We arrive in Jerusalem to find all our immediate needs — lodging, scheduling, advice — all anticipated by the remarkable Ellen Haber.
We call Ellen “The Fixer.” If we have a need or a problem, we just call Ellen and in no time at all the problem will be resolved. We are incredibly fortunate to have such a kind, intelligent, and resourceful human as one of our allies!
She is a long-time friend of this project, a frequent correspondent with Matthew Rozell, and (the icing on the cake) she and her cousin Naomi Vilko (who we will meet soon) are relatives of Ervin Abadi, the Hungarian artist who had been imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen and liberated from the stalled train near Magdeburg.
(Read about our visit with the other Abadi relatives here.)
It is from Abadi’s artwork that we have some of our most evocative — and clarifying — visual images from the entire incident. Abadi drew constantly, even at Bergen-Belsen. Then during his six weeks of recovery at Hillersleben, he was able to draw and paint at leisure, and thus sharing his memories with the rest of the world.
This is one of his best-known paintings. He remembers one Nazi soldier hearing cries from the prisoners for “Wasser!” — a drink of a water from his canteen — and his response was to deliberately pour out his entire canteen onto the ground and laugh at the agonized reaction.
These are the same ‘tough guys’ who will strip off their uniforms and run into the woods when the Allied tanks arrive.
Ellen brought us all into her home. It didn’t take long to get there because she had cleverly put us in a hotel within walking distance of her house. (See how she looks after us?)
She hadn’t even been sure she’d catch up with us, and yet there was food and wine laid out for us when we got to her house. Apparently she’s just always ready.
There we met her husband Irving, who is a physicist (I talked with him a little bit about nuclear fusion, about which I know a little and want to know more, but the conversation quickly went over my head), and her son Avi (for Avraham) who is a rabbi. This is a family of smart people, to say the least; for years, Ellen worked with big-league companies, identifying their needs for custom software applications and then working with them to develop the tools they needed. I would imagine that in most cases, the companies didn’t know they needed the apps until Ellen told them and then were amazed at how well things worked afterward!
Ellen helped us with some missing details about our itinerary for the week and answered some questions we had about the upcoming holidays. She told us we should reach out to her if we needed anything, and we knew she meant it. She’s the Fixer.
One of the events of the week I will treasure forever was when Ellen told us that our project is a Ḳiddush ha-Shem (קידוש השם) — a “sanctification of the name of God.” We are suitably awed and will carry the name forward with pride!