Revealed: Who Was “The State of Israel’s First Baby”?
Among the National Library’s photography collections, one particularly adorable discovery caught our eye: a series of images titled “The State of Israel's First Baby.” There were no other identifying details. Solving the mystery took a bit of detective work, some help from kind strangers, and a stroke of luck. But eventually, we found the birthday girl—and she even gave us a special interview.
“I really believe that’s me! I had no idea anyone photographed me—it’s such a surprise, and incredibly moving! I’m overwhelmed!”
That was Ahuva Naftali-Yoktan’s reaction when I showed her photographs she had never seen before—images taken shortly after her birth. As fate would have it, the State of Israel was born at exactly the same time.
One of the photographs cataloged at the National Library under the title “The State of Israel’s First Baby.” Photo: Benno Rothenberg, 1948. Meitar Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, National Library of Israel
Now that you know the ending—let’s go back to the beginning.
Like many great stories, it all started by chance.
I was searching for a hopeful story for Israeli Independence Day—something to lift the mood during difficult times. Something to wish the country well on its birthday.
Completely by accident, while browsing the National Library catalog, I came across a heartwarming photo labeled “The State of Israel’s First Baby” in Hebrew. Jackpot! I dove into the catalog entry, eager to discover who this adorable baby was.
What I found wasn’t a single photo, but an entire series—capturing the same cheerful infant, lovingly cradled by hospital nurses.
But then—frustration.
Beyond the photographer’s name, Benno Rothenberg, the year—1948—and the title, there were no further details. Who was the baby? Where was the photo taken? Nothing.
Our dedicated archivist Tamar Lewinsohn even searched Rothenberg’s original logbooks (his extraordinary archive was deposited at the Library only a few years ago), but those, too, came up empty.
I felt defeated. Maybe this mystery would never be solved.
So I did what people do these days: I asked ChatGPT who the first baby born in the State of Israel was. The chatbot thought… and then did what it tends to do when it doesn’t have a real answer—started improvising. It made up names, invented stories. But nothing reliable emerged.
A good reminder for younger readers: beware of unverified information. And thank goodness we have archives and national libraries!
Next, I turned to our Historical Jewish Press website, searching for any reference to a baby born alongside the founding of the state. After a long search, I finally came across this delightful announcement:
It looked promising. Could this be our baby? The daughter of Hemda and Yisrael Gorin, and sister to Uri?
After a whirlwind of Google and Facebook searches—and thanks to the resourcefulness of my colleague Liron Halbriech—we learned that the family name had later changed from Gorin to Goren. The child born at the exact time of the Declaration of Independence was named Hannah Goren.
More searches in the press archives turned up an interview with a teenage Hannah, as well as names of other children born on May 14, 1948.
Hannah was asked about her thoughts on establishing television stations in Israel: “Television will take too much time away from reading books” – an interview with 13-year-old Hannah Goren, published in Davar, April 21, 1961
As it turns out, the State of Israel had honored these children over the years. They were even named “Heralds of the State’s Bar Mitzvah Year” and lit torches at Mount Herzl during Independence Day celebrations in 1961. But no—after further investigation, it became clear that the baby in the photographs was not Hannah Goren.
When Others Crack the Case for You
The breakthrough with Hannah Goren gave our research fresh momentum.
We discovered that in 2023, ahead of Independence Day, journalist Maya Ronen of Davar had written a piece about people who share their birthday with the State of Israel. Maya interviewed Hannah Goren and several others born on that historic day.
Maya generously shared her contacts from the article. I reached out—and before long, the mystery was solved.
With a high degree of certainty, we now believe that the baby in Benno Rothenberg’s photo series is Ahuva Naftali-Yoktan, born on May 14, 1948, at 4:45 p.m. at Hadassah Hospital, then located on HaNevi’im Street in Jerusalem—just minutes after David Ben-Gurion declared, “The State of Israel has been established!”
Ahuva’s birth certificate
Still not convinced? Take a look at the nurses’ pins in the photographs. After extensive consultation on various medical history forums (a special thanks to Tamar Lewinsohn and Noa Reichmann), it was confirmed that the pins belonged to nurses from the Hadassah School of Nursing.
The Hadassah nursing pin helped solve the mystery.
