From Six Million to Seventy Years 2 – CUT

CUT Version

Some of you may have watched the full version of “From Six Million to Seventy Years” – see TOI – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-six-days-to-70-years/ Now you can watch here a CUT version (06:46) The short version is not “a trailer” of the longer one. While mostly using the same footage, it is edited differently.

You may ask “what has architecture to do with such a controversial subject?” I believe it does because architecture is an expression of a society’s values. When Frank Lloyd Wright was asked (he was 90 in 1957) “what is the future of architecture?” his response was: “the future of architecture is the future of the human race. If the human race has a future, so will architecture; if it doesn’t, architecture won’t have it.”

In both of documentary versions, I try to bring up a contrast between the Shoah and contemporary anti-Semitism on the negative side, and some remarkable examples of Israel’s contemporary life and architecture on the positive. In the full version, I also include some autobiographical snapshots of our life in Israel, from my first visit, when I was eleven, during Yom Ha’atzmaut 1956 – my mother was then Argentina’s WIZO Secretary General and she brought me with her – to my latest five-month journey in 2016.

Sure, Israeli settlements are also the product of architectural design, which provokes much controversy. I stated my position on previous blogs published by TOI –100-year cease-fire, Israel in 2044, Why Aliyah?

But since then, things changed not for the better. In the last few years, there has been an increase in anti-Semitism in Europe that exacerbates the Palestinians not only along Gaza’s border but also in many Europe countries. The claim is not just for a Palestinian state along Israel, it is for “Palestine from the river to the sea.” Tihs is not just “legitimate nationalism” or a different narrative. This is fascism (read Madeleine Allbright’s latest book, Fascism: A Warning.)
Is there an end to the conflict? To a large degree, it depends on all of us. We cannot control the thinking and feelings of others, but we can control what we do, what we build and where.

Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Design Museum, Holon

Supreme Court