MIRA LICHTMAN BARAK

HOHLOCAUST PROJECT KATZENELSON HIGH SCHOOL ISRAEL.

MAIL: YUVAL24598@WALLA.COM, LIOR11982@GMAIL.COM                                                    RELATIONET2014@GMAIL.COM

First Name: Mira

Last Nmae: Lichtman Barak

Foster Perents: Dvora and Yoel Lichtman

Year of birth: 1943-1945

City of birth: unknown

Country: unknown

Marseille

             

        The  history of Marseille:
The city was founded in 600 b.c. by the Ancient Greeks. Back then, the city was called Masellia. The city was settled by colonists from the city Phocea, in ancient Greece. During that age, the city has become a center of producing tin and bronze. The great scientist and explorer Pytheas, was born in the city (the journey to the Northern Atlantic ocean).

            The city was not affected by the decline of the Roman Empire until the 8th century.

            In the 5th century, the city was captured by the Visigots, and it had turned to a Christian center.

          

            The golden age of the city was in the 6th century. Bach then, the city became to a commercial center of the Mediteraine.

Marseille-Part of the French Kingdom

Marseille became part of the French kingdom during the 14th century.  Yet, the city was known by its rebelliousness against the rule.

During the French revolution, the city and its residences were big supporters of the revolution, and many volunteers joined the rebel forces in Paris. The national anthem of France, " La Marseiilaise", is called after those volunteers.

Marseille- Between Two World Wars  

During the first period of the 20th century, the city began to establish its status as one of the biggest ports of Europe. Marseille’s port was used both in World War I and World War II.

During World War II, the city was bombed by the Italians and The Germans. Until 1944, the city was situated in south of France, was part of the “free zone”, was also called “France of Vichy”. The area was ruled by Henry Phillip Petain, and the new regime was known by its anti-Semitism. The new regime, which technically was dominated by the Nazis, sent over 40 thousand of Jews to extermination camp in Eastern Europe, and over 12 thousand of Jews to the concentration camp “Drancy”, near Paris.

                                                                               

In 1944, after the “Invasion to Normandy”, Petain and his government escaped to Germany, and the “Free zone”, including Marseille, was captured by the Nazis. The Nazis kept sending Jews to extermination and concentration camp until the Allied Forces liberated France in August 1944.

Marseille-After World War II until today

After World War II, many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were brought to Israel by ships which sailed from Marseille’s sea port. The Organization of Alia B was in charge for those operations. The most famous one is the ”Youth Alia”, a huge operation of bringing kids who survived the holocaust to Israel.

Due to its enormous sea port, during the 50s and the 60s, many immigrants began settling in the city. Most of the immigrants were from “The Maghreb”, northern Africa, and especially from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Some of the immigrants were Jews, especially from Algeria, from the Jewish communities of Konstantin, Oran and Algiers. Today, the Jewish community in France is the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world. The Jewish community of Marseille is the second largest in France. Today, those immigrants shape the figure of the second largest city in France, Marseille.

           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille

          http://www.marseille.fr/sitevdm/versions-etrangeres/english--discover-

          http://www.lonelyplanet.com/france/provence/marseille/history

          http://www.destination360.com/europe/france/marseille/history

this map shows Mira's journey to Israel

Mira's Story

I arrived by a ship named "Alexandria", which sailed to Israel from Marseille's port in 1948.

I don't know anything about my parents or about where I was born and lived.

In my immigration papers, it says that I was born between the years 1944-1945, and it was verified by medical opinion.

According to these papers, I was born in Poland, but nothing is sure and I don't really know who I am.

Some years ago ,I have been interviewed For a national newspaper about my story.

·         “I always feel peaceful about myself, although I have had a tough life”

·         Mira, how do you feel about your name, which you don’t really know if it is your birth name?

Answer: “My name, I feel at peace about it. It is who I was, who I am and it is my name forever.”

After I had arrived to Israel, I was sent to a boarding school named "Onim" in Kfar Saba, which was a small town in the middle of Israel.

I had been there for 4 months.

 Afterward, two people named Dvora and Yoel Lichtman had taken me away from the boarding school, and adopted me. I moved to Sauld Street in the town of R'anana. My adoption process was long and took three years with a lot of difficulties.

“I have no brothers or sisters. It was horrible and sad to grow up alone. My parents always worked so that they didn’t have a lot of time for me-I have always wanted a brother or a sister.

I wore this overall when I made my "Aliya" in 1948

·         There isn’t even one day that I don’t think about who I am and where I was born. Sometimes I look in the mirror, and think to myself about my real identity, while I’m crying and looking at the pants I wore when I have arrived to Israel with.

Throughout my life, I have met many people who claimed that they were my parents. The first one appeared in my early childhood:

1.      Right after I was adopted, when a woman appeared in my house several times to the request of one Canadian man, who thought that I was his lost daughter. After a while, my parents decided to put an end to this episode, and they applied to the court.

2.      The big trail- the Lang family and my identity.    

It started when I was twelve years old, a man knocked at the door, stormed into my house and claimed that I was his daughter. The man was the father of Lang family- and that is his story:
The Lang's arrived to Israel in 1957. During the war, the Lang's had four girls. One of them starved to death. The father was recruited to the Red Army, and the mother had to stay in with the three girls (the youngest only a year and a half old and they thought it was me).  

Because the father was enlisted, the mother wasn’t able to treat the girls and she had to give them to an orphanage. The little baby girl wasn’t accepted to the orphanage, so they unwillingly gave her in to another orphanage.

When the war was over, she claimed her name was Tzila Lang. The orphanage keepers informed them that the children were sent to Israel.