Meet Ahuva!
As noted earlier, Ahuva herself can’t say with absolute certainty that the baby in the photos is her—but she strongly believes it is. “There were six boys and one girl born in Jerusalem that day,” she tells me. “I was born at 4:45 p.m., just after the Declaration of the State was completed. Because Jerusalem was under blockade at the time, my mother had to walk to the hospital while in labor. Hadassah had already been evacuated from Mount Scopus and relocated to HaNevi’im Street. There was no other way to get there. My mother was in very bad shape. The nurses brought her half a tomato from the ward for wounded soldiers to help her regain strength.”
“To be born with the state?” she continues, “It makes me feel more Zionist. It gives me a sense of belonging—and responsibility.”
Ahuva during her military service
Indeed, during her childhood and teenage years, her birthday carried great meaning. When she turned nine, the Jerusalem Municipality organized a special trip for her and the other Independence Day babies. Later, they celebrated their symbolic “bar mitzvah” with a festive torch-lighting ceremony and took part in other joyful events and meetings with national leaders over the years.
Young Ahuva (bottom row, second from left), with fellow birthday celebrants, on a 1957 trip organized by the Jerusalem Municipality
We even found a special interview with Ahuva published on her 18th birthday!
Today, Ahuva lives in Jerusalem’s Armon HaNatziv neighborhood. She’s a mother of four and grandmother of three. After many years in public service—and some time living abroad—she continues to work and volunteer in Jerusalem. And by the way, she happens to be friends with Hannah Goren!
Ahuva Naftali-Yoktan
And of course, the question we had to ask: What does Ahuva wish the country for their shared birthday?
“More than anything, I want to see the hostages return home. All of them. Together,” she says. “I hope we can become a united people once again. And if not peace, then at least let there be quiet.”
About 140,000 Jews were living in the Netherlands when Nazi Germany invaded in May 1940. Within five days, the country was under complete occupation, and persecution of the Jewish population began almost immediately. By January 1941, Jews were forced to register, and by the following month, the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam was sealed off and handed over to the Judenrat. Jews were barred from public places, their children expelled from schools, and prohibited from entering parks, markets, or using telephones.
In 1942, the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow badges and deported thousands to forced labor camps. Many were initially sent to the Westerbork transit camp in the northeastern Netherlands before beginning the grim journey to Auschwitz.
Among those who endured most of this horrific journey—but did not survive to witness liberation—was Vroutje Bloemist.
Bloemist had once been an exceptional student. She attended a Jewish school for impoverished children in Amsterdam, and in 1886, she received a certificate of excellence from the school’s administration, commending “her diligence in studies and her superiority among peers.”
The story of a Jewish schoolgirl in the Netherlands 150 years ago might not have seemed especially noteworthy had I not found this very certificate here at the National Library of Israel, folded neatly inside a Dutch-language Book of Esther printed in Amsterdam in 1867. The book might have been a school prize, as she received the certificate in the Hebrew month of Adar, during which the festival of Purim is celebrated with readings from the Book of Esther.
This old volume arrived at the National Library as part of the “Treasures of the Diaspora” initiative in the 1950s. “Treasures of the Diaspora” refers historically to books looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust, later recovered by the National Library from across Europe. However, books belonging to Dutch Jews, like Bloemist, generally were not actively looted but were discovered after the war in synagogues and homes of murdered Jewish families. These books were later collected by the National Library and are now preserved in Jerusalem.
I wondered what had become of that outstanding student. Was she alive when the Holocaust began? If so, what was her fate?
Tracing Vroutje Bloemist’s life proved relatively straightforward. Her name soon came up in Yad Vashem’s database, though details were sparse and tragic.
From the Yad Vashem records, I learned she was born in 1873, meaning that she received her certificate at thirteen. The genealogy website MyHeritage revealed that Bloemist married Barend Pront in 1914. The couple lived in an Amsterdam building, alongside Bloomist’s sister, who was married to Barend’s brother.
During the Holocaust, Bloemist was imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen. Towards the end of the war, she was transferred to Theresienstadt and murdered. I sought to uncover more than this stark summary. What exactly happened to Bloemist, who was an elderly woman by then?
