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Family News and Photos from Israel
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Late in 1948, I was suddenly shocked when
my dear brother Saul passed away in February. I had no idea that he was so sick
with *leukemia. It was the second time that I had to trudge through the snow to
reach the funeral parlor of Garlick* in
We had taken the trolley car along
Southern Boulevard to
But my mother kept right on doing the
usual housework. Perhaps it was out of necessity, because we had no money for
household help and there was no Medicare at that time. Perhaps she was not
aware of the danger because she had never really opened up to the American
scene.
Suddenly I saw half her body paralyzed*
and quivering*. I was scared to death. We called an ambulance* or a taxi and
took her to
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I had graduated from the
I can only remember a few
pleasant meetings with the representatives of some Jewish fraternity* who
rushed me. That is, they sat me down and acted real friendly. I was flattered
but did not join, perhaps because I simply could not pay the annual membership*
fee, but was too embarrassed to admit it.
I also remember a Dr. Schechter* at CCNY,
an amiable professor in a white gown and a smelly pipe. He introduced me to the
anatomy of a frog and I almost fainted from the dissection. I recall how proud
I was to join the ROTC* (Reserve Officers Training Corps), put on a uniform ,
feel grown up and taking part in the action. I was proud to be in the ROTC,
even though all we did was to march, drill, and listen to a lot of lectures.
I felt the need to be proud because many
people disliked the Jews. I felt inferior, especially because of my facial
features, which were definitely not of the North European type. I once
discussed my feelings of inferiority with a neighborhood Protestant Episcopal
minister who had befriended me when I had been in Troop 122* of the Boy Scouts.
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Our troop met in the basement of the local
That was a pity because it was a missed
opportunity. The Scouts were like a window out to the wide world. While tying
my fingers into sailors' knots*, I began to day-dream about earning all those
prestigious scout badges.
I remember that we had some outings into
nature, maybe into the wooded area of Van Courtlandt Park. To this very day, I
get a warm feeling whenever I smell the smoke of a campfire of fresh branches.
But there were some incidental expenses for uniforms and travel and they were a
burden on my family.
My parents frowned on any outside work or
extra-curricular activity, claiming that
it would interfere with my studies. But they did allow me to bring coffee after
school from Zlotnik's* Bakery on Southern Boulevard to Mr. Zacharias* the
barber, for a tip of ten cents.
I also delivered papers for a few months
for a local candy store. I used to stand in a parking lot out in the freezing
cold*, waiting for the distribution truck to arrive. Then I would carry the
papers to the store. One day I entered the cabin of a parked truck to get out
of the cold. Some bullies came over to me and just kicked me out.
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At sixteen or so,
without asking my parents, I got a job stacking returned books at a public
library in another neighbor-hood. The work itself was quite dull but two things
helped to liven it up. First, I got a chance to have a peek at books other than
text-books*, and that was a welcome change. Until then, textbooks*, notebooks* and learning had been
my whole life.
Second, I had some
long talks with the Irish janitor* during our breaks. He was a prime example of
a dogmatic Roman Catholic. He tried to be polite by admitting that all
religions have the right to exist and build houses of prayer. But he is certain
that Catholicism* is the only true religion. I am reminded of this whenever I
hear that Marxist dialectical materialism is the only true social philosophy or
that Orthodoxy* is the only true form of Jewish worship.
Well, I began to
wonder whether my time spent at work was worth the effort. One day I left the
job and walked out after very short notice, which was not fair to the
librarians, I admit. I must have been in a panic from my parents' pestering me
to stay home.
When I quit, they
breathed a sigh of relief to see me back at my writing table in the bedroom
that I shared with my brother Saul. So it was back to looking at the brick
walls and barred windows at the back of the adjacent tenement buildings. Back
to day-dreaming about blue skies, green fields and chirping birds.
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To finish the story about the Scouts, the
immediate reason for my departure was a dispute in our troop. For some reason,
our scout-master, Mr. Richardson*, had to transfer to another troop. His
assistant, Mr. Young, was the natural candidate to replace him. One day, Young
came over to my house to ask for my support. He claimed that the Protestant
hosts of our troop refused to approve his promotion to scoutmaster because he
is a Catholic.
I did not know him too well but I was very
sympathetic to Young, who was younger than
After one semester at CCNY, I had enough
of biology and enlisted in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP*). I
explained it to my parents as a chance to get some free schooling in electrical
engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick*, New Jersey.
I would have a uniform, free tuition, room
and board, plus social activities. I spent about nine months at
The ASTP soldiers in the group before us
got caught up in the
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The
Germans already knew that the war in the East was lost. At about Christmas time
in 1944, the gathered all their remaining resources for a big offensive against
the American lines on the French border. Our soldiers had been rushed through
very shortened basic training courses. I know that our course lasted for only
six weeks instead of the usual three months. It seemed that the Army was in a
hurry to move us out to
In
basic training, I felt that we were not really ready to do any fighting. We
once had an exercise in which we went out on patrol and were asked to react to
various surprises on the way, such as a land mine, an enemy sniper*, a sudden
ambush*, rough vegetation, barbed wire and so on.
At the
end of the exercise, the commanding officer gathered us together around a
sand-table and asked us to remove our helmets in a moment of mourning for all
the men who would have been killed or wounded in the simulated patrol. Then he
went over all our mistakes. The patrol was difficult for me because I was not
in good physical shape after several months in college.
For
example, I could not run up to a wooden wall* and jump onto it and climb over.
I tried again and again and failed. This was not pleasant because all the
others climbed it very easily. During one or two weekends I stayed behind in
camp to practice climbing this wall. I do not remember whether I volunteered to
stay in camp or whether our platoon* sergeant just would not give me a weekend
pass* to go to town. In the end, I lost weight and succeeded.
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I have
a negative trait in my character which sometimes blocks me from facing reality.
I first became aware of this in elementary school when I was under stress. I
loved classical music even then, especially the romantic music of Peter
Tchaikovsky*.
From
time to time I would surprise myself by humming tunes from his symphonies, even
while climbing the staircase in going from one class to another. Perhaps I was
happy or sad or frustrated at such a time, but the humming* of the music
certainly gave me a good feeling.
But
sometimes I knew right away when I was making a mistake, Once we got a task for
homework to find out the name of the President of
The
news spread like wildfire and a swarm of pupils quickly surrounded me to hear
the name. I felt flattered and even popular, but very soon everyone scattered, and not because the
school-bell rang. I was left with the feeling that they pupils had exploited me
for their own benefit and that I probably could not count on their help in
return.
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I held
several talks with a young man named Alfred or Albert*, who called
himself Al. It was in the schoolyard while
sitting on a ledge of stone next to the baseball field. He must have
sensed that I was under stress and tried to converse with me. To this day, I am
not sure about his full name, his intentions and whether he was a teacher, a
social worker or whatever.
But he
made a big impression on me, enough to prompt me to write about him in my
diary. I suppose that my urge to report in writing about my activities began
early in life. Instead of working ever harder to solve my problems, I would
start to day-dream* and imagine running away to more pleasant places.
This
happened from time to time when I felt severe pressure and emotional stress. I
would look out far into the distance and see myself walking in the fields among
the trees, far away from our barking sergeant, our anti-Semites and the war. Some
pupils tried to solve their problems by changing their family names.
I
remember a neighbor named Alfred Lembersky*. His name showed that his family
came from
From
Let me
return to the last great German offensive in late 1944. They were very cunning
and clever. They wore the uniforms of
American soldiers and caught our boys in surprise ambushes*. They
confused our patrols by twisting* around road signs to point in the wrong
direction. They captured many prisoners and I could have been one of them.
I am
afraid to even think of how they would treat me when they saw that I am a Jew.
I would have felt safer, if you can call it that, to be sent to fight against
the Japanese. I shall never forget the war crimes of the German army,
especially when they wantonly massacred one hundred and eighty American
prisoners at Malmedy* in
A
military camp is a mosaic* of sights and sounds*. I remember how surprised I
was to see black soldiers housed in a remote corner of the camp. They were in
separate units and not allowed to mingle with us. I could not comprehend this
because I had lived among blacks as a child. There are also the smells.
The
army served lots of coffee, especially after a night-time exercise, but it was
tasteless. Every cup of cheap coffee reminds me of army coffee. The barracks
were heated by local burners that used a crude oil similar to diesel fuel. The
smell of the burners in the winter permeated the whole camp and left a lasting
impression on my senses.
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I must
confess that I was naïve in many ways and was under the influence of the
puritanical principles of my sister Jeanne. It bothered me very much to hear
all the cursing around me. Some of the curses such as Dammit* were relatively
mild. But others involved the Holy Spirit and the anatomy of women. I knew one
sergeant who kept a Bible in his office with many bookmarks*. He could find and
quote all the passages about love, sex, phil-andering and adultery.
We had
one instructor who kept telling a story in episodes about a woman who was being
lowered in a peach basket* into the bosom of a soldier waiting underneath.
There must have been a point to it all, because everyone around me was
laughing, but I could not under-stand what the story was all about.
I must
also confess that I was not very smart in my behavior at that time. I once got
very friendly with the corporal of our platoon, a Southern Christian named
Pugh*. By mistake, I thought that I could confide in him and asked him how he
felt about all the “chicken shit” in our company. “Chicken shit” was the
popular expression for the hard and sometimes harsh rules of training. He was
very offended and took it personally, as if he was the one responsible for all
`the running around and tough training regime.
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Once I
was waiting in line in the dining hall and talking to my friend behind me about
how dead-tired I am from all that running around. I did not notice that our
regimental commander, Colonel Tracy*, was nearby and overheard me talking. I
was called into his office and charged with bad-mouthing officers and hurting
morale. Also present was his assistant, a gentile named Captain Schuster*. I
could hear them whispering, “What can you expect from these soldiers from
I was
punished with a month of KP, that is, Kitchen Police. This is an elegant title
for peeling potatoes and onions all day. I became well acquainted with the
morning cook, a crude soldier of American Indian origin from
I also
made mistakes with my buddies in the platoon. I was using a machine gun with a
Southern boy named Eason*. There were many boys from the South in our unit. I
remember one named Steagall who was very friendly. I was fascinated by the slow
Southern accent of Eason. I was tempted to imitate it in a friendly way.
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Slowly
but surely, Eason began to dislike the idea and thought that I was mocking him. I decided to apologize, back off
and speak normally, but it was too late. Eason gave me a dirty look, “You’re a
Jew, aren’t you?” I realized that our friendship should remain confined to our
machine gun*.
My
careless talk about chicken shit was partly due to my lack of acceptance among
the people in my barracks. By chance, they were mostly Yugoslavs from the coal
mines of
Zigo
was short and blonde and once challenged me to a fight. He said, “I know you
guys, you own all the stores in Mercer*,
The
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Antisemitism
even infected Saracelli*, my Italian-American neighbor. He was friendly until
he discovered I’m Jewish and he became very cool to me. Of course, I did not
emphasize my religion, although the Southerners were so infected with hatred
against Negroes that they seemed to regard every white man as a brother.
Private
Cease*, a cheerful, chubby Southerner, stopped me once and wished me a happy Jewish
holiday. I asked, "How did you know that I am Jewish?" He replied
that he is from
There
was a large Roman Catholic church across the street from the campus. It was the
object of my fantasies of running away to greener pastures. I used to listen to
the regular ringing of the church bells and they attracted my attention. I
asked myself, “Why not walk in and take a look around? Surely they would
welcome me and make me feel comfortable.”
This
was surely naïve because it would ignore all the centuries of the Inquisition*
and other persecution. But I did indeed enter one day. I sat down and began to
read booklets about their principles. I was amazed to discover that their ideas
about marriage and sin contradict all the liberal ideas that I had learned in
school. I went away feeling that here was another god who had failed.
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I have pleasant memories of
I was reminded of my failures in Mr. Jackson's class in high
school. We would receive a project to draw a certain part and everyone would
finish it in a few days, whereas I was always late in handing it in. Despite my
difficulty in under-standing shapes, I remember that I enjoyed the
calligraphy*, lettering, language and symbols in the drawings. Even then, I
suppose, those were my real interests.
We lived in a dormitory that had become vacant when the students
were drafted. Despite the restrictions, I did manage to make friends with a lot
of young people my age and got a taste of what it was like to live away from
home. I used to travel home by the Pennsylvania Railroad every weekend and even
today I remember some of the stops with strange-sounding names such as Metuchen*,
Rahway*, Hightstown, and New Brunswick.
I had never been away from home before, except for a few weeks in
a summer camp during the early years of the war. I took advantage of a free
vacation offered by our neighborhood Settlement House at a camp somewhere in
the Catskills.
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The
earth smelled fresh and moist and the air was cool and clean. Our footsteps on
the wooden planks of the floor echoed through the hollows in the foundations.
