Page 9 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Autumn 21
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left the vast graveyard that they had hoped to went down the toilet, which by then, needed
resettle. There were primitive Jews from it.
North Africa from Saharan mud villages and There were about 60 young people in our
even some who had lived in caves…. not group; left wing and right wing, religious and
exactly what we middle-class British kids irreligious and we hailed from Europe, North
were used to. The Jewish Agency eased the Africa, South Africa and South America and
transition period for us; we did not stay in the we all got on well together. The lingua franca
camp but returned each night to a flea-ridden was English with more and more Hebrew as
hotel where we slept three to a bed. Were we time went on, but there was a tendency to
glad when the boat for Israel finally limped stick to language groups. I think that classes
into port!
were held in French, Spanish and English.
Apart from having a good time, we also
worked hard, studied hard and endured
hardships.
Jerusalem
1950
(Wikipedia)
Jerusalem in 1950 was a beautiful compact
little city of infinite charm. Stone-built houses
– no rows of match-box housing, almost
hidden in a forest of T.V. antennae. Food was
strictly rationed, but we were used to that in Jewish immigrants from Yemen in a tent
Britain. We never saw a potato in a year and encampment in 1950 as they are visited by
although the European members of our Israeli nurses. (Jerusalem Post)
group took it in their stride, the Americans,
Canadians, South Africans and South One thing that sticks in my memory is the
Americans really suffered “withdrawal week we worked in Sha’ar Aliyah, a camp for
symptoms.” processing new immigrants It was an
abandoned British Army camp, Old, leaky
We had clothing coupons and even had to tents, pouring rain and mud everywhere. The
give coupons for repairing shoes, so many for occupants were Yemenites, who had arrived
so much leather, depending on whether you by “Operation Magic Carpet”, and I
needed your soles, or your heels mended. admired the quiet dignity with which they
Water was still rationed in Jerusalem. Once faced the dreadful conditions. There were
a week when the cisterns were filled, we were whole families in the tents with all their
given a bucketful each and with that we possessions in a few sacks, separated from
washed ourselves top to bottom, then our each other by a threadbare blanket strung up
smalls, then our rooms and what was left
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