Holocaust survivor Gabrielle Haller becomes an Israeli Ambassador to Great Britain and mother to the powerful mutant David Haller, AKA Legion. She fiercely loves her son, whom she goes to great lengths to help and protect.
Holocaust Survivor
Gabrielle Haller is an Israeli Holocaust survivor who, having experienced extreme trauma in Dachau, withdrew into catatonic schizophrenia, retreating from reality. She is cared for at a psychiatric hospital by Dr. Daniel Shomron. When all his attempts to bring her out of her trance state fail, he calls upon his old friend, Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, a telepathic mutant and “miracle worker”. Xavier arrives at the hospital and meets Shomron as well as one of the volunteers and fellow Holocaust survivor, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, AKA Magneto, a mutant with magnetic powers.
Xavier uses his abilities to help Gabrielle by entering her mind. He finds resistance in the form of a barrier and monstrous insects defending her self-imposed sanctuary. The imaginary creatures sense Xavier’s presence and attack, but he breaks through her wall to find Gabrielle reliving World War II.
Still inside her mind, he discovers that her grandmother died in a cattle car by Gabby’s side while Gabby survives the concentration camp, amidst thoughts of suicide and begging the Nazi guards for the gas chamber. She is then transformed by a commandant’s spell that turns her into solid gold. At this moment, she is awakened from her trance and Xavier comforts her with assurances that she is safe.
Diplomat
As an Israeli Ambassador to Great Britain, Gabrielle is an adept speaker and eventually earns a doctorate. With her doctorate and as an Ambassador, she serves on a defense counsel in one of Magnus’s trials, negotiates the secret exchange of prisoners, and represents Israel at unification events.
Axis Adversaries and Assassins
As a young child, Gabrielle and her family were taken to a concentration camp by the Nazis and powerless, she watched her family perish around her. Though she survives, it takes a toll on her psyche and lands her in a hospital after the war concluded. She experiences a trance state for a time.
Wolfgang Von Strucker, AKA Baron Strucker, the Hydra leader, kidnaps Gabrielle to extract her knowledge of hidden Nazi gold. He succeeds but is unable to defend himself against her mutant friends, Xavier and Magnus.
An Aqiri Super Hero accidentally shot and killed Gabrielle in an attempt to assassinate her son, Legion. The hero’s president had been holding a grudge against David.
Friends and Loves
While Gabrielle is in a trance state after surviving the Holocaust, Dr. Daniel Shomron cares for her at a psychiatric hospital. Volunteers such as Xavier and Magnus also assist in caring for her.
Gabrielle joins Xavier and Magnus as their traveling companion once she’s liberated from her catatonic state. Xavier and Gabrielle share a romance and have a son, David, though she keeps David from him until he exhibits powerful psionic abilities that threaten the lives of others, including their mutual friend Moira MacTaggert who exhausts her resources to help him.
Gabrielle later becomes close friends with Dr. Daniel Shomron, who is also David's Godfather until assassins kill him.
A Diplomat’s Chronicle
While Gabrielle recovered from the mental ordeal she suffered, Shomron revealed that Gabby expressed verbal images during the session with Xavier, including her transformation into a gold statue. Xavier postured that it was associated with extraordinary pain and fear but that his guess was as good as his at the meaning of it.
Meanwhile, a Nazi within the hospital informed his leader of Gabby’s return to consciousness.
In the weeks that followed, Xavier and Magnus become her constant companions and Gabby bridges the gulf between her old and new life in Israel with ease. The three friends traveled the country together and on their journey, Gabby falls in love with Xavier who seeks solace in her love.
Though Gabby and Xavier are attacked by mercenaries and Gabby is kidnapped by the assailants despite her struggles against them. It becomes clear that she was taken by the terrorist organization, Hydra, led by Nazi Baron Strucker who tortured information out of Gabby about a hidden stash of Nazi gold. To protect herself, Gabby returned to a catatonic state, meanwhile Xavier and Magnus used their powers to defeat Strucker.
When Gabby heard Xavier’s voice, she came out of her trance and realized her mind’s hiding place was akin to a living death and sought life instead. Though their relationship ended not long after and Xavier left unaware that Gabby was pregnant.
Haller concealed their son, David’s existence from Xavier, later becoming the Israeli ambassador to Great Britain and marrying Dr. Daniel Shomron. After moving to Paris for Gabrielle to serve in the Israeli diplomatic service, their home was invaded by an anti-Semitic assassination team, who killed Shomron before the 10-year old David’s eyes, the terror catalyzing his mutant powers, which he used to destroy the assassins’ minds. However, while doing so, he unwittingly psychically connected with their thoughts and emotions as they died, shattering David’s mind into multiple personas (dissociative identity disorder) and rendering him catatonic.
By his late teens, David’s catatonia transitioned to autism, and Gabrielle entrusted David’s care to Moira MacTaggert, a longtime colleague of Xavier. But when David uncontrollably absorbed the consciousness of two of her associates, MacTaggert and Gabrielle summoned Xavier to her Muir Island research facility to assist.
Xavier arrived with a number of his students. In his efforts to help David and learning that he was his son, he attempted to treat him but in the process, David absorbed his mother’s mind as well as some of the other mutants. While in David’s mind, Gabrielle and the others met David’s personalities including the absorbed mind of the assassin who killed Shomron. He admitted to her that he absorbed David’s telepathic talent and learned how gentle David’s soul is, so he tried to repair David’s splintered psyche into psi-selves and reintegrate them into David’s core self.
Meanwhile, Xavier worked with Moonstar and found that David’s multiple personas called themselves Legion. They were able to restore David’s mind to near-normalcy, returning Gabrielle and the others’ absorbed consciousnesses back to the physical plane.
Sometime later, Gabrielle joined her friend Magnus’, now called Magneto, defense counsel alongside Xavier. Magneto had been charged with crimes against humanity, but the trial was disrupted by Baron Strucker’s mutant children. After they were defeated, Magneto did not return to the proceedings.