Unfortunately, there were rips in the window screens and the mosquitoes* would
invade and sting. Some campers had fertile imaginations and whispered that
German Nazis may be living in the area.
One of
our young counselors stands out, a certain Schwartz*, who was waiting to be
drafted. He used to take us out on nature walks and ask us to dig for little
animals and rocks. When we complained that we want to keep our hands clean, he
used to explain, "Hey, fellas, dirty hands are all right, because there is
clean dirt and dirty dirt. This dirt here is clean." I have not forgotten
that lesson.
When you are young and ride home on trains
it is an unforgettable experience and I therefore regret that I live so far
from any railway in
From
Being away from home in the army, I had
become detached from my family to the point that I even had no idea that my
father's health was failing. Well, I knew that he had a heart problem. He would
get out of breath just climbing up to our apart-ment upstairs. But he never
suffered any sustained chest pains and was never close to a heart attack. I did
know that he took some pills such as digitalis*.
He held on for several years, but my
sister Jeanne had already begun to watch over him. I think that she helped him
to move from our second-floor apartment on
I must give my sister full credit for
this, because she had suffered a lot from the bitter opposition of our parents
and Aunt Ida over her marriage in 1946 to Joe Zanger. They kept repeating a
rumor that he had a wife and three children hidden secretly somewhere. I could
never believe such an absurd story. I am sure that Joe had some faults, but he
was not a philanderer*. Jeanne was very hurt because the three children
belonged to Joe’s married brother, not Joe.
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Joe Zanger
was a simple laborer, a gentle soul who had been embittered by the anti-Semitic
attitudes of his fellow-workers in the shipyards*, where he worked as a welder.
In fact, he was injured in the eye by a spark from his welding torch and did
not see too well after that. He thinks that he was so upset by the insults and
snubs that he just lost his concentration and hurt himself. The detractors* in
our family simply could not understand that this is
Such a loving family would not just
see her as a daughter of inferior status, as was the custom in
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Jeanne
had had several suitors and I remember their names. There was Lenny*
Rosenzweig, the husky pre-dental student and Joe Goldstein, who couldn't find
work and had joined the National Guard. Joe used to admire my large frame and
encouraged me to go in for contact sports. He once invited me to take the ferry
to his base at Governors*
My
sister turned to me and asked for a brother’s understanding. After all, we had
trekked together her over the Triboro* Bridge that crossed two rivers, into
far-off neighborhoods and towns. Once we even walked across the
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Under her influence, I enrolled for the
weekend nature walks sponsored by the Herald Tribune* with some respected guide
whose name was perhaps
I think that it was my wanderings on foot that
prompted me to make a supreme effort at age 16 to learn to ride a bicycle. I
would rent a bike in
The group included my high school friend
and neighbor Jay Graber*. By the way, Jay later moved to
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Jay Graber said that his neighborhood has
many rich people and is a target for car thieves. They broke into his car
several times and stole one or two. When they encounter a locked steering
wheel*, they cannot drive the car away, so they become frustrated and angry.
They smash at the wheel with force, break it off and vandalize the car.
Jay’s wife Anita had a sad youth. She was
born in
By the way, there were also car-thieves in
From
To
return to my youth, as time went on and the family squabbles continued, my
confusion increased and I could hardly concentrate on school work. On the one
hand, I got the habit of closing my ears against bitter, baseless and
back-biting* talk. On the other hand, I began to act like a journalist. That
is, I would listen to one side of a story and reply by quoting the other side.
This is good balanced journalism and preserves the trust of your sources of
information. But if the people around you are your own family, it can be
dangerous because it can draw flak and accusations of being naive and
credulous.
I was
learning the dangers of extreme views and the necessity to find compromises by
getting together and talking things out. I am sure that many other young people
who are caught up in such a dysfunctional* situation come to similar
conclusions.
In the
late winter of 1944, while I was still in uniform, I was selected to return to
the ASTP program, this time at
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I
began to date steadily a girl named Lois Salzman* from
Esther
Kaplan* was another story. She was tall and fair and wore thick lenses over her
red cheeks. She was unusually shy and bashful but sometimes broke out into
laughter for no apparent reason. Her parents, however, were not shy at all.
They insisted that I observe the Sabbath with them and questioned me closely
about my religious practices, making it very clear that if I am not ready to
keep to traditions, then there is nothing more to talk about. Rita Leisten, on
the other hand, was mysterious and really turned me on. She was so intellectual
that I came away from every meeting with my head full of new ideas. My head was
full of some age-old ideas as well.
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But Rita Leisten* kept her distance in an
elegant way. At last I realized that our relationship had come to a dead end.
It was through Rita that I met another student, Iris Litt*. My wife Ruth tells
me that Iris was a fellow student at
The show finished late and the girls
rushed to the Grand Central Station to catch the last train of the
Lois Saltzman* was plain, superficial and
often giddy, but also out-going and fun-loving. I felt good with her and was
only one short step away from declaring my intentions when she hinted that her
father had some plans to take me into his business. For me, a poor boy from the
From
As I
recall, another problem with Lois was that she did not share my enthusiasm for
Jewish activities. I never saw her at Hillel House or at demonstrations for
To be
fair to Lois, I think that she offered me real friendship and perhaps even
affection. To this day, I am grateful for her interest in me, which helped me
to learn about women. Lois was just about the only girl friend at college whose
face and character I clearly remember. I sincerely hope that she married the
right guy and set up a family as she had wished.
I
graduated from
From
This lack of proper background and training reminded me of the
time when I became interested in religion. I had just been discharged from
service in August 1946 and still felt a need to find my bearings. I wrote a
long letter to the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan* seminary (later
I knew that I would never be a rabbi because I had been detached
from synagogue life for so long. Actually, my interest was aroused when I was a
basketball fan in high school. One of the teams in our league was the
Talmudical*
Then in the army I began to go to services on Friday evenings out
of lack of much else to do in camp. The chaplain* assumed that I knew the
prayers and called me to take part but I was so embarrassed about my ignorance
that I found excuses to wiggle out. My buddies had whispered that he was not so
pure as he appears and had been seen whooping* it up in
From
I do
recall that he loved to discuss religious issues and we had deep discussions
sometimes. He once urged me to stay away from the Reconstructionist* movement
of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan because in his view it is pantheistic and emphasizes
only certain aspects of the Almighty whereas the Orthodox see all the aspects.
My interest in religion had been sustained during my time at college. Feeling
lonely, I would frequently attend parties and lectures at the old Hillel House,
where I was greeted and befriended by Rabbi Harry Kaplan. We held many informal
conversations, during which he impressed me with his wide range of knowledge
and humane approach to students. Looking back, I think that he felt that I was
groping for an ideal and lacked a real compass* in life.
Rabbi
Harry Kaplan did not talk or behave like a guru*, simply like a mentor*. His
was the human face of Judaism and I was impressed. He may have been a
Conservative or even a Reconstructionist, I do not know. That was the beauty of
it, because he emphasized the basics of being a Jewish student. He avoided
partisan politics and kept to the big issues of the day, such as the struggle
to implement the United Nations decision to partition
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It was
at the Hillel House that I had met several students from
Alex
emphasized that he is not the emissary or representative of any organization;
but rather a private person who has come to study He was quite preoccupied with
the dangerous military situation all over Palestine, especially on the roads
and in Jerusalem. He kept repeating that it is not a game, that real bullets*
are flying and killing people.
He was
astonished by what he regarded as our naive approach to current events and
tried to wake us up to reality. But his attitude could not dampen my enthusiasm
and his lack of interest in Zionist action put him at the bottom of my list. We
marked him down as someone coming from a tired and cynical*
Another
student from
From
Despite
his bourgeois* background, Aryeh was close to the labor movement and identified
himself as a member of the Hagana, the underground self-defense force of the
Histadrut* Federation of Labor. Sometimes, when we met on the paths of the
campus, he would recognize me from Hillel House and stop his bicycle to talk.
I was
fascinated by his constant use of a bicycle and asked him about it. He was
proud that Tel Aviv (at that time) was free of motorcars and everyone rode
around on bicycles. The weather was usually mild and the cost of cars was
prohibitive for many. This led me to ask about culture* and customs* in
I once
remarked that I had discussed some violent incident in the
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When
hostilities broke out, the Jewish Agency warned all Palestinian students to
continue their studies in the States for the sake of the future. Aryeh ignored
this instruction and rushed back to join his unit. He fell in action in the
Another
sabra whom I met was Ehud Levi Pascal*, a chubby*, short fellow with a thin
voice and no-nonsense attitude. Unlike Kesselman, he liked to have a good time
downtown, dancing and drinking at bars. Since I naively regarded every
Palestinian student as a representative of our cause. I was stunned. His name
interested me though and I hinted to him about his background. Since he was not
very responsive, I turned to Aryeh Kesselman for information.
It
turned out that Pascal is a variation of Paschal (Pesach) and he comes from an
old Sephardi family who had settled in Petach Tikva and made a lot of money
using Arab labor in citrus orchards. He was in the centrist* General Zionist
movement but sympathized with the leftist Hagana self-defense force. He did not
sympathize with the rightist underground called the National Military
Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi), under Menachem Begin.
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Ehud Levi Pascal also had no sympathy for the leftist underground
called the Freedom Fighter of Israel (Lochemei Herut Yisrael), under Avraham
Yellin-Mor*. These dissident groups rejected the Hagana policy of
self-restraint* (havlaGA). Instead, they insisted on blind retaliation against
the police and army of the British Mandatory authorities and demanded active
armed resistance. I found out about the sympathies of Ehud Levi Pascal one
evening when we attended a lecture at Hillel House. The lecturer was a
spokesman of some American organization that supported the Irgun militia of
Begin.
The speaker kept hammering*
away at the military situation in
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The people seated around us were amazed at
the fury of the reaction and acted to restrain the two Palestinians. I myself
was sure that a fist* fght would break out. In the end, everyone calmed down
and the lecture continued but the lecturer was not repentant for his vicious
charges. I remember coming away with the feeling that the stakes are very high
in
My biggest disappointment, however, was
Haim Polishuk. He was tall, thin, well-groomed with a mustache and always
dressed in loud suits, jackets and ties. I spoke to him several times at Jewish
gatherings and was impressed by his British mannerisms and his lack of interest
in Zionism, which he concealed by an amiable façade*. For the life of me I
could not figure out how a Jew could live in
The Communist opponents see in Zionism a
nationalist force that turns people away from the class struggle. The
ultra-orthodox opponents, such as Agudat Yisrael*, see Zionism as a secular
force that turns people away from religion and delays the coming of the
Messiah. I concluded that Haim Polishuk was just a plain petty bourgeois who
behaved as if he had drifted into
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This
idea of people drifting along on the tides of fate was later nailed down for me
at an ideological seminar of our kibbutz movement. Our principal lecturer was
the elderly spiritual and political leader of the Kibbutz Meuchad, Yitzhak
Tabenkin*. He spoke about passive Jews who drift with the tides of fate. He
used the Greek word "sty-CHI-a" to describe this phenomenon of
history. I admit that I had never heard this word before and I can only assume
that it is a part of the Marxist doctrine. It is apparently from the Greek but
it wasn't in the Webster unabridged dictionary.
Stychia
seems to be the process of aimless wandering, without a plan, just drifting
along, buffeted by the winds of change. The wanderer trusts fate and looks for
the easiest way out to better horizons. This could apply not only to Jewish
history, but also to aimless job-hopping*, to love affairs that come and go, and so on.
The idea of Stychia has stuck in my mind because my own parents
had wandered out of
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But still, in their choice of a destination, my parents just followed the leaders in their
town. In effect, they emigrated in the footsteps of their relatives who had
already arrived, settled down and vouched* for them. It was a cycle in which my
own parents, after they had arrived and settled down, could vouch for the rest
of the family who had stayed behind in waiting.
To
return to the Israeli Haim Polishuk, it was clear that he came from a wealthy
family because he needed to finance his studies without a scholarship. It was
obvious that he had rarely set foot outside the Tel Aviv area, He was a solid
supporter of the anti-Labor* movement of Menachem Begin.
It
made me realize clearly that
To
return to my application to the rabbinical seminary, it was rejected. I do not
have a copy of their letter, but it stated that my background in Jewish studies
was too far below the required level. I
recall that they suggested that I take private lessons from a rabbi. They had a
point, since I knew next to nothing about the Talmud* or the writings of the
Sages.
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At
that time, the Yeshiva* College did not have any preparatory and outreach
programs, the way they have now. So my yearnings to express my Jewish feelings
had to find other outlets. After my brother's death, I saw no sense in
continuing my graduate studies in physics at
Ramat
means "the hill of" and Yochanan is in honor of General Jan Smuts*,
the white nationalist leader of
Although
the kibbutz is located not far from
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I
explained that I was a member of the Intercollegiate Zionist Federation of
As it
was, there was no training farm yet for IZFA people and I would have to go to
the training farm of Habonim, the youth movement of the Labor Zionist
Organization at Cream Ridge*, New Jersey. It was good for me emotionally
because I needed to get away, to work hard and consider my future.
