Holocaust Survivors Find Recognition in Israeli Beauty Pageant
Anna Grinis was just two days old when World War II broke out, escaping Nazi-occupied Russian territory with her mother not long thereafter. But on Sunday, in what was certainly a surreal moment, the 75-year-old Moscow-born Israeli found herself being crowned, to the strains of “Pretty Woman,” as Israel’s “Miss Holocaust Survivor.” The fifth annual pageant, held in Haifa, honors those who survived the WWII genocide.
“I have no words to describe how excited I am,” Grinis reportedly declared after winning the crown.
Fourteen finalists, selected out of the nearly 300 Israeli Holocaust survivors who threw their hats in the ring, competing on Sunday.
“Tonight we’re letting some women who survived the Holocaust have something that was robbed from them in their youth …we want to give something back to them, [and] tonight it’s for them to enjoy,” noted David Parsons of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, a sponsor and supporter of event organizer Yad Ezer La’haver (Helping Hand to a Friend).
Contestants included German-born Malka Gorka, 73, whose entire extended family was killed by Nazis and who emigrated with her parents to Israel in 1948, and Hungarian-born Carmela Ben Yehuda, 89, who survived Auschwitz before arriving in British-ruled Palestine in 1945.
After winning, Grinis said, “During my whole childhood and a significant part of my life, when my mother was alive, she always used to tell me about this period that we ran way from Moscow where I was born and there was nothing to eat there. We barely survived.”
Sunday’s pageant drew a crowd of about 1,000, including Knesset members and Sara Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who crowned Grinis. “You all have endured the darkest period in history, and despite everything, you chose life. You chose to raise families, to work, to create and to continue living,” Netanyahu said. “You won.”
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