Rubinger, David

David (Dietrich ^[8] ) Rubinger was born in 1924 in Vienna. His father Kalman was a scrap metal dealer. In 1938, after the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany, Kalman was arrested and sent to Dachau , but thanks to a relative in London he managed to free himself and leave for England in 1939. Then his son received permission to enter Palestine in Mandate . David's mother, Anna, remained in Vienna, three years later she was also arrested and sent to the Small Trostenets concentration camp in Belarus, where she died ^[7] .

In Palestine, David Rubinger joined the Kibbutz Beit-Zera , and later the Kibbutz Tel-Amal ^[9] . In 1942, at the age of 18, he went with another 17 Jewish young men and women as a volunteer to the British army. He participated in the North African campaign , then was transferred to Malta, took part in the Allied landings at Barletta (Italy) and reached Germany. From there, he, along with other members of the Jewish Brigade, was sent to Belgium, because the British command feared retaliation against the German population by Jewish soldiers ^[10] .

In August 1945, on the anniversary of the liberation of Paris , Rubinger and his colleague were given leave to this city and two tickets to the Paris Opera . They were late for the performance, but while spending time in a nearby bar, they met local girls. Between one of them, Claudette Vadro, and Rubinger began a novel, which, however, did not last long. When parting, Claudette gave David his first Argus camera. This was the beginning of Rubinger's passion for photography, which lasted the rest of his life ^[10] .

In 1946, Rubinger returned to Palestine with his bride, Annie Reisler - his distant relative who survived the Holocaust ^[8] . During the war for the independence of Israel, he commanded a platoon in Jerusalem; In the same period, his first photographs began to appear in the newspapers Davar HaShavua and Ha-Olam Ha-Ze ^[9] . After the war, Rubinger served for some time in the Department of Cartography and Photography of the AOI ^[7] , and from 1951 to 1953 was a full-time photographer of the editorial staff of Ha-olam ha-ze ^[9] . After that, he worked in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, and in 1954 became the stringer of Time magazine in Israel (this happened after the publication of his first work, which became famous - a picture of a Catholic nun who was looking for fallen dentures in the neutral strip between Israel and Jordan ^{[11 ]} ). Two years later, on the instructions of Life magazine, he made photo reports from the theater of operations of the Sinai campaign and has since collaborated with this publication for more than 60 years, setting a record for the duration of his work among his photojournalists ^[7] . He also collaborated as a photo editor with the Jerusalem Post and was a full-time photographer of the Knesset ^[8] .

Rubinger, who has taken more than half a million photographs in his professional career, was later named Shimon Peres as “the photographer of a nascent nation”. He photographed all the contemporary leaders of Israel, often in an intimate, relaxed atmosphere - among his pictures Golda Meir , who feeds her grandson, and Menachem Begin , who helps shoes his wife Aliza ^[8] . He also filmed Begin during his historic visit to Egypt in 1977, and in 1983 accompanied US President Ronald Reagan in Washington for a month ^[7] . In his pictures you can see Israeli paratroopers returning home after the release of hostages in Entebbe ^[12] , Marc Chagall , who works on the painting of the Knesset, Ethiopian Jews who were evacuated to Israel during Operation Moses , a otdatel dissident Nathan Sharansky , descended in 1986 by plane at the Israeli airport, the bloody text of "Songs of Peace", taken from the body of the murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin . Rubinger often held photo shoots during the filming of Hollywood films in Israel, including Ben-Hur ^[7] .

The most famous of the photographs by Rubinger, however, is a snapshot of Israeli paratroopers at the Wailing Wall , taken during the Six-Day War, immediately after Israeli troops occupied the Old City of Jerusalem . The reporter flew to Jerusalem from the Sinai Peninsula, where he was filming the fighting, in a helicopter evacuating the wounded soldiers, and, according to his own recollections, arrived at the Wailing Wall less than half an hour after the Temple Mount passed into the hands of the Israelis. He stopped the three soldiers and took several photographs with them, taking them down from the ground (at that time there was only a narrow passage between the Wailing Wall and the walls of the surrounding houses ^[11] ). After that, Rubinger also photographed the new army chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who had just arrived at the Wailing Wall. He believed that Goren’s photograph would become famous, and he critically responded, both then and later, to the photographs of paratroopers, but it was she who became famous ^[13] . Rubinger gave the photo to the press service of the Israeli government, which widely replicated it. Later, when the picture without publishing the consent of the author began to publish various commercial publications, Rubinger tried to go to court, but according to a court decision, the photo was declared a national treasure, which was not covered by the creator’s copyright ^[7] . Subsequently, the photo was compared with the famous snapshot of American servicemen flagging Iwo Jima ^{[8] [14]} .

In 1982, David Rubinger received the Enrique Kavlin Award from the Israel Museum , which was awarded for his contribution to photography, and in 1997 he was awarded the Israel Prize ^[9] . Although his marriage to Annie was conceived as fictitious and was intended only to ensure her right to enter Palestine, he lasted more than half a century - until her death in 2000 ^[11] . In this marriage, daughter Tamar and son Ami were born ^[8] . After Annie’s death, at the age of 78, Rubinger met Ziona Spivak, who had lived with him for some time, but was killed in 2004 by her former Arab gardener. Rubinger himself continued to work after reaching the age of 90 and in particular took the oath of the new government of Israel in 2015 ^[11] . In 2008, his illustrated autobiography “Israel through my lens” ^{[12] was released} . David Rubinger died of cancer in March 2017, at the 93rd year of life ^[15] .

• David Rubinger (Hebrew) on the Israeli Art Information Center website