In real life, Douglas admired Israel for fighting for Jewish statehood in the shadow of the systematic slaughter of European Jewry. Throughout the film Hans repeatedly remarks that “home is a place you lose,” but slowly discerns that Israel is a homeland for Jews fleeing oppression. When the police track him down, Hans barricades himself in a room, though he eventually surrenders and acknowledges he is sick and needs help. Roaming the countryside, Hans is befriended by a boy and woman who belong to a kibbutz and invite him to stay there. Chafing from confinement, he escapes from the facility and beats up an Israeli police officer whose check of his identification papers stirs up memories of Nazi interrogations.
#LOVE STRANGE LOVE 1982 STREAMING REGISTRATION#
From the Octoedition of The B’nai B’rith Messenger part of the National Library of Israel Digital Collection (Zack Rothbart)Īt the registration center for new immigrants, Hans, a former juggler and clown, hallucinates that his deceased wife and children are peering at him from a window.
Douglas receiving a gift to present to Moshe Sharett, prior to filming “The Juggler” in Israel. This connection was reinforced when Douglas played Holocaust survivor Hans Mueller in Edward Dmytryk’s The Juggler, the first Hollywood motion picture to be filmed in Israel. Privately during this period, his attachment to Judaism expressed itself by fasting on Yom Kippur out of a sense of solidarity towards the Jews of the past and the present. He landed his first leading role opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946, though he would not be cast as a Jewish character for another seven years. A rabbi agreed to officiate at a subsequent wedding in return for the couple promising to raise their children as Jews.ĭouglas subsequently admitted that he never intended to honor this pledge. He married his first of two gentile wives in 1943 (the second converted when they renewed their vows in 2004) in a ceremony conducted by a navy chaplain. From the collection of the National Library of Israel, courtesy of: Ragmanĭouglas served in the navy during World War Two. A photo of Douglas on the wrestling team at St. The alumni protested over a “Jew boy president of the student body” and threatened to stop donating to the school.
Instead, Douglas left his imprint on the campus as an actor, champion wrestler, and the first non-fraternity member and Jew to be elected student president in 1938. Though athletic and handsome, he was not rushed by the fraternities whose national charters banned pledging Jews. Lawrence University, a Liberal Arts college located in an isolated rural area of northern New York. He could not escape this prejudice when he attended St.
I had to run the gauntlet, because every other street had a gang, and they would always be waiting to catch the Jew boy.” “After school each day, I’d have to walk about twelve blocks to Hebrew school. As he recalled in his autobiography, The Ragman’s Son: The anti-Semitism he encountered in his hometown, however, never let him forget his Jewish origins. Though he had a bar mitzvah and celebrated Jewish holidays in his home, he did not share the piety of his parents. His childhood temple offered to subsidize his education at a Yeshiva so he could become a rabbi, but he had fallen in love with acting and declined the offer. From the collection of the National Library of Israel, courtesy of: The Ragmanĭouglas always was acutely aware that he was Jewish. Even before that, he adopted the Americanized surname of his uncle Avram Demsky and preferred Isadore over Issur. Like many Jews of his generation, Kirk Douglas had changed his name to avoid revealing that he was born Issur Danielovitch, the son of poor Jewish immigrants who lived in Amsterdam, New York.
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