ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: How were the German Templers living in the Land of Israel involved in a plan to save European Jews from the Nazis?

Dr. Dina Porat was born in Argentina in 1943 and made aliyah to Israel in 1950. She received both her M.A. and PhD in Jewish history from Tel Aviv University. Her main areas of interest and research have been the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and she has written numerous books and papers on these subjects. Since 1997 Dr. Porat has been a member of the European Center for Research of anti-Semitism and Racism (CERA) Scientific Committee, and in 2005 she gave a presentation of tools to monitor anti-Semitism in the OSCE Cordoba conference on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. One of Dr. Porat’s interests is what the Jewish residents in the land of Israel, known as the Yishuv, did during the Holocaust to try to save European Jews, and the absorption of survivors afterwards. Her 2008 book Israeli Society, the Holocaust and its Survivors is a collection of 20 essays analyzing this issue. She spoke with us about this little-known chapter in Jewish and Israeli history.