Giora Solar

* 1947

  • “For example, my mom experienced a great shock when we came to Czechoslovakia – there weren't borders between Czech and Slovakia yet, only a crossing – and she saw a sign of Slovakia with mountains and the double cross. She said: 'Is that returning again?' For her this sign represented times of Hlinka and all around that. Otherwise we saw a big potential, although a great poverty that arouse during communism, too. We saw those pretty hotels in Tatry, but how poor it was inside.”

  • “When I went to Bardejov because of UNESCO work for the first time, I stayed in one very nice hotel. Then they were supposed to come and pick me up, and as I was waiting, I noticed that everything outside was beautiful. They had very nice houses. After I returned home, I asked my mom: 'Why did you leave?' My mom told me: 'We have gone through the war and Auschwitz, we came back home and the communists took over. We said to each other: What if all is going to repeat just under a different name? That's why we'd decided to leave.' And I asked her why they left to Israel. In September 1949, Israel existed for only about one year, that's why I wondered why they didn't go to America, Canada, Australia, where our family was. She told me that she considered Israel to be the only place in the whole world, where they wouldn't hear: 'You don't belong here.'”

  • “It was something beautiful that suddenly it opened, that it was possible. We thought that everything could change. Who knew what would happen twenty years after. For example, my parents immediately travelled to Czechoslovakia back then. Dubček was an amazing name for us. We were full of hopes, we read about that. We didn't have a television back then. The TV appeared in Israel I guess in 1973 or 74. We didn't see it, but we read about everything what was happening in Prague, or even when the Russians came.”

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    Izrael, Tel Aviv, 20.11.2017

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It wasn‘t a history for us

Portrait
Portrait
zdroj: Pamět Národa - Archiv

Giora Solar was born on April 9, 1947 in Prešov. During the Second World War, his mother Edita and father Albert were persecuted because of their Jewish origin. Both of them managed to survive the horrors of Auschwitz, they met and got married after the war. In 1949 they decided to emigrate from Czechoslovakia to Israel. In 1965 Giora graduated from grammar school and in 1968 he completed the compulsory military service, during which he as a radio operator took part in a six-day war against the Arabian countries. He finished studies of architecture and antiquity restoring in Italy and yet during his study he got employed in Haifa archaeological research. In 1980s he became a significant Israeli renovator participating in beginning of institutionalizing of archaeological preservation in Israel. Later he worked for UNESCO and in a great way he also endeavored that the city of Bardejov was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000.