I
don’t remember much about the Habonim farm, except that it was not on any
railway line and I had to travel either by bus or by hitching a ride on the
farm's truck. I felt a bit of an outsider because the trainees on the farm were
a bit younger than I and had known each other for a long time. I remember our
comrade Hayim Zeldis* who later made a mark for himself in English poetry and
literature. He would sit down on the floor with us and read poems and essays on
Jewish subjects, some written by himself. He had a small goatee beard and
intense feelings.
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Before
Zeldis, I had thought that poems were classical literature to be learned or
children's ditties about roses are red and violets are blue. His mentor was the
American Labor Zionist leader, Hayim Greenberg*. Despite some pleasant
experiences, the atmosphere was definitely parochial; there was an accepted set
of beliefs and slogans. This disturbed me, even though I agreed with many of
the socialist principles that were held to guarantee the Zionist revival.
My
impression of parochialism among the young pioneers was reinforced when we used
to receive visits from neighbors at the training farm of the Bnei Akiva*
religious movement. They would come from time to time to do some task or other
that could not be done on their own farm, maybe using our potato-peeling
machine. They were mostly native-born who lived cooperatively as we did but
their ultra-modest dress, devotion to prayers and refusal to eat our food put
up a barrier between us.
We
agreed about the need to settle the
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I keep wondering what the religious Zionists would have thought
had we introduced them to an extraordinary pioneer named
I have no idea how such a person could be admitted to our group of
idealists. Maybe her father had influence and pulled strings* to get her into a
healthy environment. I had met some free-living students in college but I had
never before met a real bohemian. It all seemed weird and unnatural. I was
truly fascinated by her way of living but nevertheless she scared me to death.
In my imagination, she was like a witch.
I remember getting stuck once on the highways. A friend and I
decided to attend a nation-wide Habonim (or was it IZFA?) convention in
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The
locals reported that a brutal assault had occurred at that same junction just a
short time ago, and everyone was wary of strangers. I suppose that we finally
had to catch a local bus to reach another town. This memory leads me to think
that hitch-hiking*was perhaps still an accepted norm in those days, whereas
nowadays it is another story. Getting stuck on the highways was nothing
compared to what happened to Dave Levine* who was with us at Cream Ridge. He
and a buddy were killed in a road accident on the way back East.
He was
a big, husky, cheerful fellow. I thought that he was from Canada but my friend
Moshe Sheskin*of kibbutz Hulda, who comes from Montreal, informs me that Dave
was a New Yorker who was with him at the Habonim training farm in Smithville,
Ontario. You could recognize Dave by the overalls that he always wore, ready to
jump onto a tractor or a farm machine.
I
think that the death of Dave Levine was the start of my obsession about road
accidents, which became stronger when I myself almost got seriously hurt. A
small commercial van in which I was a passenger in back overturned in 1950 near
Kibbutz Matzuba* in the
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However,
the framework and population of Matzuba were very different from those of our
home base at Bet HaShitta. Matzuba was a small society of about 150 members,
pioneer youth from
We had
discovered a group of young, well-educated French speaking Jews from
Kibbutz Bet HaShitta was looking to expand
both its population and its economy. The members of Matzuba belonged to the
main stream of the Labor party, that is, loyal to David Ben Gurion and his
policies. Bet HaShitta was divided into mainstream Labor and militant leftist
radicals who opposed any compromise with capitalism. These divisions would
become manifest later during the Korean War. In the meantime we could not
acclimatize* and we went back to Bet HaShitta after six months or so.
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About
the accident, a kibbutz driver had asked me to go along with him to load up
some barrels of lime* for use in white-washing walls. It was a rainy day and
the roads were wet. We were on a completely straight stretch of flat road
between hills when the small van began to skid and slowly fall to the right
side. As it was, I was sitting in back among the barrels and I got knocked
around a bit but came out without real injury. It could have been much worse if
we had been speeding, or if I had been sitting next to the driver. Also, If the
barrels had not been empty but rather full of lime, then they would have
battered me, splashed lime all over me and burned my skin. I escaped by the
skin of my teeth.
That
incident reinforced my general fixation on safety. I have joined and pay
regular dues to a non-profit foundation called Metuna (Moderation), with
headquarters in Netanya. The leaders of Metuna are Professor Zvi Weinberg (ex
British) of
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We
firmly believe that highway deaths are not really accidents, but rather reflect
the corruptive influences in our society, such as vulgarity*, impatience,
discourtesy and impoliteness. Under these influences, drivers travel at speeds
that do not fit road conditions and follow other cars at distances that do not
fit traffic conditions. Of course everyone has his own ideas about the causes
of death on the roads, and the list is endless - human error, bad roads, poor
lighting, poor policing and so on.
Yet
when a driver declares that he knows all about road safety because he drives a
car, it resembles a speaker of English who thinks he knows all about the
language because he uses it. When the victim of a crash arrives at the
emergency ward and his whole family is in shock*, then the causes are left far
behind. In effect, the war on road accidents is on such a wide front, that
every effort to fight it must be welcomed, no matter what the source or
outlook.
Metuna is based in Netanya but has close
links to the Jerusalem College of Technology, which has developed a hand-held
monitoring device called Marom* (Heights), now officially adopted by the
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Meanwhile,
at the training farm of Habonim at Cream Ridge, I was not in good physical
shape in the spring of 1948. I could hardly keep up with the others at work. To
help support the farm, we were encouraged to seek outside work. One week, I
found myself moving bales of hay from the fields to a haystack* in the second
story of a barn, which is usual in northern countries where there are rainstorms
in the summer.
The
farmer happened to be Jewish and quickly noticed my distress, even though there
was a motorized conveyor belt* for the bales. So he helped me out and gave me
some time to rest. I can only assume that he sympathized with the goals of our
training farm, because I was not really earning my wages.
This
farmer and others told stories about attempts by Jewish farmers to raise
chickens in
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Another
baron,
After my unsuccessful experi-ence with
bales of hay, I got the bright idea to look for work at an electrical*
enterprise in the vicinity. I wrote them a letter to introduce myself but did
not receive any reply. I fancied the idea that the owners were anti-Semites
anyway and probably did not want Jews around.
In fact, it was all so naive. I had no
references*, no experience and could not even guarantee that I would remain in
the area for any length of time. I could have done better as a dish washer and
indeed I did my turn washing dishes after meals on the farm.
After several months at Cream Ridge, the
time had come to move on. The Habonim labor Zionists needed the room for their
own people. Further-more, our own group of student Zionists was wary of getting
too close to any political party lest we lose our appeal to the general public
and scare off* people.
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So we decided to accept the offer of Young
My mention of scaring people away reminds me of an
incident with a reluctant supporter of the farm. He was a middle-aged local
businessman who occasionally came to visit. One time, he kept hacking away at
the subject of political Communism*. He was very worried about our cooperative
way of life and the danger of Communist influence. Our leaders tried to humor
him by explaining again and again that our kibbutz ways are not connected to
Communism or to Soviet
I
remember taking part in general meetings on all sorts of current issues. We
once discussed at length ways and means to help some parents who may need
financial assistance or medical attention because we their children were not at
home. Yet here too I could not really become active in working committees*.
From
This
was because I was a newcomer and not familiar with the workings of Young
For
the first time I saw spartan-looking* girls, short and stocky like Dina Green
and the peppery dynamo called Judy, playing basketball just like boys. I
suppose that my ideas of co-education were backward because I had gone to an
all-male high school, the
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The training farm of Young
Also,
unlike Cream Ridge, the place had a little makeshift synagogue and we used to
hold services under a canopy* on Friday evenings. Although I was estranged from
religious traditions, I did welcome the services as a social event and took part.
Guest rabbis would come to lead the prayers.
At
To tell the truth, my back would often
ache from the weeding* and I often found myself walking all the way back to the
kitchen just to straighten up for a while instead of standing in one spot. It
must have hurt my conscience because I remember it to this day.
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Another thing that I recall from
Danny
Brisker was very tempera-mental, articulate and sometimes argumentative. He was
stocky, with a strong jaw, square face and florid complexion. I still have a
photograph of him with Henrietta Szold when she visited a Youth Aliya village
run by the Hanoar Hatzioni* (Zionist Youth), affiliated with the General
Zionists. As I recall, he was born in
From
Danny
Brisker defended the mass rally by torch light, stating that it was not a
German invention and that the Nazis do not own the copyrights*. In his view,
mass rallies and drum parades are a tangible expression of solidarity among
youth and an honorable tradition; an integral part of many youth movements in
Europe to inspire and stir young people to action for any given cause.
Our
more moderate comrades intervened by claiming that Young Judea is not built
along the lines of European youth movements since it sprouted on free American
soil. Brisker was adamant and insisted that campfires and burning slogans are
symbols that incite and excite youth everywhere. I am reminded of all this
because I had intended to visit Danny Brisker for old times' sake when I came
to
Brisker
was a stormy petrel* and I remember him well because he introduced me to a type
of Israeli that I would later meet quite often. He held strong views based on
firm found-ations and was unwilling to compromise or concede anything to
opponents. He apparently felt that if he were to compromise on his ideology -
in this case, liberal, democratic, non-socialist Zionism - then he would be
compromising his integrity.
From
Until
now I had been a loner, without any other student Zionists to keep me company.
In the Fall, our movement rented the use of a farm at
I
remember encountering my first married couple, a tall, angular field worker
named Yonah* and his pretty wife. I observed them closely, trying to figure out
what it feels like to be permanently attached to one woman. My only memorable
farm experience was in working for a few days in filling and tying sacks of
buckwheat* at the back of a combine harvester. The grains came out straight
into a jute bag hanging on hooks from a metal ring. It was exciting work,
despite the terrible noise of the motor that sounded like an oncoming storm.
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Despite
the fast pace of the work and the noisy machine, I felt good about being
responsible and working hard. I had read about buckwheat in books, but had
never seen it before. Perhaps my mother, of blessed memory, kept buckwheat in
the house but she used to call it "kasha". To my untrained eye, it
looked like the ordinary wheat seed that Mr. Lebow* brought to our junior high
school biology class at Public School 52 on Kelly* Street in the Bronx. But I
was not sure of how wheat is turned into bread.
The
driver worked for a tractor station for the local farms. He used to slow down
from time to time to let me catch up. Our training farm could hardly afford to
buy a buckwheat harvester* because it could hardly repay the investment. The
operator wandered around from farm to farm, harvesting the buckwheat, and made
a lasting impression on me.
When I
hear of the kibbutz buying a large farm machine, or a new car for the car pool,
I wonder whether it would not be more economical to rent the machine or the
car. Maybe I think of all the rusted* farm machines lying around in sheds everywhere.
I imagine how they looked when they were shiny new and wonder whether they ever
paid back the cost before they became outmoded. I know from experience that
Israelis do not like to rent an apartment or anything else.
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There
have lately been attempts to introduce the leasing system into
According
to our pundits*, rent money only makes the owner richer, that is all, and in
the end you are left with nothing, holding an empty wallet. We prefer to chain
ourselves to a thirty-year mortgage instead, if only we can call ourselves the
owners. I understand that the moshav settlements of small co-op farms and some
Arab villages do have families who specialize in harvesting and picking
services, and in that they have the advantage over us in the kibbutz. We
apparently prefer to buy machines rather than rent them for use during the busy
season.
I can
still see the old wooden sheds of the farm at
From
For
me, who had driven only a bicycle before then (and even that, rarely, only as
an adolescent) it was a new experience to drive a tractor. I had seen rubber*
tires in other farms, but our tractor had metal wheels with spiral projections
to grip the soil. It may have been a result of the War, when rubber was
mobilized for the army.
After a few months, the fateful year of
1948 was drawing to a close and it was time to move on. I had exhausted the
option of farm training. I now needed to consider my future and get closer to
the scene of the action. As I look back, going back to my old life was no
longer a possibility. The Jewish world seemed to be going up in flames* and
here I was weeding vegetables and harvesting buckwheat. I had become friendly
with some of the girls and had even had a strong crush on a girl named Ruth
(not my wife Ruth) but she showed no interest in me and I remained unattached.
I did not find the emotional strength to
consult with my family. My sister Jeanne had married Joe Zanger and had moved
up to
From
Perhaps I knew inwardly that
if I let life pass me by, I would probably become a wimp or a nerd, that is,
very intelligent but dead inside The interesting thing is that I have only
recently picked up the terms "wimp*" and "nerd*". I do not
remember them from those days. We used to use other words for an unsuccessful
outsider worthy of pity, such as "nebbich" or "shlemiel" or
"shlemazel".
