Mother Camera – A Conversation with Leora Kroyanker

Mother Camera – A Conversation with Leora Kroyanker

Hannah Farkas-Himsley

Interview and edit by Rotem Pesachovish-Paz

Leora Kroyanker is an archivist, cataloguer, editor, and exhibition curator. She and her sister Ruth (Ruthie) Geva, are the co-owners of the Hannah Farkas-Himsley Collection, now housed and maintained at the Israeli Film Archive. The aforementioned collection is a truly extraordinary compilation of footage shot by Hannah Farkas-Himsley, Kroyanker and Geva’s mother, over a 40-year period. The collection includes footage of a number of historic, milestone moments that had taken place in the first few decades of the State of Israel’s existence, from the 1940s and all the way to the eighties. Other highlights include dozens of hours’ worth of footage shot in England, Russia, Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Italy, Scotland, Germany, South America, South Africa, and many more. The interview with Kroyanker which took place ahead of International Women’s Day 2023, focuses on the person her mother was, and all the invaluable footage that she left behind.

Your mother, Hannah Farkas-Himsley, was a true Renaissance woman: a researcher who became widowed, raised two daughters, and managed to build a formidable career for herself as a doctor of bacteriology at Hebrew U. And all this, she managed to do alongside her nonstop filming on her 8mm camera. If you wouldn’t mind telling us a little bit about her:

LK: I remember mum always with a camera in her hand – both still and video. She would edit her movies once they got back from the film lab, having taken the long and winded road. It was only then that she remembered what she’d even filmed and who was in all the footage. She’d splice it all together by theme. For instance, there was one called ‘Children.’ She would put together all sorts of things that weren’t necessarily historic occasions. Later, it made sorting through them a bit of a challenge – in the sense of what exactly had been shot, and when – but she made sure to leave a note on every reel with several keywords.

Where would she edit her films? Did she have a study? Her own studio?

LK: We lived in a three-bed flat in Jerusalem, and two of the rooms were joined together. The lounge, and what used to be a bedroom, back when my father was still alive. The only thing dividing the rooms was a curtain. The bedroom, she turned into a study, with this large desk where she used to work on her articles and also her films, and this sofa bed she had on the side.

And that was where she slept, was it?

LK: Yes, she slept on this wide sofa bed, that was very nicely cushioned. That room did not look like a bedroom at all.

Meaning, she really managed to maximise an otherwise small space and make it truly multifunctional.

LK: Oh, most definitely. She was a very resourceful woman.

As a young girl, what was your experience of her?

LK: A fun mum. Very easy going. She was thirty-one when dad was killed. I was almost five and Ruthie, my sister, was nine months old. It happened at the end of the Independence War, on the very last day of 1948, and it was obvious to her that she had to work – so she went back to work at Hebrew U’s medical school.  

Your mother came from a very well-established family. How did the family end up moving here?

LK: My mother’s father was Ben-Zion Aronowitz, and her mother was Sarah Lifschitz. They were originally from Vilnius, which is where their first four children were born. Then, in the middle of World War I, they were expelled from Lithuania. Mum, the fifth child, was born in Moscow in 1917. After the war, in 1921, thanks to an agreement that allowed Lithuanians to repatriate, they left Russia with all their hidden possessions and made it all the way to Danzig, which was a transit stop en route to the Land of Israel [then Palestine].

Eventually, they made it here in the spring of 1926. The family was ultra-Zionist and had already visited the land at turn of the 20th century. They had planned to immigrate, but the path to making Aliyah was indeed a long one. In Danzig, mum started school in year 1, where they taught in German. Now Danzig was a free city, meaning lots of Jews ended up there ahead of moving here. Mum spoke both German and Hebrew. It was the language they spoke at home, and when they arrived in Tel Aviv she immediately fit right in and was very well liked – this is something I’ve always heard from all her girl-friends, not to mention the many suitors that she had. She was very Israeli, but at the same time also very European.

So she moves to Palestine at the age of nine. When exactly does she start documenting? At what point is her documentarist’s consciousness born, and under what circumstances?

LK: I know she kept a journal, and that she would write letters. And I know that my auntie, who was only just a little older, already had a camera in the thirties – so surely, she would have had one too. It’s possible that she didn’t have one at the time that was exclusively hers, but two of her sisters certainly did. And at any rate, my mother was the most serious and most diligent out of all of them.

