In an unconventional beauty pageant in Israel on Sunday, fourteen participants posed for pictures with elegant hairdos, waved their hands at adoring crowds, and spoke of their experience in surviving the atrocities of World War II.

The event was the fourth such pageant dedicated to celebrating the life and resilience of Holocaust survivors in Israel, Reuters reported.

“Tonight we’re letting some women who survived the Holocaust have something that was robbed from them in their youth,” said David Parsons of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, which helped organize the event. “We want to give something back to them tonight it’s for them to enjoy.”

Among the participants were German-born Malka Gorka, 73, who was brought to Israel by her parents in 1948, and Auschwitz survivor Carmela Ben Yehuda, 89, who came to Mandatory Palestine in 1945.

Russian-born Anna Grinis, 75, who was an infant when the war began, was crowned the winner by the wife of Israel’s prime minister, Sara Netanyahu. “When my mother was alive, she always used to tell me about this period (when) we ran way from Moscow … and there was nothing to eat there,” Grinis recalled. “We barely survived.”

“You all have endured the darkest period in history, and despite everything, you chose life,” Netanyahu said. “You chose to raise families, to work, to create and to continue living. You won.”

“I have no words to describe how excited I am,” Grinis said after she was crowned, according to Israeli media.

Organizers of the pageant said that it was a way to recognize the past suffering of the participants and afford them some respect, rather than a traditional beauty competition.

[Photo: Amos Ben Gershom /GPO ]