as you’ve already guessed, was Hannah Senesh (Szenes). The talented writer was born in Hungary, made Aliyah to the Land of Israel and then volunteered to serve in the British Army and joined the group of volunteer-paratroopers dropped over Nazi-occupied Europe. On March 15, 1944, she parachuted into Yugoslavia together with Reuven Dafni, Yonah Rosen, and Abba Berdichev.

At first, she joined a local partisan group, but in June it was decided to move forward with her main mission, which was supposed to take place on Hungarian soil. She attempted to cross the border and was caught by Hungarian soldiers. She was then transferred to a Budapest jail, where she was charged with treason against the Hungarian motherland and tortured to reveal the identities of the other paratroopers.

She refused.

Senesh shared her burning faith in the justice of their cause with Matilda, as well as her experience in dealing with Gestapo interrogators. She listened to her, encouraged her, and gave her strength, especially after the endless rounds of torture Matilda endured. She advised her to steal and destroy her forged identification papers, so that the government would have no physical proof against her.

“In the end, it didn’t really change anything,” said Baruch, Matilda’s son, “Lemke (the Gestapo commander in charge of the prison) would always tell her ‘I don’t need this document to execute you, I will execute you, anyway.”

Did Senesh really believe that they would get a fair trial? It’s hard to know, but when Matilda revealed that she was pregnant, it was clear to Senesh that she could not wait for the final outcome of Matilda’s arrest – she needed to escape, and soon.

In Hannah Senesh’s writings, which are mostly preserved in the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel (courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen) – in poems, diaries, and letters – we see the strong relationship she shared with her mother Katherine, but also her special attitude towards motherhood in general:

If there exists in the world a token of honor and respect,
a wreath of loyalty, of love,
there is only one worthy of it:
Your good mother!
Let your heart harbor gratitude,
and let your lips sing a prayer,
Hear now the most beautiful word in the world:
Mother!

(Hannah Senesh, “Mother,” 1933)

“I would like to erect a monument to my mother—a mother who, from my childhood to this day, allowed my brother and me to set sail into the world to seek our own paths, forgoing her right to hold us back. This is not just the image of my mother; many Jewish mothers of our generation share this fate.”

(From Hannah Senesh’s diary, December 14, 1940)

When Senesh explained her escape plan to Matilda, the latter panicked. The route sounded too complex and the odds of success too low. But Senesh insisted and encouraged her to do it – if not for herself, then for the child in her womb.

Was this an escape plan meant for Senesh herself? Was young Hannah, who was far more fit than the pregnant woman living in inhuman conditions, capable of using this route herself? We’ll probably never know, but many believe that she didn’t try to flee since she was certain she would be released – which, as we know, she wasn’t.

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Farewell letter from Hannah Senesh to her mother, likely written on the day of her execution. It was found in the pocket of her dress, which was handed over to her mother. Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel

Matilda followed every stage of the plan, step by step: When they came to take her for interrogation (again), she feigned falling down the stairs. She needed to be precise in her fall – not too hard, so as not to harm her baby, but hard enough to have her sent to the infirmary.

The infirmary was on the third floor of the building. It was much quieter than the rest of the prison and its windows weren’t barred. Matilda waited for the nurse to leave the room. When the coast was clear, she tied some sheets together and carefully climbed down out of the window, down to the street which was still part of war-torn Budapest but still safer than being in Gestapo custody.

Hannah Senesh was executed not long after, on November 7, 1944.

On February 13, 1945, Budapest was liberated by the Red Army. Immediately after being freed, Matilda turned to the convent where she had put the thing most dear to her – her daughter, Tova. She was told they had no such girl.

But by now, Matilda knew a thing or two about how useful windows could be. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she climbed up to the convent’s rear window and forced it open. There, she immediately identified Tova, who in turn recognized her mother. They left together, to meet Eliezer who had been switching between dozens of hiding places in the last few months.

Shortly afterward, Matilda gave birth to her son, Baruch. His body was covered in bruises, a result of the tortures suffered by her mother, but was otherwise healthy. Following his birth, the Galtstein family made Aliyah after much suffering and not a few miracles, where they could finally raise their children in peace and happiness.

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The Galtstein family, at their Ramat Gan apartment. Photo courtesy of the family

The story of the rescue of Matilda and Baruch by Hannah Senesh has accompanied the family for many decades. Senesh became a national hero in Israel after her death, but their connection was personal.

“Mother would tell of it, again and again, to anyone who would only listen,” Baruch said, adding that every year, on the Hebrew anniversary of Hannah’s execution, the 21st of Cheshvan, he would say the kadish prayer for the clever, brave, young woman who saved their lives.

A few years ago, Baruch traveled to Budapest with other relatives to explore the family’s roots in Hungary. They had their picture taken in front of the building which once served as the Gestapo headquarters, where Matilda fled through the window while carrying Baruch in her womb.

Above them was a sign placed there shortly after the war:

“Thousands suffered in this building.

In the dark days of 1944, between March 19 and December 31, they were arrested by the German Gestapo and most were sent to the death camps.

The few who remain alive remember them.

Budapest 1946.”

