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In his book, Himmo, King of Jerusalem, Yoram Kaniuk recalled the trauma of the Independence War as he set out to settle his long-open score with it. He fought in that war as a combat soldier with the Palmach, hurt his leg in battle during the ill-fated attempt to seize control of the Old City and was treated in a monastery-turned-hospital which gave him the inspiration for his book, including the character of a critically-injured soldier. The epilogue of his novel is set 12 years after the war. Chamutal finally makes it to Jerusalem and discovers a place where people have ice cream. Life goes on.
In Israeli mythology, 1948 remains a highly charged topic: an idea; a longing; a dream; a promise unrealised; an opportunity missed. Guttman, a Transylvanian immigrant himself, once said that for him, 1948 holds no myths. “I wasn’t interested in what things were actually like back then. In Himmo, I didn’t feel like I was hitting some kind of national nerve. For work purposes, I dropped the ‘the’ people always put before the year .” It is therefore unsurprising that Guttman opted for an altogether different ending: the siege of Jerusalem is broken; the wounded soldiers abandon the makeshift hospital, and the mute daughter of the monastery’s caretaker is seen walking down the waterlogged corridor, holding her amputee doll – Guttman’s ironic way of saying that life has indeed resumed.
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For more information about the rights holders, please visit the relevant collection page, or contact the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) offices.
We have the utmost respect for all rights holders’ copyright and put great efforts to track down any and all intellectual property owners for the purpose of seeking and obtaining permission to use their materials featured on the website.
Any and all materials are used in accordance with clause 27a of the 2007 Copyright Act. If you believe that your rights as intellectual property and copyright owners of any material featured on this website have been compromised, then you may contact the Israeli Film Archive via email with a cease-and-desist notice, requesting that the material in alleged copyright infringement no longer be used. When contacting the archive, please state the merit to your copyright ownership claim, as well as your full name, email address, and telephone number, with a link to the relevant webpage.