During the war, the Allies established a missing persons tracing service, later managed by the Red Cross. Only recently have its archives been opened to researchers. The service’s records, located in Bad Arolsen, western Germany, contain tens of millions of documents detailing the fate of countless Nazi victims, many of them Jewish. Bloemist is listed among them. In Amsterdam, she worked as a milk distributor for the Jewish community—an essential occupation, delaying her deportation to Westerbork until September 29, 1943.
After four months in Westerbork, she was moved to Bergen-Belsen, remaining there for fourteen months. Originally a prisoner-of-war camp, Bergen-Belsen also held Jewish hostages from neutral or Allied nations as bargaining chips. Thousands of Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank and Vroutje Bloemist, ended up there.
Yet this was not the end of Bloemist’s tragic story. Her name also appears on the grim list of those who perished aboard the Nazis’ “Lost Train.”
“Over one hundred victims were buried along the train tracks…” – The memorial commemorating victims of the “Lost Train” (From the archives of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum)
By April 1945, British forces were closing in on Bergen-Belsen. Josef Kramer, the camp’s commandant, decided to evacuate the surviving prisoners who were still able to travel, sending them by train to Theresienstadt. Three trains carrying approximately 7,000 Jews, many of whom were from the Netherlands, departed southeast. The first train, leaving on April 6, was liberated along the way by American troops. The second train, departing the following day, managed to make its way to Theresienstadt.
On April 9, Vroutje Bloemist and roughly 2,500 fellow prisoners marched to the nearby town of Bergen and boarded the third train the next day. This final transport moved very slowly, often standing idle for hours or even days. Occasionally, prisoners were permitted to leave the train briefly to search for food.
They traded their few remaining belongings for bread in nearby villages, or scavenged wild vegetables in the forests beside the tracks. Every day, numerous prisoners died from typhus. Each time the train halted, graves were hastily dug alongside the rails. On April 17, the train entered the ruins of Berlin, taking two entire days to pass through the devastated city from west to east.
The original objective—to reach Theresienstadt—soon became impossible. American forces were approaching from the west, Soviet troops from the east, and the train and tracks were bombarded nightly. The “Lost Train” wandered aimlessly, first moving south, then west, depending on the conditions of the tracks and remaining bridges across German rivers. Eventually, realizing the war was effectively over, the German guards fled, leaving the train abandoned roughly two kilometers from the village of Tröbitz. Russian soldiers soon arrived, opening the doors of the train cars. For the surviving Jews aboard, the war had ended.
The exhausted passengers disembarked and made their way to the abandoned village, temporarily settling there and subsisting on leftover food they found. Approximately 200 had died of starvation and illness during the journey and were buried in mass graves. Another 300 perished in the days immediately following liberation. Vroutje Bloemist, already 72 years old, did not survive.
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Another document found in the archives at Bad Arolsen—originally from the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum—provided further insight into Bloemist’s final days. It was written by Josef (“Jupp”) Weiss.
Josef Weiss was born in Germany in 1893. After the Nazis rose to power, he fled with his family to the Netherlands, where they were deported in 1942 to Westerbork. There, Weiss and his wife assisted younger inmates and tried to provide supplies for Jews deported to extermination camps in Poland. In 1944, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where after several months he was appointed to the position of “Elder of the Jews.”
In this capacity, Weiss maintained detailed records of prisoners, documenting births, deaths, and deportations. Weiss and his wife were also placed aboard the “Lost Train.” During the journey, Weiss continued keeping meticulous records, noting those who died along the way and recording the locations where their bodies were buried. Weiss survived the journey, but his wife died of typhus shortly after liberation. He later immigrated to Israel.
In his notes, Weiss mentions Bloemist. He recorded that prisoners who died on April 20 and 21 were buried:
“On the railway segment between Finsterwalde and Falkenberg, at kilometer 101.6, about ten meters south of the tracks, within the forest.”
Among the sixteen names listed at this location (with one additional name crossed out) was Vroutje Bloemist-Pront. However, a second entry by Weiss offers slightly different information, listing Bloemist as one of those who died on April 23—likely just before the train’s final stop. According to this record, she was buried alongside 27 others: “On the way to the village of Wildegrube, just before a sharp left turn, on the left side of the slope, approximately 20 meters from the railway tracks at kilometer 106.7.”
