Holocaust survivors take the fashion runway

This was the first beauty pageant for Lieber,74,who was born in Poland in 1937. She was 5 when her father was killed by the Nazis in Germany,and 6 when her mother faced the same fate. It was the first time down the runway for all 14 finalists,in what was billed as the first-ever pageant of Holocaust survivors.

They wore sensible shoes,and no swimsuits. Personal stories counted as much as poise.

I had a long struggle against death,I almost died in the concentration camp, Mania Herman,79,told the audience of about 500. I came to Israel in 1951. I studied,I worked,I made a family. I wrote three books about the Holocaust.

But this pageant was of greater consequence than to serve up a feel-good moment. It tapped into a core conflict that bedevils this society,where most everyone agrees on the need to keep the memory of the Holocaust central and alive,but not everyone agrees on how.

Some criticized the celebration for trivializing a tragedy,a reminder that in Israel the Holocaust is both omnipresent and ever-contentious.

Zeev Bar-Ilan of Beersheba,himself a survivor,wrote a letter to the newspaper Yediot Aharonot decrying the event as an attempt to harness and exploit the harshest blood bath in human history for the purposes of entertainment. Colette Avital,a former Knesset member who was elected on Thursday to head the umbrella group of 54 survivors organizations said in an interview,If it was up to me,I wouldnt even dream of it.

Such dissent demonstrates the constant struggle over how the Holocaust is handled. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been lampooned for comparing the Iranian nuclear threat to 1939.

Avrum Burg,author of the 2009 book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From Its Ashes,said what you see in Haifa is a struggle over the strategy of the memory.