Zagare: Litvaks and Lithuanians Confront the Past - Paperback
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Her commitment to the cause of the refuseniks and her involvement with them once the gates of emigration opened and they arrived in Israel eventually led to an exploration of her own family history. Together with her cousin, she embarked on a roots journey to Zagare, a little shtetl on the border between Lithuania and Latvia. Here she met Isaac Mendelssohn, the sole survivor of the town's Jewish community. Unexpectedly, a meaningful and fruitful relationship developed between Isaac, a group of descendants and a group of local inhabitants, a relationship always shadowed by memories of the slaughter in 1941 of Zagare's Jewish population by Nazis and local Lithuanian collaborators. The culmination came in 2012 with a joint project of the two groups to erect and dedicate a memorial plaque in the center of the town. As part of her desire to accept Zagare, Sara Manobla followed up on the story of an elderly Jewish woman and her granddaughter who had been rescued and hidden by a Zagarean family during the Nazi occupation. She tracked down the granddaughter, now living in Jerusalem, and her testimony resulted in the Zagarean family being posthumously honored by Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority as Righteous among the Nations. The book ends on a note of hope and reconciliation, as this account of a search for roots leads to a coming to terms with today s highly charged relationship between Lithuanians and Jews.
Sara Manobla was born Ursula Sara Towb in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Her grandfather David Towb immigrated to Britain from Zagare in 1890. After receiving her BA (Honors) from Durham University, she joined the BBC s World Service as producer of foreign language radio broadcasts. After her first visit to Israel in 1960, she made aliyah and settled in Jerusalem. She married Eli Manobla, a Jerusalem-born architect and artist, and they had three children. She continued her broadcasting career as head of Israel Radio s English Department. With her family, she spent two years in Vancouver, Canada, as director of the Canadian Zionist Federation s Pacific Region office. She was editor of the magazine Panim, a monthly survey of the arts scene in Israel, published by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She contributes travel articles to the Jerusalem Post and does freelance translating and editing. Her chief passions in life apart from her family are travel and music. She is a composer as well as a proficient musician, playing piano, cello and flute in amateur chamber groups and orchestras.
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