June 1967 Judith's Escape (cont'd)

...of escape with her. But momentarily we were more than friends, we were sisters. "I love to come this way because it reminds me of our escape from the Old City when I was a little girl," she would say. All the while I realized I had been privileged entrance into a secret vault hidden within her soul.Here are some of the details of her memorable flashback in history. Parents of Jewish children living in the Jewish Quarter had been informed of an opportunity to get some of the children to safety preceding the war of Jerusalem's liberation. Undercover Jewish agents had entered the city through underground gutters or sewers. Once the plans were made, under the cover of dark, only a few grieving parents dared to hand over a small number of children down into the lines. Five year old Yudith was one of those children.The children were told it was only a game so they needed to hold the hands of one another as they were led single file and stooped over through the pipe system. When they came out below Mount Zion, they still had to descend into the valley outside the city walls through trees and foliage and then ascend into the protection of the neighborhood of Yemin Moshe. Unknown to the children, (Judith later learned in the documented historical facts) Jordanian snipers on the walls of the Old City could have fired a fatal shot at any momentThey succeeded in arriving to safety and after the battle for Jerusalem they were reunited with their families.Yudith Dimon and I became friends when we worked together on Kibbutz Hagoshrim in the children's house taking care of 3-5 year-olds during the first Lebanon war. She had a love for art and often I would accompany her out to the fields where she would paint and I would read. Upon returning home, she would lead me down a difficult path through the thicket and I would relive those nostalgic moments of her childhood with her. I don't know that she ever shared her trek with anyone else. I mean, after all, we were adults! But, she loved reliving those moments of her salvation!A successful artist, her earlier paintings reflect the darkness of her early childhood, but she went on to study her passion some time after I left the kibbutz. Now her paintings reflect a brighter happier life.