My Background

I was born in 1979 in Haifa, Israel, the country in which I spent my first two and a half decades. My father, born in 1943, was a Holocaust survivor from Bessarabia, a region in the south of the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. My mother was born in Israel after her family had escaped from Poland. The Holocaust was very present in our home, and thus also Germany and our very own “German question". My father's curiosity about the people that caused so much pain to him and his family led him to Germany, which he visited many times, both West and East. My first stuffed animal was actually a German monkey he brought from one of his journeys.

Since childhood, my passion has been history. During my university studies I focused on German and Jewish history (I have a master's degree in German-Jewish history). I began my studies in Jerusalem and continued them in Vienna, Heidelberg and Berlin - a melting pot of culture and thought.

To this intriguing city, Berlin, I came in 2006. After finishing my academic studies here, I was a parliamentary assistant with a scholarship of the German “Bundestag" (the Federal Parliament), which granted me many insights into German politics and their way of doing things (or avoiding them). Although this wasn't really the program's purpose, I happened to notice that most German politicians have something in common: They are quite convinced of this nation's new moral superiority, supposedly forged by the catastrophe of the war. To me, this seems more like a new outfit for an old pattern...

While working in the Bundestag, I was asked to give some tours to foreign visitors, and that's how I discovered this field and how fulfilling it is. Except for guiding, I continue to work in my other professional field: For about 20 years now I've been translating mostly academic literature from Hebrew into German and vice versa, for publishing houses in Germany and Israel. Yet what I love most is touring my city.

Even after long years of research, there's always something new to discover: Another story, another piece of history - it's more about passion than work. Thanks to my guests, I've been exposed to many different perspectives on this city, which leaves no one indifferent. And that's what touring is about for me: An ongoing dialog, the sharing of perspectives, and learning from each other.