When the parents came to Israel, they were told that there was a girl in Ra'anana that matched the description of their daughter. They went to the court with the claim that I was their daughter, and demanded to take me back to their custody. The trial was very intense; at some point my adopting father broke a chair. The case was discontinued for a couple of weeks. When the trial continued, the judge couldn’t reach a verdict. The adopting parents claimed that their daughter had a spot on her stomach in a shape of a strawberry. And I didn’t have one.

One day, my father decided to take me to the bureau in the old court of Tel Aviv. I felt small and vulnerable near the judge's large desk. The judge asked me where I wanted to spend my life: whether with my adopting parents or with those who claim to be my biological parents.

 I decided to live with my adopting parents- and I am glad that I did.

·         “I will do everything to find something, someone, a family.”

My parents told me I was adopted

Due to the trial, my parents were forced to inform me that I was adopted.

I remember it as if it was yesterday: "I was escorted to my room and told a story about a

couple who wanted a child, 

yet couldn’t have a baby. There were children in an institute called "Onim" where they saw a young girl that wanted to hit another boy with a stick. Then the couple pointed at the girl and said "we would like that girl to be our daughter". My mother pointed at me and said to me: "You are that girl".

those are the papers of my aduption

I said to myself: " As long as my parents are alive I won't look for my biological parents

My parents suffered greatly from that trial, everyone knew about that trial.

My foster mother was always quite ill, and after the trial her condition only worsened.

this is me, in the middle, when i was five. at my sides, standing my two foster parents

After the judge ruled that I belonged to my foster parents, the "Lang father" wasn’t willing to let me go. He was stalking me after school behind the large Ficus tree, grabbed me by my hand and asked why I wasn't with them? I was their daughter after all". I was very frightened of him. It was a very rough and traumatic chapter in my life. I had many dreams that my biological father captured me.

Finally, my parents got a restraining order against him, yet it didn’t make much of a difference.
After few months the harassments were stopped. "In my point of view he was despaired, so he decided to stop".

In retrospective, the decision to stay with my foster family was the right decision.

Me as a teenager

The search:

I was at the age of 12 when I was told that story.
After my parents died, I started to look for my biological family. I looked everywhere in the country. I went with my husband to "Lohmei Hagetaot" (the Ghetto Warriors) to look for my identity. We did it by looking in hundreds of photographs with a magnifying glass, searching my face. It wasn't a success.
Afterwards, we went to "Yad Vashem" museum looking for papers about my identity. Again ,without any success.
We even flew to Poland and searched there in different places for some clues about me, but it was in vein, because I don't know where I was born and what name my parents had given me.
"Nothing succeeded help me find my family. Nowadays, I have stopped searching".
"Because of the years that have passed, it is hard to believe that I'll succeed in

·         “It is everything because I don’t have a birth name. If only I knew my birth name, a fact about myself something to hold to. The years pass and the chances to find anyone become more and more impossible. There is no one to get information from, to know and to find out”.

Finding my family by DNA. In my opinion, it is a lost case. There is no one to get information from."

"I found these files while i was searcing after my true identity."

 these files are Mira's edoption decuments-

“Lost Identity”
In 1997, I took part in a TV show named "Lost Identity".

This show was about some Holocaust survivors who just like me, lost their relatives in the war. Sadly, my case was the worst in this show, because unlike the others, I didn't know anything about my identity, my birth land, my family name and even my first name. Until now, I don't know who gave it to me, who decided that it will be my name. The purpose of the TV show was to   help us find out about our lost relatives. They did it by publishing our names and photos in Israel and Poland. The pictures, which were published, describe us through three periods, our childhood, our adolescence and our adulthood.
The show tried to help me find my lost relatives. They thought that it was important for me to do a DNA test with the Lang family, to make sure that they weren't my biological family. They made a connection with the Langs' daughter and we did a DNA test. After a period of waiting, the results came and I knew for sure that they were not my real family. It was a big relief for me that the decision I made many years ago was right.

Part of the interview that held with Mira

·         

 “I can’t see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’-I’m skeptical”.

  

·         It is hard to believe that I’ll find someone, something about my identity. If I ever find anything, it will be by a DNA test.

Biography and Family

Although I have had a tough childhood, stress and anxiety I want to bless this couple, my adopting parents, because of them I have become the person that I’m now. They were a couple who suffered during their lives, but they always loved me very much and helped me-“a lot of the warmth and love I got from them, and that’s what matters.

I got married when I was eighteen years old, in 1962, to my husband-Yigal.

I served in the IDF for a half a year, so I’ve tasted the experience of the army.

After I finished my service (which got short because I was pregnant with my first chilled ) ,  my husband and I had a small chicken farm, which developed with the years, until it was one of the biggest farms in Ra’anana.

Afterwards, I got pregnant, and therefore I had to quit my recent job, working at a chemicals factory.

After I had my first son, I decided that I want to spend my whole life with my child, as a correction to

my childhood. I didn’t want my kids to grow up alone; therefore, I decided to stay at home with them. After 7 years my youngest son, Oded, was born. Nowadays, my oldest son lives in Canada.

At the time my kids grew up, I "adopted" a kid names Shahar, who came from a destroyed family. Each weekend and holiday, we hosted this kid at our home. It was very symbolic for me, as an adopted kid. All the details about this kid, his last name the identity of his parents were unknown.

I have decided to do this procedure again in an older age, this time with a lonely soldier. My daughter walks in my path as well, so she also decides to adopt a kid, just like me, when she got older.

one of my hobbies is painting this painting is one of my favourits

I don’t complain about my life, I’m so lucky that I have fallen into the hands of such a good people, that I have found my husband that always helped me that I have a family-children and grandchildren. I’m lucky and I shouldn’t complain about anything, though the hurtful sensation of who I am and where I was born always comes up, and other people can’t understand.

·      
   “Although there were some tough periods in my life, I moved on.”

” This family is my victory -what does a person need more”.