Apropos Yiddish, my parents
used to have some strong words to say about my sister's suitors, "Er iz ah
GAWR-nisht." This comes from the German and roughly means that he is
simply a nothing, a nobody, a non-entity*. This has been assimilated into
modern Hebrew as "EFF-es", meaning "a zero". And if you are
really pissed off at someone, you double it by saying "EFF-es
m'oo-PAHSS" meaning a Zeroed Zero. The epithets* may change but the urge
is apparently still with us.
Since my comrades counted on
me to help run the farm, I did not want to just run off and desert everyone. So
I discussed my position with them and wrote ,a long letter of explanation to
the pioneering section of the Jewish Agency explaining why I wanted to leave
the farm for
From
But I felt the need to set down my
thoughts, clear the cobwebs* out of my head and make it clear that I am not
leaving the group of students, just packing up earlier than the others. I
remember visiting the offices of the Jewish Agency to receive their reply. For
the first time I looked down carefully outside the window at the hustle and
bustle of Broadway. I began to think of what would be when I put all this
behind me, when I would leave the city in which I was born and grew up, the
city where my close family still resided.
In the 1990’s I used to visit the
apartment of my brother in law Paul Grimes on Broadway* near
I don’t think that I was eager to become
an expatriate. In fact, I was altogether unaware of the implications of my
American citizenship, perhaps because this was my first trip overseas. I would
like to digress a bit about my problems with citizenship, before I forget. It
is a bit of a story that you may have heard me tell before but it's a part of
me. I learned from it to keep in mind that my American background follows me
wherever I go and no matter how hard I try to assume another identity, I must
remember where my roots* are.
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My problems with citizenship began in
1951, when our group of student Zionists was in training at kibbutz Bet
HaShitta in the Jezreel* Valley. We had received several visits from the new
settlers at Kibbutz Yiftach in the
They were mainly battle-hardened veterans
of the Yiftach brigade of the Palmach, the elite striking force of the Haganah.
The discharged soldiers had established their kibbutz in 1949 on a hilltop at
the edge of the Naphtali hills, overlooking the
Although the valley below had broad
expanses to support field crops and for the breeding of carp* in fish ponds*,
the number of members had now dwindled to one hundred or less. Furthermore, the
young men and women of Yiftach had undergone training in different kibbutzim,
some pro-Marxist and others anti-Marxist. This created a delicate social and
political fabric which was very much strained by the cold war. The more
responsible persons among the moderate anti-Marxists were interested in a group such as ours with
a declared non-political stand. Deep down inside, perhaps, they hoped that we
Americans would stand behind them in an hour of internal crisis.
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The very fact that we were
trainees* at the veteran kibbutz of Bet HaShitta was encouraging to them
because, up until then, the society at Bet HaShitta was noted for its success
in living together in harmony despite its sharp division into two rival
ideological camps of equal strength. Yet even this large kibbutz did indeed
split up later, in 1953. Here is an outline of the story of that split.
A very large anti-Marxist*
minority supported the policies of Ben Gurion and the Labor Party and were
tired of the majority's arbitrary pro-Soviet bias in politics and education.
They therefore decided to transfer en masse to Ayelet HaShachar, a moderate
kibbutz next to Gadot in the
In the meantime, our group
got caught up in a heated national election campaign. Some radical party
activists in the kibbutz ignored our pleas to leave us alone because we are
non-political. Some in our group became convinced that we just have to vote for
the Labor Party because it presented itself as a bastion* of liberalism,
repelling the attacks of the extreme right and left. At the right was Menachem
Begin and his Herut (Freedom) Party. At the left were the
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The real dilemma was not how to vote but
whether to vote at all. We knew that voting in foreign lands is not allowed but
for us
Another dilemma was about military
service. I had been conscripted in 1951 together with my fellow student
Zionists. At that time, the tour of duty was two years, not three as it became
not long after. Several of us were wary* of the implications of serving outside
the States and asked the induction officer not to compel us to swear
allegiance* to
The induction officer simply asked us to
declare* that we would serve faithfully, obey orders and follow regulations.
Many of us did not realize it then but our service in
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Asher Oppenheimer* and I became friends
because he was worldly-wise and I enjoyed listening to his stories and learning
from his knowledge about life, even though it was sometimes wrapped in
cynicism*.
In 1951, we were doing basic training in
adjacent bunks of a wooden hut in the Allenby* Barracks in central
Asher was taken to the military hospital
at Tel Litwinsky, now called Assaf* HaRofeh. Assaf was a famous Jewish doctor
in the sixth century. I did not want to be a hero but I was determined to visit
Asher in hospital. And so I did. After all, it just as easily could have been
me. Maybe I was too immature to realize the dangers involved. Fortunately, I
had no problem in entering the isolation ward and I was proud that I did not
forget him or let him down. I lost track of Asher for many years but heard that
he had gone back to the States to continue his rehabilitation and complete his
education. His preservation of American citizenship facilitated this.
From
In
1975 or thereabouts, Asher turned up at Elbit Computers of
Gil
was born at Yiftach in 1952, just a few days before or after our own first born
daughter, Techia, and they had been together in the same infants' house while
Asher and I were in the service. Asher now wore a truss* for back-support and
still limped a little but otherwise he seemed to be in great shape. In November
of 1985, however, three years after I had left Elbit, I heard that Asher had
died from an attack of Hepatitis B.
Ruth
and I have kept in touch with the widow and with her second husband, Max
Guttman from
From
Batya and Max stopped by at Gadot while on the way home from some
family celebration on the Golan. Ruth and I served them refreshments and we had
a pleasant conversation. But the talk faded away after a while. As I waved
goodbye to them, I realized why we had run out of subjects to talk about. I
noticed two large political stickers on their rear windshield. One of them
advertised an illegal, pirate radio station called Channel Seven (Arutz
Sheva*), run by the settlers on the
Ruth and I are as politically distant from Max and Batya as day is
from night. We are for the peace process and against forceful infiltration of
Jews into an Arab city such as
From
Returning
to the political situation in 1950, one central issue at that time was the
outbreak of the war in
I
suppose that President Harry Truman* still enjoyed the credit that he had
inherited from his predecessor, Franklin D Roosevelt. Indeed, we did not see
any fine distinctions between the Red invaders from
But on
the other hand, the local ideologues bombarded us with bitter attacks against
the so-called American imperialists for starting a war of aggression far away
from the American mainland. The leftists admitted that Russian and Chinese
weapons had been supplied to the North. But they claimed that this was in
response to American and British provocations in the form of weapons that had
been previously supplied to prop up the corrupt regime of Syngman* Rhee in
Seoul. In any case, we were told, the United Nations troops were the only
foreign soldiers on Korean soil who were intervening in its internal affairs.
From
This
was before the Chinese forces entered
The
Korean War thus acted as a catalyst to bring to the boiling point many tensions
and differences of opinion that had been simmering* under the surface for many
years. It was a mosaic of old accounts waiting to be settled. The Korean war
also personally affected one of our members, Benesh* Goldman from
It is
interesting that throughout 1998, Kibbutz Gadot has had a wave of young
volunteers, mostly students and jobless from
From
You
can easily imagine how such a heated debate was like a time bomb in our midst.
At that time, the living conditions in the kibbutz were still very primitive*.
The dining hall was an old building with no proper entrance or lobby. Near the
door was a simple bell*, that is, an old round heavy disk of metal, probably
from a farm machine, installed within a simple framework, with an iron rod
hanging next to it. They used to sound this bell to call the members to come
and eat or to sound an alarm.
Clover*
was an important food for the cows. We used to irrigate the clover by bringing
in water through open ditches and then flooding it into beds of five meters in
width. I learned to cut the clover with a scythe, rake it up into rows with a
clumsy home-made rake, load it up onto platform-type wagons drawn by mules.
Then we drove it for about one mile all the way home.
There
we parked next to the cow barns and pitched the clover into the mangers*
through wide openings in the concrete walls. The manure* was considered
valuable. It was carefully preserved in a shallow trench by covering it on top
and on the exposed side with old sacks that were carefully tamped down to
encourage fermentation by pressing the air out and keeping it out.
From
As said, we used to compact down the
manure with paddles* to drive out the air and help it to ferment. We used
wheelbarrows* to wheel-in the manure from nearby cow-sheds. To prevent the
wheelbarrows from sinking into the soft manure, we laid down a pathway of
wooden planks. Larger quantities of manure were loaded into small cars that
rode on rails which had been "liberated" from the deserted railway
line through the
Furthermore,
the trauma* of the Holocaust was still affecting people. A world-famous pianist
and lecturer on music appreciation named Frank Pelleg* (Pollack) was a friend
of the settlers and used to give concerts for them. One day he came to the
dining hall of Bet HaShitta and brought an opera singer with him, Yosefa
Shocken*. She was a distant relative of
Gershon Shocken, the editor and publisher of the respected daily paper,
HaAretz.
After
a few songs of general interest, Pelleg and Schocken began to present some
artistic songs in German called Lieder*, by Schubert and Beethoven*. A strange
hush came over the audience. Suddenly a woman cried out in amazement, pain,
rage and insult. There were many German Jews in the kibbutz but I am not sure
that she was one of them. Her throat was choked with emotion and she could
hardly speak. "How can you bring into our home the cursed language and
decadent culture of the German killers?
Have we not suffered enough from their racism?"
From
The
singer was dismayed and stopped singing. The pianist stopped playing and tried
to calmly explain that the artistic songs of central
The
underlying political tension occasionally led to social friction, rumors,
counter rumors*, secret
The
ideas of our group on
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Masses of illiterate* immigrants and
broken Holocaust survivors were flooding into our country but our financial
resources and infrastructure* had been severely depleted by the War of
I
clearly remember working with new immigrants from
We
laid down long temporary water lines to irrigate the saplings before the rains
came. The main lines were old metal pipes and the branch lines partly of rubber
hoses. As a planter would get tired out from digging holes and hoeing*, we
would put him onto watering the new trees, which was easier work. Laying the
water lines was not easy because they would have to be woven in and out between
large rocks and boulders. I recall that the military command was very
interested in our work in afforestation, especially in the planting of tall
eucalyptus* trees to conceal our roads and buildings. That is a story that deserves
to be told.
From
Among
the pine trees were interspersed eucalyptus trees, imported from
In
1948, the Syrians had crossed the Jordan in force and captured salients* in
three regions: Tel Dan near the sources of the Jordan, the Daughters of Jacob Bridge (near Mishmar
HaYarden, the Gadot of today) and Tel Katzir* at the south-eastern shore of the
Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Their tanks and armored vehicles easily streamed
down the mountainside and overran the old private farming
There is a small memorial park at the
site, not far from the entrance to Gadot, opposite the small outpost of
military police. There are picnic benches, a water faucet*, a reconstruction of
a stone homestead* made from its scattered stone building blocks, and a
memorial sign. The sign shows the layout of the forty-five or so original
houses, with all the familiar Jewish names.
From
Those
farmers who did not manage to flee were either murdered on the spot or were
taken prisoner and carried off to
The
memorial park also has a prominent monument in the traditional style, that is,
a heap of stones, with a plaque showing the names of the twenty or so
volunteers from the region who rushed to the defense of the village but in
vain. They were mostly from the Hagana official defence force and this is
reflected in the usual Jewish names of
One of
our members who recently passed away (in 1996) was Uri Geffen*, a veteran of
the Yiftach brigade in the 1948 war. He decided to volunteer to keep in touch
with the refugees from Mishmar HaYarden. He would invite them from time to time
to address a festive reunion to tell us, their inheritors, about their trials
and tribulations. It was easy to keep in touch with them because they somehow
kept together and most of them live in Netanya, just north of Tel Aviv.
From
As I
listen to their stories about how they remember their village, I cannot help
thinking of the thousands of Arab villagers who hold on to their own memories.
I wonder why their feelings are considered less legitimate* than ours. Of
course, the uprooted Jews are no longer farmers and they know that Gadot has
taken over their land. So they do not long to return, but their attachment to
their heritage is impressive.
Apropos
of refugees, I cannot forget two instances of Jews insisting that they
value their memories and will not easily give them up. I remember bus line
number 9, which used to run from the center of town up to the
When
the
From
Another
instance was an interview that I heard many years ago on the radio. A modern
orthodox pioneer was talking about his forced exile from the Etzion* bloc of four
religious kibbutzim, located south-west of
I
heard this refugee insist that his real home is not the house in which he now
resides in Yaffo*, in Tel Aviv South. He prayed daily to return to his real
home in kibbutz Kefar Etzion, which he could view only from afar, standing on a
hilltop near the border. He had saved all his old photographs and souvenirs so
that all his family, young and old, would never forget their origins and where
they belong.
This
radio interview stuck in my mind because I compared these feelings of Jewish
yearnings to similar longings among the Arabs for their destroyed or
dispossessed villages. I am not sure what the political conclusions are, but
the longing for the homeland of your youth seems to be an integral part of
human nature*.
