One of Israel’s first citizens has a message for Netanyahu and Hamas

When Hamas militants launched a surprise dawn attack on Israel just over a week ago, killing 1200 Jewish citizens, Holocaust survivor Sarah Saaroni was transported straight back to the horrors of World War II.

“I felt it all so deep inside of me. Israel is a part of me,” the 97-year-old says.

Sarah Saaroni lived through the Holocaust Credit: Joe Armao

Saaroni, who became one of Israel’s first citizens when it declared independence in 1948, is calling for a resolution to the conflict to avoid the loss of more innocent lives.

“Who is really the victim in all of this?” the great-grandmother says. “It is the innocent people on both sides. The children, the families. It is innocent people who always lose the most.”

Saaroni, who now lives in Melbourne but still has family in Israel, has been watching gut-wrenching scenes of the war from afar, filled with dread and heartache about the rising death toll.

As Israel prepares to invade the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, thousands of whom are fleeing to the south of the city, Saaroni is calling for an end to the bloodshed and for humanity and peace to prevail.

‘In a war, nobody wins.’

Holcaust survivor Sarah Saaroni

“You cannot live in a world with hatred,” she says. “You will destroy yourself and those around you. In a war, nobody wins. Everyone has the right to live where they want to live, and how they would like to live, in peace.”

A montage of photos Sarah donated to the Jewish Holocaust Centre of her family before the war. Rear from left: Brother Gidal, mother Estera, Sarah and father Aron. Front: Brother Julek, sister Zosia, Zosia's son Misza and husband Ziamka Buszmac. Credit: Jewish Holocaust Centre Archival Collection

If she could speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas, Saaroni says she would tell them: “Live and let live. We all belong to one, big human race. We must find a way to live alongside each other.”

The UN and aid groups have warned that the mass migration within Gaza, Israel’s siege and a potential broader conflict in the Middle East will cause untold human suffering. For Saaroni, it feels like history repeating itself.

“These are all people,” Saaroni says. “The world is so beautiful; if only we could all live in peace. You don’t have to love everyone – you can like your neighbour, or even dislike him, but don’t hate another human being.”

For more than 40 years after World War II ended, Saaroni could not bring herself to discuss the horrors she experienced.

For years, she had nightmares. In her dreams, she was always running, hiding, trying to escape.

“I was always caught in the end,” she says. “I used to wake up with my heart pounding and wet from perspiration. It was as if I was really physically running."

She grew up in Poland, and as a teenager, her family was forced to move into a Jewish ghetto riddled with disease, where there was no running water and not enough food or medicine. People were captured and taken away to concentration camps and there was death all around her.

When Saaroni was 16, her parents sent her to Germany with false papers that said she was a Polish Christian. It was the last time she saw them.

In Germany, the Nazis arrested Saaroni after it was discovered she was Jewish. She was interrogated, tortured and condemned to the Majdanek concentration camp. She narrowly escaped this fate by fleeing a train full of prisoners during a transfer in Leipzig.

After the war, Poland no longer felt like home. Saaroni joined a group of more than 1000 young Jewish refugees, pretending to be Greek, who crossed war-torn Europe’s borders and headed for Palestine.

Photos of Sarah Saaroni from her photo album, donated to the Jewish Holocaust Centre.Credit: Jewish Holocaust Centre Archival Collection 

On the way, they were captured by the British at an Italian port and sat on the boat for six weeks. They staged a hunger strike, which made headlines across the world. In May 1946, they arrived in Palestine, legally. Saaroni was reunited with her beloved brother Gidal.

In Palestine, Saaroni joined the underground defence movement Haganah, formed as part of the Jewish resistance against the British presence in Israel, and took part in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.

However, she says living in Israel felt like living on top of a volcano that is erupting all the time.

Saaroni migrated to Melbourne. In the 1980s she taught herself to sculpt, and her pieces, inspired by the war, are exhibited in synagogues and museums around the world.

It was only after writing her memoir, Life Goes on Regardless, about her experiences growing up in the war, that she finally felt free.

“I remember I looked out the window and suddenly I saw colour,” she says. “Before, everything was grey. I could see the fruit on the trees, the butterflies, the birds singing. I felt so light. I was sure that if I went outside and flapped my arms I would have been able to fly.”

In her home in Kew, which is full of her handmade sculptures, Saaroni finds a photo, kept in a treasured folder of pictures of her family, artwork and newspaper clippings.

The image shows a bronze statue of a tree that she sculpted, which is displayed at a holocaust museum. She calls it the Tree of Life.

Sarah Saaroni lived through the Holocaust and was captured by the Germans.Credit: Joe Armao

The tree sits on top of a mass grave. The tips of the branches are carved like human hands rising from the roots below and outstretched towards the sky.

“They are reaching for new life,” she says.

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