the seen
Israeli-Canadian Hockey Star Shares Dramatic Escape from Ukraine
Israeli-Canadian hockey player
Eliezer Sherbatov detailed his har-
rowing experience fl eeing Ukraine
on Instagram and in an emotional
interview with Canada’s The Sports
Network. Sherbatov, a longtime captain of
Israel’s national hockey team, made
headlines in 2020 when he joined a
Polish team that plays in Oswiecim,
or in English, Auschwitz, the town
where the Auschwitz concentra-
tion camp is located. He has played
for HC Mariupol in the Ukrainian
Hockey League since last summer,
and his team was staying in a hotel in
Druzhkivka, Ukraine, when Russia’s
invasion began Feb. 24.

Sherbatov spent the next fi ve
days traveling through Ukraine
by train, ultimately reaching Lviv,
where he connected with the Israeli
consulate. Sherbatov, who was born in
Rehovot, Israel, joined a busload of
refugees that crossed into Warsaw,
Poland. The 30-year-old credits the
Israeli consulate and volunteers with
getting him out, calling them “amazing
people, amazing organization.”
He was made de facto head of the
bus, he told TSN.

“They got us on a bus with kids and
elderly people,” he said. “They made
me responsible for that bus because
nobody at the consulate was coming
with us because they had to wait for
others. They made me responsible for
those 17 people and it was the hardest
thing I’ve ever done in my life, to be
responsible for 17 people when it’s a
matter of life and death.”
Sherbatov made it home to Montreal
on March 1 — where his wife and two
young children were waiting. He had
not yet met his son, who was born
while he was playing in Mariupol.

“When I got home to my family,
it’s emotions. It’s crying,” he told the
Canadian network. “I met my son for
the fi rst time, and I thought I would
never see them. I thought I would
never see my family.”
— Jacob Gurvis
Eliezer Sherbatov plays for HC Mariupol in the Ukrainian
Hockey League.

Charlotte Salomon, voiced by Keira Knightley, in a scene from “Charlotte.”
Keira Knightley is lending her voice
to an animated fi lm on the story
of Charlotte Salomon, a German-
4 Jewish painter who produced hun-
dreds of works in hiding during
World War II before being deported
MARCH 10, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
to Auschwitz.

“Charlotte,” set for release in the-
aters on April 22, follows Salomon
from her early years growing up in
Berlin, her aspirations to become a
great artist and her escape to the
south of France where she lived until
her deportation and death.

While in hiding with her family, she
painted approximately 800 works,
which became an autobiographical
series titled “Life? or Theater?: A
Song-play.” Amsterdam’s Jewish
Historical Museum showcased them
all in a 2018 exhibition, which it
has kept online in digital form. (The
museum previously showed many of
them in 1981 as well.)
The works were inspired by her
own life, which was full of tragedy
before the Holocaust — several fam-
ily members had committed suicide.

In hiding, her grandfather turned
predatorial, and she poisoned him,
admitting the deed in a 35-page
letter. “Only by doing something mad
can I hope to stay sane,” says an
animated Salomon, voiced by the
two-time Academy Award nominee
Knightley, in a released clip from the
fi lm.

Her paintings were saved by fam-
ily members who survived the war.

The fi lm also stars Academy Award
winner Jim Broadbent, Academy
Award nominee Brenda Blethyn,
Sam Clafl in, Eddie Marsan, the late
Helen McCrory, Academy Award
nominee Sophie Okonedo and Mark
Strong. — Caleb Guedes-Reed
Sherbatov: WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Gett y Images via JTA; Film: Screenshot from YouTube via JTA
Keira Knightley to Voice German-Jewish Painter Charlotte Salomon,
Who Died in Auschwitz, for Animated Film



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