It was the evening of June 25, 2025. The ceasefire had been declared that morning, but the country still seemed to be holding its breath. A few tense alerts had sounded through the neighborhood, reminders that peace could shatter at any moment.
Jerusalem was enveloped in golden light when Rita opened the door with a vibrant smile, her apartment immaculate behind her.
Judy Gottesman was already seated at the head of the table, hands folded neatly, a plate of oatmeal cookies with craisins resting nearby. Her short blonde wig was styled in soft layers, framing a warm, open face.
“Have a cookie,” she said. “Rita and I baked them this morning.”
We spoke about the recipe, which shop in the shuk sold these particular craisins, and how to find the no-sugar kind. Yes, women. What else could we have talked about?
At 87, Judy looked surprisingly young, with an energy that catches you off guard. I never would have guessed her age. There was a gentleness in her smile and something composed in the way she held herself: shoulders back, voice calm, eyes alive. She looked like a woman who had seen much of the world and chose to meet it with dignity.
Rita had arranged this meeting between me and her cousin, but after brief introductions and offers of tea, she tactfully withdrew to the living room.
Because a war had closed the airports and missiles were streaking across the skies, I found myself at the table sharing tea with a woman who had already lived through so much.
There’s a kind of expression that comes from silence. The kind where you don’t speak at all, only listen, so someone else can remember out loud and her voice can find its way into words.
I waited a moment before speaking. “How did you feel about this war?” I asked.
Her eyes dropped to the tablecloth, her hands smoothing the fabric, and she was quiet for a moment.
“You know,” she began slowly, “when you’ve lived through what I’ve lived through, every war feels familiar and completely different at the same time.”
She paused, collecting her thoughts. “I arrived to visit my grandson,” she said. “I had no idea there was a war until Friday morning. The sirens were so loud. When we looked up at the sky, we thought the missiles were coming right here. It looked like they were right above us.”
“Did it remind you of the war when you were little?”
She fell silent again. Then she said, “Being a survivor is having memories I wish I didn’t have. I was so little. Five years old. The sounds. The fear. Some things never leave you. Different wars, you know. But I was fortunate. I’m here. It’s been 82 years since then.”
She paused, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on the table.
“Living a long life teaches you a lot. You experience a lot. I’m very fatalistic. Everyone says, ‘Why are you going to Israel? Are you going alone? It’s so far.’ But if the malach hamaves wants to find me, he’ll find me anyway.”
Something of a smile appeared on her lips. “Maybe I’ll make it a little harder for him to find me.”
Framed in the window, the sky was pale blue, without even a puff of cloud. A single bird flew high above, small and solitary but still soaring.
I looked back at Judy, and for a moment I imagined the little girl who had already lived through too much by the time she was five.
She was born on May 29, 1938, in the small Hungarian town of Kiskunmajsa. Just before her birth, an elderly woman in town, a close friend of her mother’s, passed away. Her name was Chaya. Judy was named in her memory, along with the name of her grandmother, Reichel.
“I believe that name saved me,” Judy said with conviction. “Chaya, life. To live. One thousand percent, I believe it.”
When the winds of war reached Hungary, Judy’s father was taken to a labor camp and never returned. Her mother, desperate to support the family, did what few women at that time would dare: she left home to find work.
In 1942, the two daughters were sent to live with grandparents. Goldie, Judy’s older sister, went to her father’s parents. Judy was sent to her maternal grandparents in the town of Jaszalsoszentgyorgy.
When the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944, Judy’s grandmother Blimi made a fateful decision.
“At times like these,” she said, “a child’s place is with her mother.”
Arrangements were made quietly. A non-Jewish woman agreed to take five-year-old Judy to Budapest. That night, dressed as a peasant girl with ruffled skirts and red shoes, Judy was given a Christian name. Under the cover of darkness, they slipped away.
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