The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

Later, my sister, my husband and my cousin passed away. So from December I start to light, and I leave the candle on until after the Holocaust Day and the Independence Day, in memory of the IDF and the victims. I and my survivors still talk only little about what we have been through. On the weekends I usually stay with Samuel and Ella, while the days of the week go by too fast. I just finished knitting a new curtain and I only have to work and iron it for the hanging and I am now knitting a bag for my wheelchair. My routine day goes between solving a crossword puzzle, reading newspapers in Hebrew and Serbian, a little browsing the internet, some card games on the computer, some puzzles, and at eleven PM I go to bed and say, I could stay as well until twelve or one o’clock. With all these occupations, I read a little less, and I supplement at Samuel's home on weekends. I still live in the same apartment in Jaffa. In 2005, my apartment served as the backdrop for a short film called "Broken Doll" starring actress Aliza Rosen. The photography team approached me through a social worker who knew me. They were looking for a house with old furniture and a garret, (storage space above the ceiling) , since in one of the scenes they were looking for something and found an old doll in it. The mother says, "Oh, my husband gave it to me" and her daughter says "This garbage?" It turns out that the father rape her, and she is angry with the mother and refuses to talk to her because she is crying for her husband. I heard and said, why not? And so, during filming days, I sat in the small room with a book while the staff darkened the home and took pictures, and when they invited lunch, they would call me in and I would have dinner with them. All in all, they were here five or six times, and it was definitely an experience. We were later invited to the film premiere, and to this day I keep the thanking letter I received from them. When I was 91, following the deterioration in my mobility situation, I did an overhaul of the apartment: I moved the living room to the bedroom and the bedroom to the living room, and since then I have light and space as I like. Even in the winter, I love that everything is open and well-lit. In addition, once the grandchildren and great-grandchildren came, we all had to huddle around the computer desk, while now there is room for everyone. I make sure the apartment and the balcony are saturated with flowers and plants and always say, if anyone wants to bring me a gift, there are flower pots at NIS 12, with an African violet, or with Florist's Kalanchoe. Jenny loves plants too, and we both cultivate them with a lot of love. Recently I find myself thinking a lot about my mother. I remember all kinds of things: how she made pajamas for us, made jams, baked cakes, she did everything - sew, read, tell, talk, or give advice too. She was Mother in the full sense of the word. I remembered how, when the war broke out, the adults considered sending us the children to Palestine and I said, "Mama, I don't want to". I didn't want to separate. It might have saved me the difficult experiences I had in the camp, but thanks to my refusal to say goodbye, I still had a few years with my mother. I remember the foods she used to make and that I could not learn from her, and sometimes I try to make them myself, but it doesn't taste the same.

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