The two documents prepared by Josef Weiss
The kilometer measurements cited by Weiss refer to specific points along the former railway connecting Halle and Cottbus.
In a book published in 1999, Erika Arlt, a resident of Tröbitz, described how the train passed through her village, reaching the town of Beutersitz, where it stopped at the railway station. Unable to proceed further, the train reversed and headed back eastward. Its temporary destination had likely been the nearby town of Falkenberg—an important railway junction—but it had been heavily bombed by Allied forces just days earlier, making it inaccessible. Additionally, the small bridge over the Schwarze Elster River near Beutersitz had been damaged. According to Arlt, sixteen passengers from the train—likely those from Weiss’s first list—were buried near this site. The train then traveled about three kilometers back in the opposite direction before finally stopping two kilometers from Tröbitz, where the 28 victims from Weiss’s second list were buried. Memorials were eventually erected at both burial locations.
A Star of David marks the two possible burial sites along the railway route
As far as is known, Vroutje Bloemist had no children, and her immediate family perished during the Holocaust. Beyond an uncertain mass grave hidden within the forests of eastern Germany, all that remains of Vroutje Bloemist-Pront today are an old Book of Esther and a certificate honoring her academic excellence, both preserved at the National Library of Israel.
Her Holocaust: The First Female Survivor to Write Her Memoirs
One of the earliest firsthand accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust was written in 1944 by a 21-year-old Jewish woman. Revolutionary in many ways, it would remain her only book. She never wrote again, living out her life quietly and modestly. Who was Renia Kukielka?
Cover of Renia’s book published in 1945 in Hebrew, and a photograph of Renia Kukielka (later Hershkowitz). The book was later translated to English as "Escape From the Pit".
Had you met Renia Hershkowitz at the reception desk of the health clinic in Haifa, where she worked for many years as a medical secretary, you likely wouldn’t have guessed that this warm and pleasant woman—a happily married mother of two—was once a daring wartime courier as well as a pioneering writer.
She wasn’t a professional author, and the only book she ever wrote was completed at age 21. But the slender volume she produced was revolutionary in many ways. Holding the 80-year-old book in your hands—small, yellowed, and crumbling—its fragile appearance gives no clue to how groundbreaking it was at the time of its publication.
Bendudim Uvamachteret(literally – “in wandering and in hiding” – later translated as Escape From the Pit) by “Renia”, preserved at the National Library of Israel.
The book’s cover features only the author’s first name: “Renia”—as if that alone said everything, needing no further elaboration. Renia was Renia Kukielka (later Hershkowitz), a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust under extraordinary circumstances. She managed to escape Poland in December 1943 and arrived in the Land of Israel in March 1944, at just 20 years old.
Renia was born in 1924 to the Kukielka family, a deeply religious and Zionist household in the town of Jędrzejów, near Kielce, Poland. One of seven siblings, her parents supported the family by running a small notions shop. She attended two schools: a Polish school in the mornings, where she learned the language that would later serve her well, and the “Beit Yaakov” Jewish girls’ school in the afternoons. She was just 15 years old when World War II began.
Renia and her family endured life in the local ghetto under horrific conditions until mid-1942. At that point, she disguised herself as a Christian and worked for a Polish family. Following her sister Sarah, she later moved to Będzin and joined the underground “Dror” youth movement, where Sarah was already a member. Renia became a courier, delivering messages and documents between various resistance cells across Poland. She was eventually caught and imprisoned by the Gestapo, where she suffered brutal torture—but ultimately managed to escape. Along with several fellow youth movement members, she made her way through Hungary and Turkey to the Land of Israel, then still under British rule. As far as we know, she was the first woman in Mandatory Palestine to publish a memoir of Holocaust survival. The book she wrote, recounting her experiences, was published in 1945.
Beyond her harrowing personal journey—first as a young girl with her family, later on her own, and eventually in the resistance—Renia’s memoir also highlights the bravery, leadership, and resilience of many other women around her.
“Despite everything, we were still alive, even if we walked about like shadows, with our dearest ones taken from us. Nothing was left for us but to continue to struggle against fate. Who could know what it held for us in the future?
But this I did say to myself: If it were destined that I, too, should fall – I would not fall like a hunted animal.”