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The sign on the former Gestapo building in Budapest. Courtesy of the Galtstein family

The Undercover Operation to Rescue the Crown of Damascus

The incredible story of how a priceless Hebrew manuscript written nearly 600 years ago was smuggled out of Syria and eventually brought to the National Library of Israel

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Judy Feld Carr

Had someone predicted decades ago that Judy Feld Carr would help to smuggle an invaluable, centuries-old book out of Syria — to say nothing of delivering thousands of the country’s Jews from a dictatorship to freedom — “I’d tell you you’re mad,” the Toronto resident said in a telephone call in the waning days of 2024. “I taught the music of the Catholic church of the 14th century. If you could tell me how that [leads] to Syria, you’re better than me!”

Feld Carr utilized similarly colorful language when asked whether she has any Syrian heritage.

“Are you kidding? My father was from Russia, my mother was from Brooklyn, Ashkenazi, and I grew up in northern Canada,” she said.

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Judy Feld Carr and the Damascus Keter she helped rescue from Syria, photographed by Orah Buck in Toronto, 1993

Yet Feld Carr, a musicologist by training, became indispensable in facilitating the smuggling of the book, an artistic Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, from Syria to Canada and on to Israel in 1993.

This particular book was originally written in Italy in the 15th century. It was transferred to Spain shortly afterwards, but after the edict of expulsion the book made its way to the Ottoman Empire. It was sold among the communities of Jewish exiles and eventually ended up in Damascus.

It is one of twelve Hebrew manuscripts that have come to be known as the Damascus Keters. Today the Keters are part of the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition, “A Treasury of Words,” where culturally priceless works reside. The word keter is Hebrew for “crown.”

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The Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue

Feld Carr first learned of the Damascus Keter in July 1993 while in Jerusalem with her husband, Don Carr — the couple had an apartment in the city — when they met a curator at the Israel Museum as the renowned Aleppo Codex was being restored.

The curator asked Feld Carr if she knew about the Damascus Keter or had any ideas for getting it out of Syria. Feld Carr called Shlomo Gal, a senior Mossad official, at his home on a Friday afternoon. He berated her, urging her instead to continue bringing Syrian Jews to freedom. (Harold Troper’s 2007 book about her, The Rescuer: The Amazing True Story of How One Woman Helped Save the Jews of Syria, can also be found at the National Library.)

Feld Carr recalled that she heard “from my underground sources” that the Keter resided in a shul in Damascus. That launched her quest to bring it out of Syria, since she understood that the Jewish community there would soon be almost non-existent. “The issue was to find it and get it out. My husband said, ‘You’re crazy. How can you get it?’ That was July. In September, I had it,” Feld Carr said.

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A page from the Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue

How did she do it? During two phone calls and subsequent e-mails, Feld Carr provided few names or details, but did say she worked her contacts in Canada’s foreign ministry and communicated with the Damascus Jewish community’s chief rabbi, Avraham Hamra. Feld Carr said she “paid nothing to anybody to get out the Keter.”

A Middle East specialist in the Canadian government agreed to be the conduit, she said. On a visit to Damascus, he passed Hamra on a street. Hamra surreptitiously handed off the Keter, and the man put it in his raincoat and continued on. The man then visited at least one other Arab country before returning to Canada, the Keter resting in a black shopping bag. Feld Carr went in November to Ottawa, where they met in the man’s office and then headed to lunch.

That’s when Feld Carr first saw the book and held it. It seemed too modest to be the heralded Keter. “I showed disappointment,” she conceded. “ ‘This is what it is?’ It was small” — about 11”x14” — “on the thinnest vellum paper.”

She went on to the Israeli embassy to see Itzhak Shelef, the ambassador. She didn’t have an appointment. He held the book and “was sobbing like a baby,” she recalled. “He said, ‘This may be the Damascus Keter.’”

Feld Carr flew back to Toronto and asked a photographer to come to her home to take pictures of the Keter — without a flash, outdoors. She mailed the photographs to the Israel Museum. After Gal saw the pictures, he “sent me a lovely written message that it was the Keter,” she said.

Hamra, on a visit to Toronto, visited Feld Carr. She gave him the Keter and urged him to donate it to the National Library when he moved to Israel in 1994, which he did.

The text of this particular keter is arranged in two columns, each with 36 lines. It features quadratic Sephardic script, with the text of the Masorah arranged in beautiful geometric patterns around the biblical text.

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A page from the Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue

Interestingly, the Book of Esther is known here as the Book of Ahasuerus, named after the Persian king featured in the story (Xerxes, אחשורוש).

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The Book of Ahasuerus, instead of the Book of Esther

Hamra later sought to retrieve the Keter and took the case to court in Israel, but the decision in 2020 went in favor of the NLI. The dispute led Hamra to cut off contact with Feld Carr. Hamra died in 2021.

“He was like a brother — that’s how close we were,” she said. “I lost his friendship.”

Feld Carr said she has no regrets.

“The Keter is here for eternity, in terms of Jewish life,” she said. “The book is where it should be. It has to be in the library.”

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Another one of the twelve Damascus Keters, currently on display as part of the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition – “A Treasury of Words

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected].