Dear Editor: After just having viewed the movie “The Invisibles,” at my local Kew Gardens Cinema, I was inspired to write this brief memorial for my late beloved companion, Gloria Beutel Katz (1948-2018), of Briarwood.

“The Invisibles” documents the true heartfelt stories of four Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Berlin, but there are many other such experiences, as those of Gloria’s late mother, Sally, of Forest Hills, who survived Romanian and Nazi anti-Semitic pogroms in Dorohoi, Romania, and of Gloria’s late father, Solomon, a survivor of Czernowitz, Romania, now Chernivtsi, Ukraine.

This gifted artist, secretary (United Federation of Teachers, Bank of India), grandmother and mother was a daughter of the Holocaust, and born in post-war Vienna, Austria. Her birth certificate listed her nationality, sadly, not as Austrian or Romanian, but as Jew!

Because of various physical and emotional effects of the Holocaust, Gloria was a person with a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder but, despite her disability, created about 300 works of art in the media of ink and liquid embroidery. Her journey included two trips to Israel, including her work on a kibbutz. Her greatest passion was music, especially Neil Diamond and his Christmas album.

“The Invisibles”‘ climax is toward the end when the Jewish survivors were confronted by Russian soldiers and asked to recite the Shema Yisroel to prove that they were Jews:

“Shema Yisroel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad” (Hear, O, Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. Deuteronomy 6:4).

I cried, because Jesus said, in the Gospel of Mark, the most important commandment is the Shema Yisroel, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And in professing that, “you are not far from the Kingdom of God.” Gloria, a Jew, lived those words as a Jew and also as a Christian.

May she rest in eternal peace in Heaven with God and all His angels and saints. Amen.

JOSEPH N. MANAGO

Briarwood