This modest book is, as far as we know, the earliest firsthand Holocaust account by a woman to be published in memoir form—while the Nazis were still laying waste to Europe. Her story of survival, both alone and as part of the underground, defies belief. It is told in the first person, in her own words, written so close to the events themselves, and untouched by later notions of how such a story “should” be told or what it “ought” to contain.
To Write and Not Forget
“The first survivors who wrote immediately after the war wrote with utter sincerity,” says historian Anat Livneh, whose doctoral research examined how Holocaust survivors shaped their memories in light of their encounter with the Land of Israel. Her study focused on Holocaust memoirs published in Israel between 1945 and 1961. “They didn’t yet know what had happened elsewhere, what had become of their extended families, and so they didn’t write about that. Nor did they weave broader historical or ideological narratives into their accounts. That’s what makes these books so unique and authentic.”
The books written during this period gave rise to a new literary category. As Livneh writes: “The early personal Holocaust memoirs are neither purely literary works nor conventional historical documentation—but they are a phenomenon in their own right, essential to understanding how survivors sought to preserve memory and raise awareness of the extraordinary experiences they had endured, and to give those experiences meaning” (p. 91 of Livneh’s doctoral thesis).
“September 12, 1942 – The night was beautiful, I remember, and lit by the moon. I lay in a field, shivering with cold and trembling at my thoughts during these last passing minutes. Why, indeed, should one toil so arduously for a life as inane, foolish, and disgusting as this? Nevertheless, one does not wish to die.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 38)
According to Livneh’s research, in the fifteen years following the end of World War II, only a handful of survivors published accounts of their traumatic experiences. During that time, approximately 70 Holocaust memoirs were published in Israel. “To grasp just how limited this phenomenon was in the early years,” she explains, “consider that by the 1990s, around 180 such books were being published every year.” Before Renia’s memoir appeared, only two autobiographical accounts by Holocaust survivors had been published—both by men, one year earlier. Six more were published the same year as Renia’s, all of them also written by men. Later, memoirs by female survivors began to appear, but these were mostly written by well-known underground leaders like Róża Robota and Zivia Lubetkin. Renia’s story, by contrast, was told from the perspective of an ordinary woman.
Newspaper announcement of the book’s release inHaaretz, April 4, 1945. From the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel.
“Her book is strikingly authentic, and she writes with humility and honesty,” says Livneh, who interviewed Renia in 2005, about a decade before her death. “She wasn’t a leader like the other women who published books at the time, and maybe that’s why it’s easier to relate to her.”
What prompted Kukielka to write? The kibbutz movement played a significant role. In her early years in Israel, she lived on Kibbutz Dafna, on the northern border. The movement encouraged Holocaust survivors—particularly those involved in resistance or youth movements—to document their experiences. Survivors were allowed time off from their regular duties to write, and they received support for publication. Although Renia hadn’t been a member of any movement at the outbreak of the war, she joined one during it. That dual perspective—knowing both the world of traditional Jewish families and communities struggling to survive, and the world of young resistance fighters—infuses her writing with rare insight.
In the First Person
Kukielka accepted her kibbutz’s invitation. She wrote her gripping account swiftly, while everything was still fresh in her mind. She wrote in Polish, a language in which she was fluent, and the book was translated by writer and translator Chaim Shalom ben Avraham (Abramzon).
