The New York Times' Jodi Rudoren reports on an unusual event recently held in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city: a beauty pageant exclusively featuring Holocaust survivors.
It was the first time any of the 14 finalists, who sported sensible shoes and shared their stories, had walked down a runway, Rudoren reports.
Israelis are not known to shy away from debate, but the anger sparked by this one appeared particularly poignant, given much of it came from fellow survivors. Rudoren writes:
Ze’ev Bar-Ilan of Beersheba, himself a survivor, wrote a letter to the newspaper Yediot Aharonot decrying the event as “an attempt to harness and exploit the harshest blood bath in human history for the purposes of entertainment."
Colette Avital, a former Knesset member who was elected on Thursday to head the umbrella group of 54 survivors’ organizations said in an interview, “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t even dream of it.”
The event was sponsored by Helping Hand, a nonprofit group dedicated to caring for Shoah survivors.
And here's a video slideshow of the event:
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