Natalie Portman Pays Homage to Great-Grandparents Who Died in Holocaust, Quotes Anne Frank
by Shiryn Ghermezian
Natalie Portman. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Jewish actress Natalie Portman dedicated an Instagram post on Tuesday to her great-grandparents who were murdered by the Nazis, in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Today I honor my great-grandparents, Leiser and Leah Hershlag, who perished along with millions of others at the hands of the Nazis,” the 38-year-old, who was born in Israel as Neta-Lee Hershlag, posted alongside a photo of of her late relatives.
She then quoted Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank, who wrote, “I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.”
In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, the “Thor” star talked about her family’s Holocaust history, saying, “My great-grandparents were killed in the camps, and my grandfather’s younger brother was shot in Poland during the war.”
According to the website Kveller, along with the Instagram post about her great-grandparents, Portman also shared on her Instagram stories a post from Integrity First for America, an organization that is fighting antisemitism and racism in the US by suing the neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who were behind the violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
