Veteran journalist Dina Kraft never imagined that her experience co-authoring the Holocaust memoir of Hannah Pick-Goslar, Anne Frank's childhood friend, would find echoes in her life today. But that's just what has happened amid the atrocities and horrors gripping Israel in the wake of the October 7 Hamas assault and the ensuing war.
Finding refuge in a safe room as missiles flew over her home in Tel Aviv, Kraft spoke with Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein about navigating the daily decisions involved in keeping her teenage children safe and working as a journalist. "I've never been so rattled and shattered," she said. "I was writing a book that was about a war, and now I am living a war."
Speaking as the featured author of the October One Book, One Hadassah, Kraft added that "it feels like history in some ways has folded in on itself..... This is not 1942 and '43. It’s not the Kishinev pogram ... but we are seeing themes that are reminiscent of the Shoah."