The
subject of refugees brings me back to the refugees from the destroyed
From
The
original pioneers from
As
said, the Syrians razed* the village to the ground, with the excuse that the
stone houses along the main road could provide cover for infiltrators and
guerrillas. The Syrian tanks even advanced up the hill for several more miles,
threatening to cut off the
From
In
Syrian eyes, therefore, every Israeli in the area, every pistol* for
self-defence, every house is illegal and a legitimate* target for attack. Only
Israeli civilian police would be permitted to enter. So they kept their eyes on
us and would complain to the United Nations from time to time about our settlement
activities.
When
the UN inspectors* came around for a visit, we would make very careful
preparations and dress up a few settlers as policemen. We wanted to convince
them that we have no heavy weapons in our armory, only some old rusty rifles*
against marauders and thieves. That was easy to do because it was the real
situation.
Of
course, we did not give them a guided* tour of our network of bunkers*, air
raid shelters, communications and interconnecting trenches. Any information
gathered by a United Nations observer, even one from a neutral or friendly
country, was in immediate danger of finding its way hostile parties.
That
is, from the Security Council to the
From
The Syrians would occasionally
punctuate their territorial claims by opening fire on our wooden huts. They
also sniped at our tractors plowing
plots of land on the Jordan-banks that had belonged to the devastated village.
Officially, they claimed that the ownership of the riverside* plots was in doubt
and we had no right to cultivate. This was confirmed some years later by a
local military commander named Zvi Rassky*, later the mayor of nearby Rosh
Pinna.
Rassky had come to lecture on
the current situation. He stated that the plots of land on the river banks were
owned by local Arabs, local Jews,
absentee* Arabs in
During one of many sniper attacks, Raya
Krollik* Goldschmidt, was killed in 1955. She was our nurse and had only just
been married to Yankele Goldschmidt, who was among the founders of Kibbutz
Yiftach. After many incidents, Raya was trained to run to the wooden hut of the
dining hall to warn the members to take cover. During one attack, Raya began to
run towards the dining hall but on the way she was hit by a bullet in the thigh
that caused a major internal hemorrhage.
From
After that, we decided to move the center
of our kibbutz away from the
The ban on grazing directly affected Ruth
and me, because our job was to take the milking cows out almost daily. It was
not pleasant to go chasing after cows right under the eyes of Syrian soldiers.
Once a cow ran off and approached the barrier leading to the Syrian side. Our
border guards came out to retrieve the stray* cow.
Taking cows out to pasture is now gone
forever because it is more economical to feed them at home with fresh hay and
silage. The silage is made from grasses that are compacted to remove the air
and anaerobic bacteria* can ferment them. In other countries, these grasses are
sucked into a high silo where the weight presses the air out. In our country,
the grasses are laid out into a long trench and compacted by tractors and
covered by heavy tires over sheets of canvas.
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Yet we could not give up so easily about
plowing land. We gradually equipped our field workers with bullet-proof cabins,
walkie-talkies* etc. Patrols of Border Police would regularly ride along a
security road parallel to the
I can
hear this crossfire* until this very day. The Syrians were entrenched at two
emplacements, Murtafa* and Durijat*. The Murtafa outpost was opposite the
The
Durijat outpost was a bit further north, just opposite our fields, and they
aimed straight ahead at our tractors. I became an expert in identifying the
lines of fire because the machine guns made me lose many hours of rest:
bam-bam-bam-bam without an echo and then takh-takh-takh, echoing from the hills
all around. Once I was working in the citrus groves about half a mile from the
From
I left my work and took cover behind a nearby high mound. From
time to time I stood up up to see what was going on. It was a bit risky but I
saw that the explosions were far away, close to the river banks. Of course I
was trapped* and had to stay put until the incident was over and I could resume
work. To this day I cannot remember what all the shooting was about, but that
was typical of those days. This situation was more or less tolerable until the
Syrians broke the rules of the game in 1958. Until then, it was understood that
only small arms fire would be used, but in response to a tractor incident, they
bombarded Gadot and nearby Hulata with mortar fire, causing one death and
enormous damage to buildings, electric lines, sewage and other infrastructure.
In early 1967 the Syrians broke another rule. They bombarded Gadot
in response to an incident in another sector altogether. Until then, it had
been tacitly agreed that a dispute over a specific plot of land could provoke
local shooting only. There-fore, an incident in one of the three
demilitarized zones would not be a pretext to open fire over a wide front. All
fighting would be confined to the local sector. All in all, this nightmare of
unending conflict* went on for many years and we could return to normal life
only when the
From
This
was the general atmosphere in 1953, when we arrived at Gadot after the political
split at Yiftach*. We missed Yiftach because it was comparatively calm area
there in the hills, near
All
the bigwigs of the Kibbutz Meuchad*, to whom we were loyal, paid attention to
our distress. They rushed down to meet us at kibbutz Hulata and talk about our
future. The great ideologue of our movement, Yitzhak Tabenkin*, urged us not to
give in to weakness and despair and accept the challenge of reinforcing
HaGovrim* (the original name of Gadot), a small kibbutz fighting for its life
on the ruins of moshava Mishmar HaYarden.
I
remember that we had to be aware of dangers while planting pine trees on the
rocky land between Gadot and the Jordan. I am not sure that the new immigrants
from
From
The
Moroccans were outdoor-wise*, so to speak, in that they knew how to hunt around
for all sorts of grasses for making a salad and herbs to put into their tea. I
became their friend and a friend of the pine trees as well. Many years ago I
took two saplings home and they are still growing beside my house, tall and
sturdy. They add shade, beauty and memories to our landscape.
Furthermore,
the Moroccan Jews were not ashamed of their lifestyle and their country of
origin. One elderly immigrant kept mumbling what sounded like
"Binnie-Melah*", "Binnie Melah". He knew no French, English
or Hebrew, only Arabic, so we could communicate by body language only. I knew
that "Mellah" is the Moroccan Arabic word for a closed Jewish
quarter, so I assumed that he was talking about his home town.
Many years later I closely examined a map
of
From
Cohen shared the hardships of his fellow immigrants but he kept
the religious laws, was delighted to live in the holy land and was consoled by
the continued functioning of his community in
Last but not least, I also remember Jacques*, who was unlike the
other Jews. He was short, stubby, smooth-shaven and obviously not from a
village and not used to manual labor. He came to work dressed like a Frenchman,
complete with beret, as if he had been uprooted and trans-planted directly from
an urban business district. Like the others, he was bewildered and mumbled a
mantra*, but in Hebrew, "AYN se-cho-RA, AYN se-cho-RA." (ch as in
Bach) AYN means "There isn't any...." and se-cho-RA means
"merchandise". I understood from his words and sighs that he could
not see how life could go on without goods to buy and sell. He did not want to
be hoeing all day and get paid a measly wage. I can understand his predicament
because I also had trouble in doing physical work at first.
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By the way, If you remember Yiddish, then there too the same word for merchandise was used. It was
pronounced "s'CHOI-reh" in
Of course, the new immigrants
were still not aware of the political storm that was still brewing all around
them. In the quiet political atmosphere of HaGovrim, it was hard to imagine the
trauma that we had just experienced at Yiftach. The moderates in the kibbutz
movement claimed that the Marxist members had always regarded Zionism as an
instrument* to implement* socialism and not the other way around.
Furthermore, the hard-liners*
had always wanted to make the kibbutz economy more rigid by emphasizing the
priority of the collective over its individuals. In other words, both sides
were using the Cold War as a pretext to cover their true intentions. If so,
then we were in the midst* of a real battle*.
Powerful political groups
outside the kibbutz were marshalling their forces to capture our sympathies.
For the kibbutz to survive, its members must look to one another not only for
basic necessities but also to reach a consensus* about basic issues. Yet
everyone was looking elsewhere and cynical politicians outside seemed to be
pulling all the strings.
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I remember that our group was
invited to an ideological seminar* run by the kibbutz movement at a central
study center near Tel Aviv. Of course, such seminars are now a thing of the
past, because there is neither a sufficient budget nor enough interest in
exploring the kibbutz idea. But that was 1950 and the kibbutz leaders were
perplexed*. On the one hand, most of the immigrants were not turning to kibbutz
life. Many of them had been in concentration camps and wanted to start anew in
a home of their own. Others had been refugees in Soviet
In general, the co-op way of
life ran against the grain of the Jewish traditions of being middlemen, trading
in wines, collecting taxes for the nobles, running rural inns, and learning
Torah. Despite all these obstacles, the kibbutz was absorbing masses of new
people (like me), who were attracted to co-op living but had only a vague idea
of the annals* of the kibbutz movement. One difficulty was that the kibbutz is
a human phenomenon and no ideology has a copyright on it. You can view it from
many angles. The living proof is the composition of any kibbutz society. You
have optimism and pessimism, cynicism and faith, hope and despair. The average
kibbutz member may favor one or more philosophies* that determine his approach
to cooperative living. Under certain circumstances, this diversity may cause
controversy and conflict.
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Here are some of the approaches to the kibbutz way of life:
The list of motives is endless.
*
Marxist-style political Communism, not Capitalism.
*
non-political, non-Marxist Communes, not Marxist politics
*
liberal, democratic socialism, not Marxism
*
direct democracy, not hierarchic authority.
* autonomous
federations, not a central authority.
* a
return to nature, not urban cement and concrete.
* the
nuclear family, not divorce and single parents.
* hard
physical work, not middle class, white-collar jobs
* land
conservation, recycling, not pollution and waste.
* a
return to Jewish roots, not assimilation.
*
living by the Prophets, not just synagogue prayers.
*
loose, flexible structures, not rigid strata in society
*
self-discipline* and mutual trust, not police and courts.
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Because of the diverse motives of the
kibbutz members, I could not possibly have had a clear idea of what to expect
at this ideological seminar. We heard many lectures but it was not all
intellectual. We had a great time socializing with other new immigrants over
campfires and learning folk dances. The lectures covered many subjects, such as
history, geography, economics, social science, and Hebrew grammar. I was
delighted to discover that all my efforts to master Hebrew were finally paying
dividends* and I could under-stand almost all that was said. I even found
myself taking lecture notes in Hebrew, to assimilate* the language even better.
Fifty years have passed and most of the
lecturers are probably gone by now. They were usually veteran pioneers of the
oldest kibbutzim, such as Ein Harod in the
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I had
a warm feeling for Eshed because his wife Frumka* had given us Hebrew lessons
at a training farm in
He was full of enthusiasm and paced the
room; he just could not sit in one place. He must have felt that his walking
was a distraction, or perhaps he got tired, so he would sometimes stop to lean
on the back of his chair. He spoke freely and fluently in learned Hebrew, slipping
into the Ashkenazi accent of his youth from time to time. I learned many new Hebrew words from him but
more than that I learned that settlement of the land in general and the kibbutz
community in particular have deep roots in the needs and yearnings of the Jews
for national liberation and Zionist action.
Another lecturer was Shalom Friedman. He
was fairly tall, solidly built with a square face, hair turning white and a
very dignified appearance. He analyzed a story by the Nobel-laureate Shai
Agnon* about a woman of
From
Friedman compared her name to
a word that sounded similar, TAW-haw-la, based on the root heh-vav-lamed and
associated with rousting about, making merry. Our assignment was to read the
story in full as homework*, but I never finished it because my reading was so
slow that I gave up.
However, I did learn two
lessons. One was that the Hebrew language is very rich in levels of meaning. It
is easy to use the words and manipulate them for any purpose under the sun.
That was exactly why I could not read Agnon's story quickly. He was a master
wordsmith* who could call up quotations and allusions to Bible, Talmud and
Jewish traditions with which I was not familiar.
Another lesson was that the
kibbutz puts much emphasis on literature* in general and Hebrew literature in
particular. I sensed again that we are The People of the Book and that a part
of our cultural baggage is from our contacts with Russian and rabbinic
literature. To assimilate into Hebrew culture, I have to become a serious
reader. Of course, this was before the age of television.
The month-long seminar also
included occasional sessions which resembled modern workshops or symposia. They
were informal discussion groups and considered as less important as lectures.
This seemed to be a reflection of European academic traditions.
From
I know of only one exception
to the tradition of formal lectures without feedback, the system at
I regarded this request as
perfectly reasonable and normal, but one of the paricipants, a Czech-born*
English teacher, did not agree. My European colleague stood up and protested
vehemently. "Pardon me, sir, but we did not come here to listen to one
another. We came here to hear your lecture and to learn from you. If we wish to
discuss poetry, we can do so later on at the student cafeteria or in the
dormitory on our own time." He seemed to feel that he was the spokesman
for a group because he used the pronoun "we", not "I".
