Two Jewish writers who used words to make sense of their war-time experiences have died.
Lore Segal, 29 December 1923, Austria, was one of the lucky 10,000 children selected for Kindertransport, in 1938, a humanitarian initiative to foster endangered Jewish children in Nazi territories into British homes. She was later reunited with her parents. She started to write when she was ten to make sense of what she had been through and continued writing everyday of her life thereafter, producing five novels and many short stories. “It was the novelist’s impulse not to explain or persuade but to force the reader’s vision: see what I saw, feel what it felt like,” she wrote in the preface to her first novel. In 2007, she published Shakespeare’s Kitchen, a collection of stories set in a think-tank in Connecticut which was nominated for the Pulitzer.
She was a Sun Pisces trine Pluto and square Saturn which could have given her a depressive streak but she was blessed with a lucky, adventurous Jupiter Uranus in Aries with her Jupiter in a confident square to Pluto and sextile a determined Mars in Aquarius – and two other planets in Aquarius including Mercury which gave her the detachment to stand back and observe. She also had a powerful yod of Venus sextile Saturn inconjunct Pluto giving her a singular sense of purpose.
Lily Ebert, 29 December 1923, a Hungarian-born Auschwitz survivor who devoted herself to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, including on TikTok, where she drew millions of viewers with her testimonials, lost her mother and two youngest siblings to the gas chambers. Initially she could not speak of her experiences but as she aged and her family grew – ultimately to 10 grandchildren; 38 great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson, she found the strength to speak out.
She had a stark and exceptionally tough Water Grand Trine of Mars in Scorpio trine Pluto trine Uranus formed into a Kite by Pluto opposition a Capricorn Sun which gave her determination and courage to overcome appalling experiences; and a flicker of optimism from Jupiter in Sagittarius square Uranus.
The post Lore Segal & Lily Ebert – words made a difference first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