Would you care to elaborate?

LK: Her eldest sister studied medicine but never practised. Mum, who was the youngest sister, also wanted to study medicine. But by the time she’d graduated from high school [Tel Aviv’s original Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium], granddad was in such dire financial straits that he couldn’t afford to send her abroad to study. So instead, he suggested she enrol at the Hebrew University and “we’ll see what’s what.” In 1936, she began her bacteriology degree course, as the university’s medical school had yet to be established. My dad, who immigrated here in 1935 as the head of the Physical Chemistry Department, saw her on campus, fell in love, and started pursuing her. I know all this because she saved all the letters. In fact, she’d always been known to save all her letters.

What language did they correspond in?

LK: Well, German of course. It was the language. After all, she had been speaking German since childhood. But apparently, she must have told him that he needed to make an effort and write in Hebrew. There’s this one letter he sent from a ship, during an overseas trip, and you can see how he’s trying to express himself in Hebrew, writing four lines and somehow managing to misspell every word – it’s hysterical – then, he writes I can’t do this anymore, in German and switches back to German for the remainder.

That’s so lovely.

LK: It was. Mind you, they never spoke German with me. Neither mum nor dad. They only spoke Hebrew because “the girl’s in Israel.” I have no memory of them ever speaking German at home. It was most definitely a Hebrew-speaking household.

When I think about your mother in today’s terms – losing a husband, raising two young girls, and not just managing to support the family but also accomplishing so much more – that is such an extraordinary, astonishing feat.

LK: It is. Which is why I always say that of all the widows, she was the luckiest. Also because she had a large family; and she had lots of friends; and because she was Israeli. The majority of women who lost their spouses at that time, all those fallen soldiers of the Independence War, were either fresh-off-the-boat new immigrants or newish arrivals, with nothing or no one whatsoever to fall back on. In that sense, mum was in a totally different place. I couldn’t say how well or how poorly the family was doing financially, at the time, but I think that all in all – they were relatively okay. It was no life of luxury, but they were most likely doing just fine. She had a trade, and a PhD which she earned in 1946. She was tied to the university and her life revolved around university folk.

What are your memories of her at home, in the day-to-day?

LK: When were kids, in the day-to-day, I remember she had help round the house. She couldn’t do all that and go to work. And really, the fact that she had so many chums, and acquaintances, and friends helped make sure that we had a truly terrific childhood. She had a car, so on Saturdays we’d go on lots of picnics in and around Jerusalem. She really loved doing this stuff and was always at the centre of it all – never loud or domineering or anything; more like the life and spirit of lots of things. But I’m sure that the thing that kept her going was all the support – and I don’t necessarily mean financially. I guess that her mother must have helped her, in whatever way she could. Having all this emotional, familial support, and the support of friends was something that not a lot of people had.

Hannah Farkas-Himsley and her daughters, Leora (age 8) and Ruthie (age 4), 1952

חנה פרקש־הימזלי ובנותיה, ליאורה (בת 8) ורותי (בת 4), 1952

And your relationship, what kind of relationship did the two of you have?

LK: A very, very good relationship, I would say. I was also looking after Ruthie, mind you, and in her letters she mentions how good I am with her, looking after her and really taking care of her. I was a good kid. And I also really loved the company of all the adults she was surrounded by. They were interesting people, scientists mostly. You will come across all these names in her footage. Like this trip to the Dead Sea she went on and took a couple of very high-profile scientists with her. I remember that trip. It was fun. I think it was more than just documentation [for the sake of it], but also an attempt to capture all the action and development that was going on here in Israel, and all the beautiful places, and to try and tell the stories of those places. That was a genuine part of her. She was a Zionist to her core.

And when does she remarry?

LK: Alex Himsley, who would go on to become her husband and our stepfather, was invited to Israel as an official state’s guest, on account of him having been an expert in water treatment and watermains. She knew him through a mutual friend, and when she worked as a scientific attaché in the Israeli embassy in London between 1953-1955, their relationship grew much closer. He was then sent to Canada, whereas we went back to Israel. Mum and Alex kept writing to each other, but there were all these additional hurdles. Whilst Alex was separated from his then-wife, she wouldn’t let him go. What is more, he wasn’t Jewish, whereas mum came from a very traditional home. After he’d converted in the US and learnt a bit of Hebrew, and his ex did finally cut him loose, Alex came to Israel and they got married here, in Rabbi Kook House in Tiberias. A couple of months later, in the summer of ’57, we all went to Canada – as a family. Alex was also a man of science. They were both highly energised, vital people who loved life, and were interested in a wide range of things. They loved music and the ballet, and they loved to paint and sculpt, and take pictures and shoot films, and go on trips – never not together. They got to have thirty glorious years of marriage. Well and truly glorious.

