Page 8 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Autumn 21

AN EXTRACT FROM A out- my parents opposed it and felt it to be an
unsettled time. They were right, fighting had
LECTURE I GAVE IN broken out and the group I had wanted to go

PHILADELPHIA IN 1975 out with spent six months digging trenches
and queuing for water in a besieged
SYLVIA FLOWERS Jerusalem.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM I finally made it in 1950 as a participant of
the Jewish Agency Youth Leadership Course.
“FLORA AND FAUNA”,
SYLVIA’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY I spent six months in
studying
Jerusalem,
Y Hebrew and Jewish
ou may wonder how did I
get to Israel in the first
studies, and going on field
place? I am an Israeli by
choice, not birth. I was born in trips, then six months in a
kibbutz. However, don’t
Scotland, my accent is my proof. I forget this was over 50
grew up there quite happily. It years ago and if you think
was not anti-Semitism that drove that Israel is a land of
me to Israel or a need to change chaos now, you should
my scene; it was pure and simple have been around then.
Zionism. First of all, we were not the

only people going to Israel in 1950. The
staging camps in the South of France and
Italy were chock-a-block with people who felt
they had a better claim to a place on a boat
than we had. We
spent a few days in
a transit camp near
Marseilles mixing
with inmates from

1945 Blairgowrie Camp, Scotland, 1945 concentration
Front, Bert Seltzer. First row, left to right Anna camps who had, in
Shur, Wrotz, Sylvia (Polli) Flowers, ?, the interim, spent
Edinburgh chaver.
Next row, from left, Zami Chanahowitz (Adam years in Displaced
Ben Hanoch), Esther,?,?. Persons camps and
Right back, Nat Rifkind. Back left ? wandering around
Europe before Machon 1950. From left:
Sue Birkenruth, Bradford,
I was a member of a Zionist Youth Movement opting for Israel. Sylvia (Polli) Flowers,
– Habonim - and while educating others I There were also Glasgow, Doreen Segal
found that I had converted myself. My first Polish Jews fleeing
attempt to get out to Israel in 1948 fizzled from a new wave of pogroms; they had finally

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