Recently, my husband and I were wandering around Old Jaffa and stopped to examine two aerial photos of the city mounted on a stone wall. A man came over, pointed to a screw securing one of the photos, and said, “This is where you are now.”
It was Victor Politis, the photographer. He graciously invited us into his home across from the wall and told us some of his life story, which is so chock-full of fascinating adventures and accomplishments that I can only convey a few highlights here.
Politis was born in Volos, Greece; his father was a Jewish shopkeeper. In 1998, Victor and his wife, Ani, a Haifa-born gynecologist raised in Milan, financed the Holocaust Memorial in Volos. They later sponsored the renovation of the city’s cemetery, the publication of a community cookbook titled Jewish Recipes and Traditions, and an exhibition about the small but longstanding Jewish community at the Museum of the City of Volos.
Since the 1970s, Politis has photo-documented street life in some 80 countries and won prizes, such as the Canon International Photography Award. His photographs have appeared in international publications (such as Wings, the first in-flight magazine, which he published in Nigeria) and in one-man exhibitions in London, New York, Istanbul, Lagos, Old Jaffa, and Jerusalem.
He is also a successful businessman and sometimes combines the two avocations. One of his coffee-table books, Festivals of Nigeria through the Eyes of a Passerby, was produced while he was managing projects such as establishing Nigeria’s first aluminum can factory.
When Politis was 17, he received a scholarship to study at Cambridge for a semester. He returned to Greece just after a military coup had taken place. “The junta took over, and in Volos there were signs that read, ‘Greece for Christian Greeks,’” he recalls.
Victor moves to Israel
That same year, the Six Day War inspired him and other young Jews to consider going to Israel instead of applying to Greek universities. In August 1968, Politis boarded a ship to Haifa. (His brother Moshe followed a year later.)
The young Greeks joined hundreds of peers from 41 countries at an ulpan/absorption center in Nazareth Illit, now called Nof HaGalil.
“My roommates were from South Africa and the Czech Republic. My experience during those six months was really one of a true melting pot. It was a lot of fun,” he says.
Politis then attended a preparatory program at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, housed in wooden buildings and in the old Hadassah Hospital building. “We were trained to use a gun and took turns carrying it in case it became necessary.”
Before moving on to Tel Aviv University, he lived in Ramat Gan and worked nights on an Amcor refrigerator assembly line.
“Every time I had a chance, I came to Old Jaffa to see how talented musicians and artists were homesteading, fixing, and building places that they’d bought for very little money,” he recounts. “I fell in love with the place, which was becoming an artist colony.”
He would later return there permanently after many years in the United States. “Every time I came to Israel to see my brother and his family, I spent quite a bit of time in Old Jaffa.”
In 1970, Politis moved from Israel to Boston. He studied at the University of Massachusetts and held different jobs to support himself. Since he spoke French fluently (he speaks five languages), the UMass French Department offered him a scholarship for a year at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Despite all that university-hopping, he never completed a degree. After the year in Paris, in 1974, his father died in Volos at age 60. “That started the new phase of my life,” he says.
In 1977, Politis moved to Manhattan. He worked at Rizzoli bookstore and then managed Amy’s, a small chain of fast-food restaurants owned by Israeli expat Nathan Steinman. During his tenure at Amy’s, he doubled the size of the chain.
“Most of what I knew about the restaurant business I learned from the people working there behind the counter and in the kitchen. I was interviewing them all day long,” he says.
In 1979, he borrowed money to purchase and renovate a rundown apartment on the Upper West Side. That was the first home he owned.
Victor and Ani met in New York, married in 1981, and raised two children there. In 1985, Politis began buying abandoned buildings in Harlem, renovating them, and then renting or selling them. He continued that line of work successfully in Georgia and Florida.
Politis, sans a college degree, taught a course on project development and financing at New York University and won NYU’s Teaching Excellence Award. He was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine and Ernst & Young and was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Casablanca in 1994.
Buoyed by the success of a 1990 deal in which he and a partner secured funding for the purchase of Israel-based Alliance Tire Company, in 1995 Politis founded Project Capital, which has handled diverse projects on four continents. For example, Project Capital saved a hazelnut export company in Turkey, and raised funding to keep a state-owned refinery going in Lithuania.
Victor and his wife return to Israel
Around 2005, Ani and Victor were ready to move from the Big Apple and considered Shanghai or Istanbul as their next home. But their daughter, Maya, encouraged them to return to Israel. And the only place Politis wanted to live in Israel was Old Jaffa.
One day in Israel in 2007, he called Ani in New York to tell her he had found the perfect house. It was a ramshackle building on a corner of Old Jaffa looking out on Ramses Gate. Politis saw its potential and blithely cut through reams of red tape to acquire the property and restore it.
Thanks to a dedicated team of mostly Arab workers, the renovations were completed in 10 months.
Politis, who added salvaged touches to the interior, such as a wooden Star of David window from a burnt synagogue in Haifa, discovered to his surprise that he was not considered a new immigrant but rather a returning citizen like his wife.
“I went to a hospital in Ramat Aviv to do some tests, bringing my American passport. The woman looked me up in the computer and found out that I had a te’udat zehut [identity card] from 1968. I was in shock,” he recounts.
Victor and Ani threw a housewarming party in early 2009. Guests included close friends, art collector Ilana Goor, whose eponymous museum is nearby, and the workers responsible for the renovations.
The Politis’ son, David, lives in Manhattan; daughter Maya lives in Tel Aviv. Both traveled the world from the age of 14 doing community-building projects in developing countries.
“We made sure they learned that people are pretty much the same everywhere, except maybe for their religion and the color of their skin. Both of them are great human beings as a result,” says their proud papa.
Each child has given Victor and Ani two grandchildren – Noah, Sammy, Cami, and Oren. Politis is currently cataloging his photos and memorabilia from across the world and says he takes immense pleasure from the interest his grandchildren show in these keepsakes.
While still involved with his development company, Politis spends hours at his windows high above the street, observing and photographing groups of visitors, wedding photo shoots, and the architecture of his beloved Jaffa.And because he’s a people person, he also goes outside to chat with strangers like us. We are grateful to have met this extraordinary man.
Victor Politis, 74: From Greece to Nazareth Illit, 1968. From Manhattan to Jaffa, 2009