Back at the ideological
seminar, I will not accuse the kibbutz lecturers of misleading or
brain-washing* us, but they did manage to excite us with a clear message that
we were pioneers in an unstoppable world movement towards freedom and equality.
We should feel like soldiers in a struggle to free the Jewish people from its
historical role of a parasitic middleman.
From
We need to create a healthy
economic and social basis for solidarity* with oppressed people everywhere. As
I write these words, I feel an uplift* in spirit. I return to those days and
revisit the classrooms where we heard those stirring messages of hope. To my
regret, I did not realize then how much I was beginning to identify with that
world-outlook.
It seemed to me then that I
was joining the mainstream of kibbutz society and thus fully integrating into
Israeli life. But this was only an illusion. I did not realize how far this
identification had an opposite effect. I had abandoned Jewish traditions and
entered the fringes* of society in the kibbutz and in
Only later did I realize that
my new gurus were just as petty and sectarian* as any other political faction
and their hatred for Ben Gurion was leading them over the brink into the abyss
of political oblivion. I myself instinctively disliked Ben Gurion, because of
his pompous* poses, his overbearing personality, his inability to cooperate
with colleagues and his willingness to be the subject of a cult of worshippers.
But I could not hate him because after all he was the founder of the state and
the leader of a labor party.
From
Yet my new mentors regarded
Ben Gurion as more dangerous than bourgeois capitalists, because he masqueraded
as a socialist in order to demolish its principles and split up its followers.
As proof of this, they often quoted from his book, “From A Working Class to A
Nation.” This reminds me of our ultraorthodox* rabbis, who regard Conservative
and Reform Jews as more dangerous than atheists*, because they are seen to be
masquerading* as religious people in order to demolish Jewish law from within
and split up the faithful.
Thus I accepted the argument
that the intervention of the United Nations in the Korean War was a crime, the
purpose of which was to block the wheels of progress. I had been swept up into
a heated debate not only about events that were happening at home but also
those taking place somewhere out there in Southeast* Asia. They were different
threads in the same fabric.
Some kibbutz politicians asked
me to become politically active in our student Zionist group, but I backed
away. We had pledged to keep our group non-political* and I thought that I must
not betray that pledge. It was enough that I myself had decided to vote for the
left in the coming elections. I did not want to influence others. In addition,
I was not yet mature* enough then to explain political positions that were
quite foreign to our students.
From
Indeed, we had made a
revolution in our lives because we found various degrees of fault in the
American way of life. But we remained with the education and political
principles that we had received in the
So I voted in the national
elections of 1952. I do not remember whether it was on a ballot* at an army
base or whether I received a pass to travel home to Bet HaShitta. There was no
foolproof* method to control the voting register then and the clerk at the
voting booth simply punched a hole in my identity card and stamped it, to
ensure that I do not try to vote twice. I had done my civic* duty but I had
broken an American law.
Until 1956, life went on as
usual despite my illegal vote. My troubles began in 1956, when my father Harry*
of blessed memory, passed away. I received the news by telegram* from my sister
Jeanne. My father had been a pleasant person and treated me with warmth,
perhaps because I was his youngest child, born late in life. I loved him very
much. I used to sneak up behind him while he was reading the newspaper and give
him big hugs. Even then, I suppose, I acted out my inclination to play the role
of teddy-bear.
From
He seemed glad to take a short
break from his newspaper. He used to buy The New York Times to improve his
English because his mother tongue was Yiddish. The lighting in our apartment
was poor and he sat by the living-room* window to get the light from the open
courtyard* between tenement* buildings. The windows facing the street had no
room for chairs because the double bed was right next to the windows.
As I recall, he never wore
glasses of any kind. Only lately has my sister begun to wear glasses for
reading. My late brother Saul also never wore glasses. I think that I would
have continued without glasses*, had I not been hurt in the eye in 1967 by a
small stone, but that is another story.
I thought with nostalgia* of
how my late father used to make fun of the Jews of south-east
From
As said, the derogatory remarks
about Galizianer rubbed against my grain, since I had never met any and if I
had, I could not have recognized them according to their description in the
folkore*. Why did my father make fun of these people? He was apparently proud
of the closeness of his White Russian home town of
In 1996, I made the
acquaintance of a Holocaust survivor named Henry Armin Herzog, who survived the
ghetto of
Parts of
From
The conclusion is that it is
too easy to accept stereotypes* of other ethnic groups, even in
I felt a heavy load of shock and guilt over having left my father
all alone for seven years. He had left me an inheritance of a few thousand
dollars through a benevolent fund of the Workmen's Circle (Arbeiter* Ring in
Yiddish). This was sponsored by the Jewish Bund* of Polish Jewry.
The Jewish Bund had advocated cultural autonomy in the diaspora,
led by the Jewish workers as a substitute for Zionism. My father was not
involved in this ideology but rather wanted the social benefits and to keep in
touch with his old country-men from
I remember that he used to get mail from the Suwalki-Wilkowisk*
Branch. I could not square this with the fact that he repeatedly stated that he
came from Grodno in Belarus, until I discovered that Suwalki and Wilkowisk are
satellite towns of Grodno, which once had a very large Jewish community that
comprised one third of the population.
From
My father had indeed left a few thousand dollars as an
inheritance. But there was a fly in the ointment* because he had cut my sister
out completely and did not leave her a single cent. In effect, the inheritance
was for me only. This upset me and made me very unhappy. I thought it was very
unfair, considering how my sister had cared for father in his last years. He
was apparently still very angry about her choice of a husband. Jeanne needed
the money more than I did for her household, so I began to think seriously
about letting her have all my inheritance or at least half.
Later on, this got me into
trouble with the Israeli authorities, who threatened legal action against me.
The law stated that an Israeli citizen may not hold foreign money overseas or
give away his foreign currency* to someone else. I suppose that our authorities
had got wind of the inheritance through opening my letters.
Censorship* of mail and
telegrams was common in those days when
From
In fact, even the kibbutz does
not show much interest in inherited money anymore. By rights, of course, all
inherited money should be contributed to our general treasury. This is just an
extension of our principle to submit all monies earned. In daily life, we live
in a small community and ev1eryone seems to know who has inherited money and
just about how much. But the subject is discreetly avoided, as long as the
inheritor does not radically become an eyesore* by changing his lifestyle to a
level that is over and above the average standard of living.
I think that the turning point
was the agreement with
But some individuals refused
to hand over their reparations payments to the kibbutz. Maybe they lacked faith
in the future of the kibbutz. Maybe they desired to help children who had left,
or possibly regarded it as a matter of principle because the money was not real
income but rather a return of plundered property. I have no right to judge
their motives because I have never been in their shoes*.
From
But the net effect of this refusal was a certain
weakening in the fabric of kibbutz society. Not a tear in the fabric, just a
rip. This slight rip was destined to become wider with the years and it became
more and more difficult to return to full cooperation.
Let me go back to my protest about the
unfair inheritance. There was an exchange of letters with the authorities and I
was even inter-rogated at a local police station. The detective was sympathetic
but pressed me real hard. I consulted with the kibbutz secretary about my
predicament. He was sympathetic and directed me to a very fine lawyer named
Yitzhak Shevoh, a respected Sephardic liberal who was retained as a legal
advisor of the national kibbutz organization at that time.
I visited his office in Tel Aviv to
discuss my problem and he gave me a clear explanation of the legal position.
Although he could not find any loopholes in the law, he did consent to
represent me at a court hearing. He advised me to plead guilty as charged and
request special consideration due to hardship in the family. The lawyer hinted
to me that my being a pioneer at a border settlement and an American immigrant
may work in my favor.
So I pleaded guilty and explained my need
to renounce a part of the inheritance. The judge denied my request and I had no
alternative except to throw in the towel, to give in and obey the law in full.
Then I transferred all the money to
From
When I produced proof of the
transfer, the prosecutor closed. the case. Somehow, I later did help my sister
with goods and services. I thought that cutting her out like that was an
indecent outrage*. Some friends called it a noble act, but to me it was just
elementary justice, In any case, it cemented my relationship with my sister.
This incident was a turning point in my relations with the police.
I was dismayed by their inflexibility* and crude methods. Some of my innocence
went down the drain. Since then, I confine my contacts with them only to
anonymously reporting severe traffic violations that endanger me. On the roads,
I ignore the traffic cops. Their job is to find the lawbreakers, that is
drunks, maniac speedsters and so on. My job is to drive safely and in a
defensive manner.
My disenchantment* with our
police was reinforced by a run-in that I had with them in 1978, when they
charged me with a criminal offence of owning a pistol without a license. That
is another story, but I'll tell it. In the late 1970's, a series of terrorist
attacks swept me up in the wave of acquiring pistols for self defense. I was
then working at Elbit Computers in
From
This is the main road into town that
passes the entrance to
I
entered the store and the clerk showed me his selection of pistols. There were
models like Beretta that used nine-millimeter bullets, like the ones for the
Uzi submachine gun. The bullets are relatively cheap but the pistol itself was
too expensive for me. Other models used a cheap, small-caliber. 0.22 inch
bullet, popularly known as the two-two, but I did not trust its ability to stop
an attacker. So in the end I bought the cheapest pistol for 500 liras, made in
communist
It was
not a complete bargain, because it used bullets of 7.65 millimeter caliber,
which are relatively expensive. Nevertheless, I asked myself, "How much do
I really use the bullets, except for some mandatory target practice once a
year?" At that time, ranges for shooting practice were not as common as
they are now. The closest shooting range to Gadot that I knew of was in
From
By the way, you can practice and renew your license nowadays at an
old granite pit in nearby Ayelet HaShachar. Well, I had no problems with the
pistol and took care of it regularly. My problems began in 1976, when I moved
to Pardess Hanna in order to facilitate the contact with our handicapped son
for the sake of working with him on neurological exercises. The kibbutz had
provided us with a used Renault commercial van and Ruth and I would travel home
to Gadot once every three weeks.
At Gadot, we picked up our mail and laundry. As I recall, I would
tuck our mail into a special envelope and read it later on, when I got back to
Pardess Hanna. Somehow or other, I misplaced a warning from the authorities
that I have to renew my license for the weapon. I looked and looked and when I
finally found it, I was delayed for a week or so by some other matters.
Two weeks or so overdue, I
contacted the Ministry of the Interior and offered to pay the renewal fee but
they refused to accept it. I was stunned because I had been late in other
payments and considered this normal. They also summoned me to report at the
police station. The desk sergeant immediately confiscated the weapon and in her
gravelly voice informed me, "You are no longer the owner of this pistol,
sir." I was directed to a detective in an interrogation room and I told
him my version of the incident.
From
He insisted that I sign a statement about possessing an illegal
weapon. I strongly protested, saying that I was a temporary resident of Pardess
Hannah and the official mail of the Ministry of the Interior reaches me only at
Gadot, my permanent address far away. I pleaded that he take into consideration
my special circumstances, accept my mix-up is reasonable, especially since my
record is clean, my life-style is positive and so on. It was all in vain and
brushed aside. He would not listen or react. In the end, I signed what amounted
to a confession of guilt.
It reminded me of the refusal of the judge to consider any special
circumstances of my inheritance. Well, I had committed a criminal offence by
not paying the license fee for a weapon on time and that was that. Under
protest, I signed a declaration that I has possessed a weapon illegally. A few
months later I was tried by a circuit judge who fined me about 100 lira (not
much) and warned me that she was being lenient and that the next time around I
could expect worse.
I keep reflecting on what I had done wrong. All in all, I should
have kept better track of the expiration date of my license and reported to the
police when the date expired. Nevertheless, if the police were so insensitive
and inflexible towards a law-abiding citizen like me, then how must they treat
the others? Well, I was finally allowed to renew the license and I got the
pistol back.
From
However, I was so upset that I started to pay the license fee much
ahead of time and decided to sell it as soon as possible. And so I did in 1996,
to one of our members. Of course I asked for a ridiculously low price because I
was glad to get rid of it. It had never helped me survive anyway. However, I do
regret that I sold two holsters with the pistol. Too late, I discovered that a
holster is an excellent sheath for a pair of pruning clippers.
To return to my citizenship problem,
my father's death had left me angry, regretful and confused. One day, I got a
phone call from the American consulate in
The consul asked me, "Your identity card has been punched.
Have you ever voted in an election here?" I answered, "Yes, sir, I have." He also asked,
"Have you also served in the army?" I answered, "Yes, sir."
He looked very cross and asked me whether I knew that I was breaking an
American law. I was stunned and exclaimed, “I voted because I am a permanent
resident here and I care about what is going on. What? Is it forbidden for an
American citizen to vote in a friendly country or serve in a friendly army?”
From
My response was not very circumspect and
careful about things that affected my status. Not long after my father's death,
an incident occurred that distracted and unnerved me.
My
father had left some spending money for me in the care of a lawyer named Kraft.
