n 1932 married my grandmother, Valerie Kettler (née Lazarsfeld) and adopted her two daughters, my mother Evelin  and her sister Ruth. In 1933 the Lachman family immigrated to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. He became  one of the leading ENT specialists in Palestine, and was deeply involved in the early stages of building the new the State of Israel.

His research included hearing problems of wounded soldiers and industrial workers. He died in Tel Aviv in 1961.

I was born in Jerusalem to a family that was idealistic about building a democratic Jewish State, but I was constantly aware of their connection to European values and recent history. The society in which I grew up was constantly engaged in war and national conflict, in addition to memories of the Holocaust.
I dream of tolerance, co-existence and peace between people.

The badge I designed expresses this hope by superimposing a symbol of peace—the olive branch—upon an artefact that expressed in the past the honour of military service: the Iron Cross. In the spirit of the famous verse from Isaiah, the vision expressed by this badge might be said to be, ‘They shall transform their Iron Crosses into olive branches’. I have dedicated it to the memory of my grandfather Josef Lachman, who fought for his ideals as a German citizen in the First World War, and strived for peace in the state of Israel. 

I inherited a collection of family photographs taken in Germany and Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century.  I have also made a series of portrait badges, combining  the art of the jeweller/enameler and that of the photographer, as a personal reminder of that world that has vanished.