And how old was your mother when she passed?

LK: She was seventy-six. Really young. She died of cancer and had remained totally lucid right up to the very end. In her final years, she was doing a lot of research into finding a cure for various types of cancer that was based on using bacteria to target and destroy the cancerous cells, without compromising the body’s other cells. She and her colleague in Canada believed this was going to be something that would change the world. She spent a good few years working on this substance but in the end, it didn’t really amount to much.

When she was on her deathbed, she decided to try this stuff on herself. She didn’t know how to work out the right dosage, so she and her colleague in Canada would try to figure that out together on transatlantic calls. She also had friends here who were in the same field, but none of them knew how to work out the quantities, let alone inject her with the substance and take responsibility for it. So eventually she just came out and said, “I believe this stuff isn’t harmful, so I’ll just inject myself” – and she did.

Whoa.

LK: When I phoned her Canadian colleague to break the news to him that mum had died, he said to me that she was the bravest person he’s ever known, and that her decision to test the serum on herself gave science a giant leap forward. She proved that the substance had no adverse effect on the body. She was convinced it was going to work, but apparently it was just too late when she started using it, and the doses weren’t exactly right either. As a whole, she was a bold, courageous woman. She was fearless. I don’t remember her ever being scared of anything.

That’s extraordinary.

LK: She was always like that; moving forward. She wasn’t scared to speak her mind, nor was she scared to walk away, and somehow she just knew how to make everything work together – and truly, she lived a good wholesome life. Her last words, as she was literally on her deathbed with Ruthie and I at her side, each of us holding her hand, were “we should keep the trials going.”

Remarkable. A woman of science and research right up to the very end.

LK: The science. That’s what she said. “The science.”

Watching home videos in the living room. Was that something that you did?

LK: It was. But in hindsight, it turns out the footage was quite selectively curated. In Canada, she would show us all these videos of Israel, but we would never watch any footage that had dad in it. Not ever. We only found out he’d been filmed when we started going over the footage ourselves and suddenly, there was dad. It was extraordinary and really very emotional. Why did she never show any of it to us? I don’t know. Maybe she found it too difficult. She hardly ever talked about dad, and I wasn’t a terribly good detective about it either. If no one tells me anything, then I’m just not going to know about it.

How is Ruthie’s and your film work impacted by the fact that your mother was an avid videographer?

LK: I couldn’t say. But I think she would have been very pleased with our approach to the films, and what we ended up doing with the footage, and that we made something of it.

How do you think your mother would have viewed the digital age? What was once kept at home with the family, has now become part of a public audiovisual legacy. The private is now essentially public property.

LK: I think she would have been absolutely fine with it, from a place of thinking that each of us is part of something that much greater – and if, by chance, we happened to have something that we enjoyed, then others should also get to benefit from it. It doesn’t feel terribly private to me, although I’ll admit that seeing myself in the footage of my 20th birthday did feel a bit weird.”

Click here to view the Hannah Farkas-Himsley Home-Movie Collection

מועצת הפיס לתרבות ואמנות
יעדי הפעילות של מפעל הפיס משתנים בהתאם לצרכי החברה והקהילה בישראל. לצד תמיכה בתחומי החינוך, הבריאות, הספורט ואיכות הסביבה, החל מפעל הפיס, בשנת 2000, להקצות משאבים ניכרים גם לפיתוח התרבות והאמנות בישראל. באמצעות מועצת הפיס לתרבות ואמנות, מעניק מפעל הפיס מדי שנה מאות מענקים לאמנים ויוצרים ויוזם שורה ארוכה של פרויקטים בתחום. יעדי הפעילות של מפעל הפיס משתנים בהתאם לצרכי החברה והקהילה בישראל. לצד תמיכה בתחומי החינוך, הבריאות, הספורט ואיכות הסביבה, החל מפעל הפיס, בשנת 2000, להקצות משאבים ניכרים גם לפיתוח התרבות והאמנות בישראל.

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