The name means “power” in German and Yiddish. But in English the noun
"craft" means handiwork and the noun "craftsman" means an
artisan. For some reason, the adjective "crafty" means cunning and
sly. My relatives in the States knew that such money existed but avoided
mentioning it openly in a letter. Instead, they used euphemisms such as
“Krafts” or "the Krafty lawyer" when referring to this money. We had
trusted him completely and had neglected to keep tabs on him. In the end, of
course, the lawyer took advantage of the lack of supervision and in the
confusion after the funeral, embezzled the money and ran off with it.
Somehow,
the district attorney's office in
From
So we
ignored the letter and did not cooperate. Although the matter ended there, I
had a lousy feeling because I hated this dirty lawyer who had masqueraded as my
father's friend and then stuck a knife in his back. I had no chance to follow
up the case but can only hope that other victims in
My
conflict with the American Consul was just at the end of the McCarthy era and
the Secretary of State was the arch-conservative John Foster Dulles. Only many
years later did the Supreme Court rule that dual citizenship is legal. The
consul informed me that I cannot be a citizen of two countries at the same
time. I objected, saying that I had met immigrants who held two passports at
the same time, for example, British and Indian.
The American consul in
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McCarran is the spiritual father of Newt
Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, and all the modern conservative politicians of the
Republican Party. I remembered that the Nationality Act expressly forbids
American citizens to vote or serve in other countries.
Some
friends reminded me that many young Americans were fed up with the foreign
policy of President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who had
declared neutrality when the World War broke out in
The official wrote a report on the meeting and returned my
identity card. But he insisted that I must show him my American passport,
otherwise he could not help me in the legal proceedings. I was sure that I had
left it at home by mistake but luckily, I thought, I found it in my travel bag.
The official examined the passport and when he saw that it had expired, he just
snipped off a corner of every page to invalidate it.
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He was exasperated and threw the book at me. He reminded me that I
had entered a war zone in 1949 while pretending to be a student in
My file will go to
I thought it over. I
considered that I was living in a border kibbutz; under very primitive
conditions and we were in constant threat of sniper fire or even bombardment.
No, I could not leave my family and friends to face all that alone. I had to be
at their side, so I decided to write a declar-ation in good faith.
I took two small pieces of note paper, each half the size of an ordinary
page. Looking back, I should probably have used a sheet of regular sized
letter-paper, preferably with a kibbutz letterhead. The size of the page reflected the austerity
of the country in general, and of our young kibbutz in particular. We encouraged
our members to save and spare in all our economy.
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I spilled my heart out and wrote down a whole megillah* about
everything that I felt. Deep down
inside, however, perhaps I was fearful that such a declaration was futile, but
did feel the need to make a statement of intent.
I said that I was born in the
Furthermore, although I had knowingly broken some laws, I was
among people who had done likewise and the authorities had apparently not been
interested to prosecute us. I have never been a member of any subversive organization,
specifically the Communist Party, and have never acted in any way, knowingly or
unknowingly, to violate the Constitution. Furthermore I had duly registered for
the draft in 1944, reported for military service and served until my honorable
discharge in 1946. Considering all these, I think that it is not just to
deprive me of my citizenship and I am sure that justice will be done.
From
I then
handed this declaration to the consulate and was sure that it would be filed in
a trash can as nostalgic, sentimental drivel. Deep inside me I could not care
less about political parties, Communists or otherwise. But I knew that the Reds
interested the authorities the most so I spelled it out.
Sure
enough, my fears came true and it did not help. In the autumn of 1958 I got a notice of loss of
citizenship, because of service in a foreign army and voting in a foreign
national election. It came as a shock to me, because I had kept my hopes up for
several months.
I began to think sad thoughts about
betraying my late father, who had worked so hard to learn English and become a
citizen. How could I throw all that away by irresponsible behavior? Of course I
could fall back on my Israeli citizenship but the immediate effect is to make
you feel stateless and homeless. Well, I comforted myself, you wanted to join
the mainstream of the surviving Jews. So here you are, just as stateless as
they are.
I had not tried to appeal the decision;
life moved on and I soon forgot the whole matter. I could not travel abroad
because money was scarce and the Syrian border kept us busy. However, I kept in
touch with American life and in May of 1967 I was reading Time magazine when I
came across some astounding news.
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The Supreme Court in
Washing-ton had declared the Nationality Act of 1940 to be unconstitutional. I
was overcome with joy. An
American named Afroyim, living in the artists colony of Safad, had lost his
citizenship on the same charges. He apparently had the time and money to appeal
to the district court of
This angered the Eisenhower administration. His Secretary of
State, Dean Rusk, appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the decision of the
lower court. The high court rejected the appeal. It ruled that a person born in
the
Even then, the person may appeal by claiming that he was under the
influence of alcohol or drugs or undue stress. Since this ruling annulled an
Act of Congress, there was no alternative except to restore the citizenship of
Afroyim.
Well, I should have called the artist Afroyim to congratulate
him, but unfortunately the only
telephone set in our kibbutz had been mobilized for security needs. So I wrote
to the American consulate in
From
The consul replied that this may be true and he promised to
investigate with his superiors. To facilitate the matter, could I travel down
to the embassy in Tel Aviv and clarify certain matters. I readily agreed, but
there was a lot of tension in the country.
The ruler of
In
early June, the six-day war broke out. The youngest of our three children,
Amir, just could not cope with the tension of border bombard-ments and could
hardly function. All the efforts that we had invested until then to
rehabilitate him from his childhood autism had been lost. The only practical
solution was to place him in a closed ward of a mental hospital, with the hope
and resolution that it was only temporary and our son would be able to return
home when the fighting was over. Of course, my plans to visit Tel Aviv went up
in flames. It took many months to rebuild our kibbutz physically and even
longer to heal the emotional scars of war.
From
When
the bullets are flying and the bombs exploding, you can wave your American
passport as much as you want, but it cannot protect you from harm. The net
result was that I did not manage to visit the embassy and the whole matter of
citizenship faded from my memory.
Things
remained dormant until 1972, when Ruth and I realized that we were becoming
detached from our families and decided to visit the States. I was then as a
technical writer and translator in the Documentation and Engineering Change
Control section of Elbit Computers in
I had
some vacation time coming so I contacted the Histour Agency in
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But I was told that my chances of being called in were very
slight, since I am a family man who lives in a structured society. Sure enough,
as luck would have it, I was summoned to Tel Aviv. I waved
to the Marine guard at the entrance to the embassy because I had not seen a
Marine in a long time. But he kept looking straight forward. I became anxious
when I looked at my invitation again and noticed that I am invited to the
Consular Section, not to the Visa Section.
I was directed to a very friendly clerk,
Mr. Jack Safriel, a Jew of Egyptian origin, who stuck his hand under his desk,
pulled out a file and asked me .in a forced tone of seriousness, "Did you
write this letter of declaration in February of 1958?" I was stunned.
There it was, in my own original handwriting. I had been sure that they had
filed it away in the trash can. The clerk informed me that on the basis of my
letter and investigation of my army service and curriculum vitae, he has reason
to believe that I am in effect still an American citizen.
All this was one week before I was about
to fly out on June 29. I asked the clerk what was the rush. I could take care
of the matter when I return from the trip. He replied that the immigration
authorities cannot be responsible for a traveler when his or her nationality is
not clear.
From
Mr. Safriel explained that you cannot just
sit on a fence with one foot in one world and the other foot in another world.
The authorities must know where their responsibility lies, whether they are
responsible for my safety or not.
I asked what I must do to restore my
citizenship. He gave me a printed page of directions to follow. I would have to
spend a whole day in Tel Aviv and
I would also have to contact the Adjutant
General of the armed forces and fill out a form in which I lie about my
military service, stating that I was a new immigrant in 1951 and my friends
misled me about the implications of my act. Everyone around me in our group
joined the army and so did I.
Specifically, and to my credit, I had
taken care not to swear allegiance to the State of
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But it was hard to take the time off to
run around doing the errands. The clerk was sympathetic with my plight and
agreed to grant me a one-time visa of entry to the
The
trip to the States went off without a hitch and we had a wonderful time seeing
our friends and family and revisiting the scenes of our childhood. My Israeli
passport was sufficient to go through a stopover at
On the
first evening, we joined a tourist bus going around
But
when we returned, I was distracted by a crisis in the life of our handicapped
son, Amir. He had turned 16 and could no longer be accommodated at the
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There
was another facility for adults near the Arab village of Maz'ra'a, on the coast
of Western Galilee, but the stories that we had heard about that place were
enough to remove it as a possibility, even without a visit..
People
had told us about a strange American rabbi called Mandel who had taken over the
buildings of the deserted kibbutz Kedma in the South, next to the development
town of
Ruth
and I decided to visit the place in late 1972. The approach road was rather
rough and the whole compound did not make a good impression. Mandel himself seemed
decent enough but he did not have the credentials that would qualify him for
the job. His wife had by chance gone off to the States to raise some funds for
the project. The rabbi was alone with his kids and had his hands full.
As we
talked, we realized that the whole enterprise was very fragile. Rabbi Mandel
had visited the Knesset to lobby for permission to open his rehabilitation
facility with assistance from the authorities. When he failed to win approval,
he became impatient to take over the buildings so he forced his way in without
official permission and settled in as a squatter.
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This invasion caused a dispute with the
nearby town council who wanted the land for its own needs. This unclear
ownership had apparently caused the neglect of the site and its approach road.
It would be a crime to bring Amir to a place like that, so we had no choice but to turn to a private
institution for adults.
The
institution was Tel Ilan (now “Illanit”), located in the industrial zone of Pardes
Hanna, not far from the Malben old age home, on the road to Binyamina. At that
time, Pardes Hanna was a small town of citrus farmers with a family atmosphere.
But in the 1990’s it developed and absorbed many people from the large cities.
I
intended to seek the support of my relatives, Rachel and Avraham Fein, who were
old settlers in the town. Rachel’s mother and my maternal grandmother were
sisters in the Murawczyk family. Soon after I came to
Placing
a young adult in an institution, even a decent one, takes a lot of emotional
strength, tender loving care, making contacts and connections and examining the
premises. These preparations were especially important since a short time
ealier the institution had been rocked by a scandal. The manager had embezzled
funds by lowering the standard of living of the wards.
From
There
was apparently no public supervision of the actions of the crooked manager. The
searches and the initial days at Tel Ilan exhausted us emotionally and
physically and the whole problem of my citizenship slipped again into the
abyss. Nothing changed until 1978, when my daughter Techia complained to me
that I was blocking her visit to the
At
first I did not understand. She explained that the American embassy asked about
her citizenship status and she had told them that she was an American by virtue
of her parents. But I was not listed at the embassy as a citizen. This really
turned on my adrenaline and I rushed into town to fill out all the official
forms about my so-called innocent intentions and brought them over to the
embassy.
I paid
the fee for passport renewal and was granted an American passport by (and catch
this - I remember her name) a Ms Sharon Hurley. She made made me raise my right
hand and swear loyalty to the Constitution so help me God. I felt like a
Senator being sworn into office. She mentioned that several other cases of kibbutz
members in limbo had come to her attention and she had worked out a procedure
to help us all retrieve our citizenship.
From
I almost kissed the consular
official and breathed a sigh of relief. I felt that I had come about a full
circle. I had started out as an American citizen and here I was back again with
my citizenship restored. An identity card is one thing but the identity of my
heritage is another. Maybe from now on I would stop trying to be like others,
to assimilate with a vengeance, but rather let my background flow naturally
into the present.
The subject of citizenship
brings me back to December of 1948, when I was preparing for aliya. Our Israeli
emissary, Yehuda Messinger, warned me officially that the American authorities
still consider
I was advised that I could get
a student visa for
From
The French also felt repentant over the
collaboration of General Henri Petain and Pierre Laval with the Germans during
the days of the so-called unoccupied, autonomous zone in south
He did insist on one thing, though, that I
travel like a sport. Maybe I was not going to be a doctor or a dentist, but no
son of his would travel tourist class, so he bought me a first class ticket on
the Queen Mary, bound for
When I entered the French Embassy to apply
for a visa, I was attracted by the large portrait of General De Gaulle on the
walls. Then I knew that I had entered a new phase in this wide world. I
received a visa as a student to
From
I do not remember who saw me off at the
pier. I stood on the deck and looked out at the nearby streets and wondered
about going out on an adventure when I was not even familiar with the
neighborhood of the waterfront.
I have some fleeting memories of my first
voyage on the ocean. The waves and the wake seemed enormous. The waiter was a
red-faced Irishman or Scot, who had a continual smell of whiskey on his breath.
I had pity on him, being so far from home. I was curious about what a ship is
all about, so I walked around the deck again and again, checking out every
lifeboat and hatch and porthole.
