An Urgent letter to Sir Martin Gilbert

Dear Sir Gilbert,

I've just read in the Haaretz Hebrew online pages about your work on a new film relaying Righteous diplomats' courageous acts during the Holocaust.

I am a published writer of Hebrew literary fiction and narative non fiction. May I bring to your attention a name I have not seen mentioned in the article - that of the Portuguese Aristides de Sousa Mendes. By now there is plenty of information on him on the net.

Please allow me to quote from my book How Far From Paradise - encounters with international women writers on Childhood dramatic recollections.

The quotation is from the Lidia Jorge chapter:

"...we have a hero here, like Schindler: the Consul Aristides, Portugal's Consul to Bordeaux during World War II, who saved thousands and thousands of Jews despite Salazar, the terrible dictator, and Salazar
threw him out of a diplomatic career and he became a poor man who ate the soup of the poor.
He and his youngest son.
It's a marvelous story.
In France, in Bordeaux, he issued visas for thousands of Jews, to allow them to pass through Portugal on their way to freedom, to the United
States and England.
Now we remember him and there are many books about him.
He risked more than Schindler - his life, his son, his wife. When he was far from Portugal, in a dangerous situation.
One of those books about Aristides is titled, A Good Man.
Can I write the name of this man? It's so important.
Aristides Sousa Mendes. Yes, only now they're talking about him.
My son is twenty three years old. Last year, when he read the book, he wept. He said, "But there are good people, there are heroes in Portugal.”

With warm regards, Yours,
Corinna Hasofferett

My Home In Tel- Aviv

My home is in Tel-Aviv.
Tel-Aviv is a sunny city, clouded by violence.
So where is my home?

At my home on a certain street (and so noisy that I have to close the windows,
except in the late night hours when the traffic quitenes a bit).
Or better still, in the room where I can sit at the table, mostly at my computer, and write.
Or still more accurate: In my last resort and refuge: my heart.

This heart has two chambers.
They tremble and suffer.
When I'm happy the chambers grow larger.

This complete state of well being when you smile for no reason just because your face and heart
are the natural home of your wide smile, this state has escaped with no warning.

You try to bring it to people's eyes and faces with some humorous response.
And 99.9% of the time they respond arguing. It's amazing.
People here have lost their sense of humour, this stance when you take a step back and look at the reality from the outside.
I say, "It's a joke."
They laugh, and to save face say, "I know, I know, you see I'm laughing."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm finding it hard to concentrate on the final editing for the Hebrew Once She Was A Child.
I want to have it published in the Spring if not earlier.
So many distractions.
Too much time taken by all those activities that are not the writing itself.

A day with no real writing leaves me empty and immensely miserable. I am addicted to life and I am addicted to the literary writing.
Sometimes they go together and sometimes they're just pulling in opposite directions.
If only one could have one life as a writer and another separate one as an non-writer, just live in simplicity fulfilled with the knowledge that all the writing has been done, like a mission completed, like an activity that has a beginning and an ending.