I met Yossi and Yosefa Sartiel (ex-Stupp) in 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War. I was then a
volunteer in a kibbutz of Galilee, in Kfar Hahoresh, where the couple was living at the time. We
had many occasions to meet each other, during the week or during the long evenings of
Shabbat. We talked about politics, history, literature, arts, travel, music, most often in English,
sometimes in French, and even in Hebrew, since I was learning the basics of the language.
These were, after long days of agricultural work, or very long nights at the factory, moments of
reflection and intelligence that I particularly appreciated, at least as much as the strudels that
Yosefa prepared. Our discussions were free. We tackled all the subjects that inspired us, in no
particular order, with the pleasure of the dilettante. All, except one: with Yossi, we did not talk
about the past. Or, more precisely, about his past. On this point, the subject was taboo. This
investigation fills this void. It will teach nothing that historians do not already know. But it does
reconstruct, through the singular destiny of a family, what the anti-Semitic violence of the last
century was like.