Ephraim Kishon , the famous satirical writer, tells about life in Hungary and how he was saved during the holocaust during a program about his life.
First of all he felt Hungarian , won prizes in school for writing, and was surprised that he was not considered Hungarian after all but first of all a jew but then again antisemitism was very common in Hungary, where over one million Jews had lived in Hungary before WW2 and at the end of the war only 90,000 remained.
The most humiliating factor had been the various laws, that one could not keep a cat, bicycles etc . and each time there were more rules forbidding Jews and keeping them separate from the rest of the population .
The man who had saved Ephraim Kishon comes to the program, a modest man, who had risked his life, had he been caught helping a jews, he and his entire family would have gone to concentration camps and still he took this risk because he could not stand to see that people with whom he lived as neighbours were treated like this.
The Holocaust memorial institute , Yad va Shem, had given the man who had helped Ephraim Kishon a medal and a certificate recognising his selfless act of helping during the holocaust.
There are a few thousand people who had helped, called matches , because they lit the great darkness around them that was the holocaust .
It is important to remember to be a match that lights the dark .It is always a different situation but always an opportunity to make a difference and be a light.
