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I still want to go to Palestine? Didn't I just!
Great excitement on the hachshara, "one of
ours is making it!". I wrote them to that
effect. About two weeks later I received their
reply. Sorry, it said, by the time your answer
VATIKIM came you were TEN days too old to be
accepted for Youth Aliya. So I stayed two and
a half years more in Britain .
Name: Tommy Amit (Welkanoz)
Born: 1927 Finally in late summer '47 I was prepared to go
Home: Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi to Europe to the D.P. camps that had been set
up by the Brecha, the escape organization of
Habonim was something that I had not heard the Yishuv in Palestine, with the possibility of
about till I was 16. At that time I was one of moving on when the time comes. I agreed of
course and set out for Marseilles in August of
forty or so refugee teenagers in a hostel not
that year .
far from Edinbro'. Someone heard about this

potential recruiting place for the Movement It was an enormous change of environment. I
and one of its most charismatic madrichim duly listened to the stories of unimaginable
came north to check us out. That was Wrotz - suffering that these people had experienced.
Avraham Wrotzlavski - who taught us some Growing up in Britain as I had done, even if it
songs and regaled us with Yiddish stories read was certainly not a normal childhood, was a
in a rich Litvak pronunciation. I was enchanted. holiday camp by comparison .
It was the first time I had heard Yiddish. My
home background did not really allow it. But I On applying for a new assignment at the head
had more reason than that to latch onto office I was asked if I didn't want to get on a
Wrotz. In my first year in this hostel Polton boat. Affirmative! Several days later, equipped
House - managed by Yehuda Goodman, we with a forged visa on my legal British Travel
worked more or less as slave labourers on Document I boarded the good ship Teti, a
surrounding farms and market gardens, and tramp steamer plying Mediterranean ports with
that was alright for me at the time but I was rubber tires, garlic eating Jewish migrants and
eager to move on to a proper hachshara. other malodourous cargo. The seas were high,
Although I was not old enough to join a the crew was filthy, the food was indescribable
hachshara at 16+, I persuaded him that at 5 and my spirits were high. I was the only one on
foot eleven and after two years of hard work board not seasick for the entire three weeks it
on Scottish farms, the six months should not took from Marseilles to Haifa. I had my
hold me back. It worked. That autumn I arrived twentieth birthday on board. We docked in
at Kibbutz Shmaryahu in Wiltshire. Haifa at midnight the 31 December 1947 .

A few months earlier I was given the job of After a couple of days I made my way to
chatzran (there, in the hostel, an after-work Hadera where my garin had moved a few
chore). It was an ill defined job of odd jobs of months previously. It wasn't much. Some tents,
maintenance services and repairs that did not wooden shacks and a few derelict looking
fit into anyone else's duties. After a year and houses, some of which were occupied by
a half of farmwork, I was familiar with all the others, not of the garin. O.K. We were
jobs on a farm except for milking and Chalutzim, no?

thatching, I was also chatzran in my spare
Six months later the call came. Hagalila!
time. When the hachshara moved to Bosham in
Hityashvut! What we had worked for and
Sussex in 1946 this became my full time job waited for. Did anyone promise us a bed of
with an emphasis on maintenance of the roses? Did they forget to tell us about the
grounds, it being a posh neighbourhood .
thorns? The chamsin? But we were young and
Some six months after arriving in Shmaryahu I eager and did not mind the gruelling work or
received a letter informing me that my 5 year fighting off enormous hornets in the day and
old application to Youth Aliya had come hungry mosquitoes at night.
through, I could make Aliya immediately. It
had taken them some time to locate me and did