The book’s first page
Her frank and powerful narrative does not spare the reader. The first chapter alone contains harrowing descriptions of the annihilation of Jewish life. And at the chapter’s end, she explains why she felt compelled to recount these horrors: it was the final wish of her beloved parents, from whom she had been separated in 1942. In their last letter to her, they wrote:
“If we are not found worthy of remaining alive, you, at any rate, keep on fighting for your lives with everything you possess, so that you be witnesses to the world; so that you may testify by what cruel means your own dearest ones, and your whole people, have been robbed of their lives. May God protect you always.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 46)
Kukielka describes how, in her struggle to survive, she left her family, assumed a Polish identity, and worked as a housemaid for a Christian family. After a short time, and much deliberation, she followed her sister to the underground “Dror” kibbutz in Będzin. This chapter of her life occupies the heart of the book. As a courier, she transported weapons, money, and intelligence. She matured quickly—perhaps against her will—revealing a strong, courageous spirit:
“The examination of documents and searching of the baggage dragged on interminably… The gendarmes were drawing closer. Bravely I untied my bundles; they dug into their contents. I engaged them in conversation hoping to divert their attention and prevent them from searching my person, as many others had been searched. I summoned all my courage and faced them confidently. They finally went on to the next passenger, suspecting nothing of the forged passports in my possession.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 83)
“Put an end to it all, my weakness counseled. But I was immediately overcome with shame at the thought. What, that I should help the designs of the Germans? Perhaps I would still have a chance to share in the revenge against them.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 85)
Her strength was revealed when she was caught by the Gestapo and thrown into a high-security prison, where she endured unimaginable torture:
“Two Gestapo men began lashing me. Blood began to flow freely from my nose and head […] I no longer felt the blows. I dropped in a dead faint.
A long time seemed to have elapsed. Then I felt water trickling down my face and running into my mouth […] A chill racked my body. A great regret that I had regained consciousness overcame me. Now I would be beaten again. But I had grown dreadfully weak and could not possibly endure much more.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 105)
Astonishingly, she managed to escape. She describes the escape as a defiant and daring act, requiring incredible strength:
“…now I had to flee. Since the guards knew I was a political offender, I would never get another chance. It was today or never […] we broke into a run […] My coat was caked with mud from climbing the hill. The decisive moment in our lives had come. We ran faster and faster, trying to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the prison yard. We were bathed in perspiration, the wind beating against our flaming faces.
I kept looking back to see whether anyone was chasing us. It seemed to me as if my father and mother were by my side, protecting me from evil.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 120-121)
After hiding with sympathetic Poles, she escaped Poland with several fellow partisans:
“We waited impatiently for the day of departure, which was constantly postponed […] The longed-for day finally arrived. […] Everyone envied me, but my heart was sad. The memory of the millions who had been exterminated, the memory of comrades who had devoted their lives to the Land of Israel and who had dreamed the same dream but had not lived to see its realization, haunted me with redoubled force on this day. Nor did I imagine how I could bring to the Land of Israel the terrible news I had.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 133, 135)
The book ends on a powerful, painful note about the survivors’ reception in the Land of Israel:
“We arrived in Haifa on the sixth of March, 1944. Our wanderings were finally at an end. But the burden of our experiences weighed heavily upon us, and the memory of those who had perished was in our minds and gave us no peace. We felt somehow smaller and weaker than the people about us, as though we had less right to live than they.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 137)
The book’s last page
Livneh, who read dozens of Holocaust memoirs for her research, highlights Kukielka’s uniqueness. As a young writer, she carried a tone of hope rarely found in older survivors’ accounts. Her transformation—rapid, astonishing—takes her from a sheltered girl in a conservative home to a fearless, independent wartime courier with a firm worldview. Her writing may be uneven, even scattered, but her emotional and intellectual growth is clear between the lines.
When her book was published, it left a strong impression. Davar wrote: “As long as we have such human material, we need not fear for the success of our endeavor!” And Hed HaMizrah added: “This time, a human voice is heard… one in whose heart the bitter, painful echo still beats—the hardships, the tortures, the suffering, and the courage endured by the destroyed exile… That echo tears at the reader’s heart, still trembling with the memory of those terrifying days of horror, when the Jews of the East were nearly wiped off the face of the earth…”
“As long as we have such human material, we need not fear for the success of our endeavor!” – Review of the book inDavar, September 14, 1945. From the Historical Jewish Press Collection, the National Library of Israel
A Love from the Old Country
Renia, who had come from an ultra-Orthodox background, chose to join a secular kibbutz in northern Israel—Kibbutz Dafna—where she sat down to write her story. Only two of her siblings also survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel, where they remained religious. Her sister Sarah, with whom she had lived in Będzin, was killed while attempting to escape Poland, as were all other members of their immediate family.
It was on the kibbutz that a piece of her past reappeared—this time as a future. “In the village where she grew up in Poland, she had a close friend who had an older brother named Akiva,” recalls her granddaughter, Merav Waldman. “He was nine years older than her.” Akiva had immigrated to the Land of Israel before the war, but like Renia, most of his family—including his younger sister, Renia’s childhood friend—were murdered. When he happened to hear that Renia had survived and was living on Kibbutz Dafna, he came to visit her. Their old connection turned into a lifelong bond. They married and moved to Haifa, where they raised two children.