I was reminded of 1938 or thereabouts,
when the battleship
If someone had handed me an application
form to enlist, I would have done so on the spot. Of course, I was running away
from home more than the navy was attracting me. I was tired of learning only
from books about real life, of being cooped up in a tenement house, of
agonizing over the tensions at home.
From
This despair had apparently prompted
me to become interested in the merchant marine. I knew the dangers from German
submarines that had torpedoed many ships in convoys on the way to
It was even worse than the storm of
the year before, when I wanted to volunteer for farm work in summer for room
and board. There were many posters around town urging young people to help the
war effort by substituting for mobilized farmers. I had seen that as a golden
opportunity to take off weight, to meet young people and to test my abilities.
But it was doomed from the start. "What, are you a peasant? What will
become of your grades? Do you want to eat pork and go out with a shiksa (a
non-Jewish girl in Yiddish)?"
All in all, I was so lonely that I asked
the British sailors if the girls in
From
We left our girls only at the last moment.
This prolonged departure was part of the ritual, which usually ended in a
routine warm kiss. We men would gather at a local café or restaurant and
exchange stories about our adventures, successes, failures and frustrations in
our efforts to kiss and pet our dates. But in the end we too had to return to
the dormitory to sign into the logbook. There was a lot of hypocrisy in those
days.
After my talks with the sailors, my
hormones began to flow out of excitement and I needed to calm down. I stopped
to talk with a Jewish doctor from the
I was so excited that I cannot recall
whether it was
From
I looked around hoping to see bombed
buildings and war damage. All I saw was an elderly Frenchman in a blue work
suit, rolling a fishing net into his boat, with the proverbial dead cigarette
dangling from his lips. The train to
The customs inspector insisted that I pay
a duty for my precious vacuum-tube portable radio which I had inherited from my
late brother. Portable radios were a novelty in those days. I said that it was
personal and not new. I said Campeeng, Campeeng, which I had used to indicate
to the customs inspectors at the port that I am just a tourist on a camping
trip. It had helped me then but did not help me now. I suppose that the French
regarded the portable radio as a luxury item. My first inclination was to dump
it on the spot but in the end I decided to pay. I had been riding on the train to
From
That is why the shortened form of Lazar is so common among Jews.
In speaking Yiddish, we used to call people Leizer if their name was Eliezer.
That is probably why I could not figure out at first how come a laser beam has
nothing to do with Jews.
In my youthful enthusiasm, I compared the station to the French
railway stations that I had seen in the movies. I was also impressed by the
porters in their blue uniforms and small pushcarts for luggage. I looked at the
faces of the people and played a game of trying to identify Jews. The name of
the famous Place de la Madeleine also interested me . It is a variant of
Magdalene, which was the name applied to the virgin Mary, since she came from
the village of Magdal or Magdala (now Migdal) near Tiberias. But that is
another story.
I must have applied at once to the Jewish Agency to get a place to
sleep. All I can remember is crowds and crowds of Jews roaming around the
offices and harried clerks who had no time to help me. The Jews were of all
ages, sizes and shapes and I felt that this was my first encounter with the
mainstream of the Jews from the displaced persons camps all over
From
I
turned to an Israeli who apparently represented the Haganah and he gave me a
voucher for a train ride to Marseille. I had some time to spare so I
walked a lot around the city. In my innocence, I was amazed that the Eiffel
tower and the other landmarks looked just like I had seen them in the
postcards. I enjoyed trying out my high school French on the locals and was
pleased when they understood me. The clothes that people were wearing were
still quite dull and gray and threadbare.
This fit in with all the memorial plaques from the war years that
I encountered on the avenues. On one street, the Germans had taken some hostages. On another street, the
resistance fighters had shot at a visiting German general. I felt very peculiar
to be walking the same streets that would have been so perilous for me just
four short years ago.
I remember taking a ride on the Metro to get the feel of the
place. The billboards were a good place to test my knowledge of French. I think
I went to the Folies Bergere or some similar show to take a peep at French
culture. The exposed bodies were just as I had imagined. The French call their
lemonade "citron" and I had some at the intermission. Now I have an
unpleasant but true confession to make. I was walking close to the Pigalle,
wide-eyed and full of wonder, when a strange woman in the crowd stopped me. I
thought at first that she was asking for a handout or inviting me into a bar
for a dime a dance.
From
It all happened so fast that I had no time to think much. She drew
me into a sleazy hotel, started to reveal her breasts and legs and invited me
to touch them. I have never told Ruth about this and probably never will,
unless she hires a special prosecutor. I guess that I was flushed from
excitement and did not realize what I was doing.
The woman wanted a few dollars in advance but all I had was a ten
dollar bill. Fortunately, I was foolish enough to give it to her, as she
demanded. She said that she would change it at the concierge's desk but she
never returned.
I went downstairs, stunned with disbelief that I,
I added that in any case, I am off to Marseille tomorrow on the
way to
From
I do not remember much of the train ride southward. I was alone
and followed the snow-covered mountains to the east and the vineyards that
seemed to cover every patch of hillside. Maybe we passed
I could feel in my bones that we were approaching the
I had reached Marseille and found transportation to an old castle
called
From
I remember one hike with
backpacks up the slope. From the hilltops I could look even further up and down
the coastline than I could from our camp in town. I was interested to try to
locate Nice and
We had reached a high place
from which we could see down below a small clearing cut out of the rock. A
trolley car was turning around in a small circle. It was the final stop of a municipal
rail line and we needed to take that trolley home. I could not imagine having
to descend that slope directly down to the trolley but that is exactly what we
were required to do. I was so scared that I almost slipped and tumbled down
several times.
I did manage to see Nice in
1972 when our Air
From
The Jewish Agency had rented from the French a string of old
chateaux around the town, overtly for the use of transients from
Our camp was different. Overtly, it was a haven for refugees but
covertly it was a military camp. The soldiers in our camp were a mixture of
conscripted refugees called Gachal (Gius Hutz L'Aretz) and volunteers like me
from all around the world called Machal (Mitnad'vei Hutz L'Aretz). The members
of Machal have kept in touch and formed an organization in the
I am a member of AVI and receive their newsletters and contribute
money to the planting of memorial forests and conventions. But to my regret I
have never taken part in their annual conventions in
From
I
personally remember two volunteers from
Our
commander was
In later years, he became a labor-relations lawyer and worked for
the Histadrut. I once met him on a street in
From
I got into conversations with some of the displaced persons and
their stories were enough to make your hair stand on end. They had become
toughened in the camps and were now rebellious. We could not train with rifles
so we had broomsticks instead. We used to run around the streets every morning
holding our broomsticks and responding to orders to sing one-two-three-four (in
Hebrew).
The French residents looked on us as if we were strange and weird.
A few encouraged us with shouts of bravo but most were indifferent. Here I must
mention that even then
A propos immigrants, I remember passing some barbershops and small
craftsmen with names on the front that sounded Armenian. In fact, I once went
into a barber shop for a haircut just to get the feel of the town and the
barber got excited in broken French when he told me about the massacre of
Armenians in
Several times I bought some red wine at a neighborhood wine shop.
The many wine shops were an attraction by their very existence. They were all
over the place, as frequent as a fish and chips shop in
From
The wines were stored in a row of wooden casks, each with its tap.
The casks contained various types of wine: red, white, strong, vintage and so
on. You mentioned the type of wine you need and the dealer poured it into a
tall green-tinted deposit bottle with a white cap held tightly in place by a
spring-operated lever. It reminded me of the Mason jars in the States to pickle
cucumbers or turnips in a vacuum.
I had no idea whatsoever what wine to
choose, so I took the cheapest. My big surprise was that it is no big deal to
buy or drink wine here. I was impressed by the license just to operate a retail
store, without any special type of license for wines and liquors as in the
States. I noticed the matter-of-fact attitude of the customers, without the
usual hang-ups about alcohol that I had known. This was in contrast to my
memories from the States.
For example, when I was in the Army, I
would get homesick from time to time and buy a bottle of Manischewitz sweet
wine on the way home from the base. I would land at a main terminal in town,
From
The owner of the delicatessen insisted
that I must put the bottle away. This was because he had no liquor license. If
an inspector saw me drinking wine, he would report it and the proprietor would
be punished by a fine. After that incident, I began to associate wine with
licenses and special permits.
I have mentioned an open port area, and I
remember that Marseille was like that. The long street along the sea was called
Avenue de la Republique, but I imagine that it is now Avenue Charles de Gaulle.
In 1997, Ruth and I took the ferry from
The Arab quarter of Marseille was nearby
and I was dying of curiosity to go have a look. But we were warned to stay
away, since we were obviously not Frenchmen and, more important, were engaged
in clandestine activities. However, that did not deter me from enjoying the
sights on the street. I noticed many vendors selling from pushcarts. Next to
local French brands of toothpaste, I was amazed to see Colgate and Kolynos
toothpaste, just like back home. Perhaps the American brands had been bought or
stolen from the armies of occupation in
From
From a small heated wagon came shouts of
"Jambon, jambon". It sounded like jam-bon or "good jam" but
when I took a closer look I saw what looked like the leg of a chicken or goose.
Perhaps it was based on "la jambe" meaning a leg or limb. A friend
told me in 1999 that she remembers "jambon" to be the name for ham.
Of course I did not touch the stuff.
My interest in words got the better of me
and I got a kick out of the name of one of the cross-town streets, La
Canebiere. I know that it still exists but I never could find out what it
meant. To me it sounded like a Can of Beer. I remember seeing a young female
student walking around with a T-square in hand, just like the ones we used to
use in drawing classes.
I quickly learned that a store named
Emballage was a place where you could get any merchandise packed for shipment.
I had brought with me from the States a bulky carton of sugar for our cousins
in Pardes Hanna, because sugar was scarce in
From
I know
that the port was international because many of the business signs mentioned
French colonies such as "L'Afrique du Nord" and
"L'Indo-Chine". By the way, I am not sure that our kitchen at the
One
day, to break the routine, a friend and I went downtown to look for a kosher
restaurant. Apparently, not many Jews were left in Marseille. The town had been
full of refugees after the fall of
It was
not easy to find because we had no information to go by and the passersby could
not help us. We finally did find the only kosher place in town, a simple dining
room without decorations. I do not remember what we ate there, probably
chicken. We were eager to meet people and our most interesting encounter was
with a Polish Jew who had survived a death camp. He was relatively young and in
good physical condition, thin but not emaciated. He had
an unusual story to tell. When
From
He drifted to Marseille and had almost
decided to move eastward towards the Italian armies. Then he heard from the
grapevine that the French were accepting recruits for the Foreign Legion in
The recruiting officer had approved his
enlistment but there was a liaison officer of the secret service with him. The
security agent became suspicious when the recruit did not speak French fluently
enough and could not answer some leading questions. He demanded a thorough
interrogation and you can imagine what happened next.
And now he was sitting with us in a
miserable kosher restaurant, looking for company like we were, trying to
rebuild his broken life. We invited him, half-jokingly, to join us but he said
that he already had gone through enough struggles to last a lifetime and could
not contribute to our cause. It had been my first heart to heart talk, face to
face with a displaced person.
Meanwhile. our unit was becoming restless
because we had completed our course of basic training, as much as we could do
without the firing of weapons. We were doing nothing, just waiting around for a
ship to arrive. There was a lot of loose talk and ferment in the barracks.
From
One day our activists incited us to walk
out of the camp without permission and parade towards the center of Marseille.
We marched in step, chanting "
I do recall that our commander
In the end we broke up peacefully but
looking back it was more of an outing than a riot. The idea was to make a
point, and relieve frustrations. Not long afterwards, the passenger ship
“Kedma” did arrive to take us to
This ends my story. In later years, my
grandchildren began to search for their roots and have asked me, their Grandpa
Shlomo, to describe my parents, Harry and Fanny Sokol, of blessed memory.
NOTE: THIS ENDS MY MEMORIES THAT WERE
WRITTEN IN A FREE AND SPONTANEOUS WAY. THE NEXT PAGES WILL BE AN APPENDIX, IN
WHICH I ANSWER QUESTIONS PUT TO ME BY MY VARIOUS GRANDCHILD-REN. DURING THE
SIXTH GRADE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, THE LOCAL CUSTOM IS TO DECLARE IT A
"BAR-MITZVAH YEAR". EACH PUPIL IS GIVEN A SET OF 13 TASKS TO DO
DURING THE YEAR. AMONG THEM IS TO APPROACH A PARENT AND A GRANDPARENT AND
PRESENT A LIST OF QUESTIONS DURING AN INTERVIEW AND REPORT THE ANSWERS. MANY OF
MY ANSWERS SURPRISED ME BECAUSE, ALTHOUGH THEY WERE SOMETIMES REPETITIOUS, THEY
DID AWAKEN FORGOTTEN MEMORIES AND I COPIED THEM DOWN FOR MYSELF.
AS EVER, SHLOMO
With best wishes for your health and happiness
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