Tel Aviv — Usually it’s been some act of violence — war, intifada — that has brought me to Israel as a reporter. This time, the purpose is cultural, and even singular — namely, to attend the opening night of a play. The life story of a long-standing friend by the name of Agi Yoeli is the subject of this play. Well known in artistic circles, she is a sculptress and ceramicist whose work has a fantasy and humor all its own. But there is a lot more to it than that.
Born in Berehovo, a small town in the Slovak part of Hungary, Agi grew up speaking Hungarian and Czech, in the course of events adding German, French, English, and Hebrew. She played the piano well enough to plan on a musical career. During World War II she married Laczy Leichtman from Budapest. He was soon conscripted into a labor battalion. After the Nazi occupation of Hungary in March 1944, she, her sister Ilu, and her parents were deported to Auschwitz. On arrival, the parents were murdered. Agi thinks she may have caught one last glimpse of Laczy, deported separately to the camp. She was expecting a child, and when the baby was born an SS woman killed it in front of her. A slave laborer, she was put to work making fuses for rockets. After liberation, she was waiting for a train when she saw, passing herself off in the crowd, the SS woman who had murdered her baby. Instead of having her arrested, Agi went into the stationmaster’s garden and either picked or pulled up flowers there.
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