Lost and found: Old friends reunite in Israel

They were best friends who enjoyed a “Huckleberry Finn kind of childhood”, running free on the streets of Bulawayo. But as they grew up, they lost touch and didn’t know if they would ever see each other again. Yet, when the pandemic hit, Walter Frankel in Australia decided to try reconnect with people from his past. He reached out to Ophry Pines in Israel, and they picked up their friendship where they had left off decades before.

Finally, when travel restrictions lifted, they reunited in Israel. “Last night, after a period of 60 years of absence from each other, I finally reconnected with my childhood best friend from Bulawayo —Ophry Pines in Jerusalem. May this friendship last forever. It felt as though we had never been apart for this long,” wrote Frankel on Facebook in May 2022. He shared a childhood photo from 1964, and another from the present day.

“Growing up as a child I had few friends,” says Frankel. “I experienced learning difficulties and was teased and bullied by the other kids.” Yet Pines was always there for him. “Ophry was my best friend and ‘blood brother’. We roamed the streets of the neighbourhood, and visited each other’s homes, which were three houses apart. We both went to Banes Primary School. We later went to Carmel Jewish Day School. I lived in 8 Helm Road, Northend, and my parents owned Regent Butchery in Grey Street.

“Life was a bit of a challenge, but my mother taught us that as long as you have your limbs and a brain, you need to get up and start over after adversity,” says Frankel. “Both my parents were Holocaust survivors. My father was from Germany. He had been in Dachau concentration camp, escaping in 1939 and leaving immediately for southern Africa. He started his life again in what is now Zambia. My mother worked in hiding throughout the war in Holland. She left after the war to go to South Africa with her best friend Olga, who wasn’t Jewish, and [she] assisted her to come start a new life. Both my parents lost their parents’ siblings and close relatives.”

“Both my mother and father come from famous Zionist families,” says Pines. “My grandfather’s uncle, Yichiel Michel Pines was a Zionist leader and helped purchase the lands of Rishon LeZion and founded Gdera. He also created new words in modern Hebrew (for example, tomato – agvania). My great grandfather, Fishel Pines, the elder brother of Yichiel Michel, was a leader of the Pines family in Ruzhinoy (Belarus) and his son, Leon Leib Pines, was a delegate to the Zionist Congress.

“My father, Yichiel Michel Pines, named after his grand uncle, grew up in Vilna and in 1937, his sister, Goldie, saved the family (parents and two brothers) by bringing them to what was then southern Rhodesia. My father joined the British army and fought against Rommel in the Sahara Desert.

“My mother’s grandfather, Aharon Mordechai Freiman Dror, was one of the founders of Rishon LeZion. My mother grew up in Rishon LeZion and during World War II joined the British Royal Air Force. My parents met and got married in Cairo, and since my dad was a British soldier, they returned after the war to Rhodesia.” Pines’s parents had a fruit and vegetable wholesale business in Grey Street, opposite Frankel’s parents’ butcher shop. “Ophry’s dad used to make his trucks available to Betar and Habonim for outings,” remembers Frankel.

“It took my mother more than 15 years to get the family to Israel,” says Pines. “I was born in Bulawayo and immigrated to Israel at the age of 10 years, nine months. I’m the youngest of four brothers. I grew up in Ramat Gan. After a post-doctoral training at State University New York, Stony Brook, I returned to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I’m a full professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Hebrew University. We moved to Jerusalem in 1987. What’s amazing is that Judy [Frankel’s sister] and her husband, Jeff, lived just a few kilometres away on Kibbutz Ramat Rachel.

“Walter was my best friend in Bulawayo. I remember our and Walter’s houses, and how to get from one to the other. Of course, I remember Judy, Walter’s sister, who would often join us. It was exciting to meet Walter and Judy after so many years.”

Frankel recalls detailed anecdotes from their childhood. “Ophry burnt his feet walking over a fire, and he was injured when his nanny, Agnes, was run over on her bike while taking him to Carmel School. He got sick after my birthday party from over-eating doughnuts. Our favourites were pint-sized bottles of milk for morning tea and a Chelsea bun. Ophry would always take off his shoes. Agnes would have to go and look for them, and for his mother’s cutlery, which we used to dig in the garden. Ophry’s mother used to serve borscht or pumpkin soup to us at lunch – I found out only now that he and his brothers hated the soup.

“My family stayed in Rhodesia until 1969 when I was 16 years old,” says Frankel. “Then we went to Cape Town. I met my wife in 1972, and we got married. We were chosen by Pick n Pay to be a member of the team to establish its venture in Australia in 1984, with the Lieberman family. I’m eternally grateful for the assistance they gave me and my family.”

Frankel’s family arrived in Brisbane “and immediately integrated into the Jewish community, which extended a warm welcome to us and our two boys. Our third boy was born there in 1986. In 1987, we moved to Sydney. We had two girls, born in 1992 and 1996. Eventually, my parents moved to Israel, Australia, and back to Israel. My dad died in Australia in 1992, and my mom died in Israel in 2017 at the age of 97.”

All this time, Pines was also in Israel, but the friends didn’t reconnect. “I tried to track him down when I first came to Israel in 1980 without success,” says Frankel. “During the pandemic, I finally made a breakthrough and we connected, but had to wait two years before we got to see each other.

“I never forgot Ophry, and was always hoping to reconnect somehow and restore what was a great friendship. When we reconnected, it was as if we had never been separated and only had to catch up with each other’s journey in life,’ says Frankel. “He and his wife, Gilia, showed me and my sister, Judy, tremendous hospitality and friendship. Reminiscing about the things we did and the people we knew was a great exercise. It was an unreal experience meeting up after all these years and to find how close we were to each other, with similar connections. It was like we never lived apart. We only hope that the relationship will continue.”