Renia and Akiva at home in Haifa. Family photo.
In later years, Kukielka said her book received heartfelt responses and that it had even been distributed as a personal gift to Jewish Brigade soldiers stationed in Europe. The book was translated into English and published in New York later that same year, and a new edition was released in Canada in 2023. Her granddaughter Merav explains that the family didn’t know for years that the book had been translated: “Even Hebrew copies were hard to find. I remember once seeing one pop up in a second-hand bookshop in Jerusalem, and I rushed to get it. It had a bar mitzvah dedication written inside. But it’s a rare book today.”
Right: the 2023 Canadian edition of Escape From the Pit. Left: the 2012 edition, based on the 1947 New York edition. Both are preserved at the National Library of Israel.
Kukielka’s story would go on to inspire author Judy Batalion’s 2022 book The Light of Days, which tells the stories of brave Jewish women who took active roles in resistance movements during the Holocaust. Renia’s story opens the book, which recounts how women resisted the Nazis—with courage, creativity, solidarity, and a level of initiative that was exceptional for the time.
Kukielka worked for many years as a medical secretary. Though her book had made a lasting impression, she never returned to writing. Instead, she continued sharing her story aloud wherever she was asked—especially before groups of students, soldiers, and visitors to the Ghetto Fighters’ House museum. “She always told strangers more than she told us, her grandchildren,” Merav reflects. “When we tried to ask questions, we saw how much it hurt her—so we stopped. Of course, I regret that now.”
Renia and Akiva with three of their grandchildren: on the right is Merav Waldman, on the left are her twin siblings, Roy and Michal. Family photo.
Renia Kukielka passed away at the age of 89, in old age, peacefully and surrounded by her loving family. “She was sweet and funny,” her granddaughter says. “The Holocaust wasn’t part of our daily lives—not in the sense of sadness or depression. She had somehow put it behind her.”
“Her story reminds me of the young female army observers who were recently discharged,” says Anat Livneh in a recent conversation. “I think part of the healing process for young people, who still have most of their lives ahead of them, is the ability to give voice to their experiences—to tell their stories in a way that reflects who they are as women and what their values are, and then move forward. That’s a tremendous source of strength.”
When Abraham Lincoln Intervened on Behalf of American Jews
U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant ordered the eviction of Jews in southern areas he controlled during the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln reversed the edict of the man he later appointed the Union Army’s commander. Grant went on to become president.
Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln) - sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (MET, 2012.14a, b)
One hundred sixty years ago, on the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died in Washington, D.C., from a single bullet to the head shot by John Wilkes Booth the night before.
The assassination of America’s 16th president climaxed the four-year Civil War between the United States and 11 of its southern slaveholding states, known as the Confederate States of America. Lincoln was determined to preserve the country as a single entity, even through war. Over 600,000 soldiers on both sides are estimated to have been killed in the Civil War.
Just five days before Lincoln was shot, the war ended with the Confederacy’s surrender to the Union.
The lieutenant general who commanded the Union to victory and accepted the surrender of his counterpart, General Robert E. Lee, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, was Ulysses S. Grant. Three years later, Grant was elected U.S. president, and in 1876, a year before leaving office, he attended the dedication of a synagogue five blocks from the theater where Lincoln was murdered.
Grant had been the source of a difficult episode in Lincoln’s presidency — and it involved Jewish Americans.
Ulysses S. Grant as a Brigadier General in the Union army, 1861
That occurred in late 1862, when Grant, then holding the rank of major general, led Union forces fighting the Confederate army in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Wanting to limit black marketeering by unauthorized suppliers, especially in the cotton trade, Grant issued a military order on November 9 that prohibited such merchants from venturing into parts of the Deep South. The order singled out one group, those Grant called “the Israelites,” stating that “Jews and other unprincipled traders” were violating the Treasury Department’s wartime restrictions. A month later, Grant issued two more orders targeting Jews. On December 8, his General Order No. 2 called for cotton speculators, whom he specified as being “Jews and other Vagrants,” to leave his military district, known as the Department of the Tennessee, encompassing parts of the states of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. And on December 17, he issued General Order No. 11, which went much further: “Jews as a class” would be “required to leave” the district.
