David Ben-Gurion standing on a museum balcony in Tel Aviv reading the new state’s Declaration of Independence, the U.N. vote tally broadcast by loud speakers over a square in Jerusalem filled with thousands of people, shouts of joy, tears of happiness, dancing the hora and singing of Hatikva — these are images many have of the birth of Israel almost 60 years ago.

For Esther Dorbian, who was 6 years old in Herzliya at the time, Nov. 29, 1947 was a brief evening of elation following the U.N. vote for partition. It was a respite between desperate poverty and constant fear and terror with years of suffering, pain, and loss — a far cry from what she sees on her trips back to the thriving tourist resort built from the village where she was born.