Jewish Americans sent telegrams to the White House to protest Grant’s order. Some traveled to Washington to lobby Lincoln directly. The president reportedly told them that he was opposed to an entire “class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”
In early January 1863, Lincoln cancelled the eviction orders. There’s no evidence that Lincoln knew about Grant’s decree beforehand or that he communicated with him about the matter afterward, said Jonathan Sarna, author and co-author, respectively, of the books When Grant Expelled the Jews (2012) and Lincoln and the Jews (2015).
Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, near Boston, said that he wrote the Grant book because the subject “is of great importance, and relates to the place of Jews in American society.”
As to his work on Lincoln, about whom thousands of books have been written (at least 450 of them being in NLI’s collection), Sarna said, “I am deeply interested in people who support and admire Jews when those around them do not.”
He added in an e-mail: “In Lincoln’s lifetime, Jews grew from a tiny community (perhaps 3,000) when he was born to a major community of 150,000 by the Civil War. Some might have been frightened or alienated by so many Jewish newcomers; Lincoln was not and included them.”
Grant’s order formed the backdrop for Family Secrets, a novel published in 2016 by Barry Spielman, an American immigrant to Israel who works in hi-tech.
The main character’s ancestor lived through the edict, dramatizing the inconsistency of the north’s having “had this image of [being] holier than thou, going to war to free the slaves,” while then “kicking Jews as a class out of a region that came under their control just like the best of the antisemitic edicts in history,” said Spielman, who for decades has researched the Civil War.
A round-number anniversary (160) provides a fine opportunity to ponder a historical event like Lincoln’s assassination, and an extra-round number offers an extra-fine opportunity. So it was that in July 2013 I wrote a feature story for the N.Y. Times on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the Civil War because the Union repulsed a Confederate attack in Pennsylvania.
On the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, I attended a night-time gathering on Washington’s 10th Street, N.W., which was closed to traffic for the occasion of a reenactment of the chaotic scene there in 1865. Costumed actors portrayed the roles of military and medical officials delivering updates on Lincoln’s condition to a concerned throng. Like the 500 or so others in attendance at the free event, I imagined what the mood was like a century and a half earlier on the spot where I stood, about midway between Ford’s Theater, where Booth shot Lincoln, and the brownstone house directly across the street to which the unconscious Lincoln was carried to be treated.
That’s when I noticed a famous American walking from the theater to the parking garage next door. It was Colin Powell, by then retired. He was with his wife Alma. The Powells were dressed to the nines, likely having just attended a performance in the infamous building, which remains a theater to this day.
Powell, a general, had served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush. I recalled the only previous time I’d seen Powell in person. It was at a conference of a Jewish organization. Powell spoke of having grown up in New York City with so many Jewish immigrants for neighbors that he spoke Yiddish. He mentioned doing favors for them as a Shabbos goy: a non-Jewish person performing basic tasks on Shabbat that Jews are prohibited by religious law from doing, such as turning light switches on and off.
Sir Moses Montefiore, while working to “break the fetters” of his fellow Jews around the world, took inspiration from Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves in the United States. From the February 16, 1866 edition of The Hebrew Leader, the Historical Jewish Press collection at the National Library of Israel
Powell’s long-ago predecessor as the U.S.’s top uniformed soldier, Grant, denied that he’d knowingly issued the three orders or that he held animosity toward Jews. As president, he atoned for those actions by appointing many Jews to positions in his administrations.
History’s timing is unknowable but spurs curiosity. Consider a reversal of roles: Powell, a black American, commanding Union troops and reporting to Lincoln; Grant, serving in Powell’s era of unprecedented accomplishment and integration for both black Americans and Jewish Americans.
Jews “throughout the nation” were asked to contribute to the funding of a “National Lincoln Monument”. From the October 4, 1865 edition of The Hebrew Leader, the Historical Jewish Press collection at the National Library of Israel
As to Lincoln, his legacy in reversing Grant’s edict is this, Sarna said: It “reassured [Jews] about America. Immigrants continued to arrive.”
