Page 7 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - January 19

NINETY THREE YEARS YOUNG
ALEC AYLAT
O language and, since I refused to speak English for
riginally from Glasgow, I was with the
Feature and Drama Department of the
BBC in Manchester (evacuated from
London) in 1944/45 when I first joined Habonim.
Not yet drafted, I volunteered for the Jewish
Brigade Group when it became part of the Eighth
Army in 1945 and was with it in Italy, Holland
and Belgium. I was demobilized, illegally, with
the Brigade in Palestine in 1946, (illegally, in the
name of another Brigadenik who stayed behind to
work with the refugees. Illegally, because I had
volunteered for the Brigade in England and not in
Palestine. He who volunteers in England is
demobbed in England. The Queen later forgave
me). It was my first change of name.
For my second change of name, I awaited my
Haganah-prepared false identity card in Kibbutz
Na’an when the kibbutz was stormed by British
army and Palestine Police contingents on
Saturday, June 29, 1946, a date always to be
known in the Yishuv as Shabbat Hashachor, the
Black Sabbath. I was arrested there like most
everyone else. We were detained in Rafiah,
interrogated several times, and I, like some others,
but hardly unexpectedly, and only following
serious efforts by the chief interrogator to get me
to understand English, was released after a month,
and went to Kfar Blum, my original Habonim
destination. While there, I participated in the
founding overnight, across the Jordan, of a new
kibbutz, Neot Mordechai. (Around which I have
since written a screenplay). I left Kfar Blum
shortly after because English was more the main
language there than Hebrew. I joined a number of
my Sabra friends from the Brigade who were
already in Lower Galilee's Beit Keshet, the first
kibbutz of the Palmach. There, Ivrit was the only
7
a year, my Hebrew language skills improved
quickly. When, eventually, I occasionally also
spoke English again, I was surprised when I
stumbled now and again recalling simple words.
We were attacked shortly after the State was
declared. Seven of our members were killed,
including Eli Ben Zvi, son of (later President)
Yitzhak Ben Zvi, We were under constant attack
for four months, and then help was needed at
Kibbutz Gesher, near Lake Kinneret, where I,
with some machine-gun skills, was sent with our
Palmach group to join the defense.
An American war correspondent, whose mother
was a friend of Rachel Ben Zvi, visited Beit
Keshet at Rachel’s request. It was “love at first
sight”. She chose to remain in Beit Keshet until
we decided to marry, which we did, several
months later, in Jerusalem. It was my third change
of name, Dassah not agreeing to be known as
Hadassah Chavivah Ben Shmuel. It was time to
leave Beit Keshet, albeit reluctantly. With Dassah
being a war correspondent and yours truly with
my broadcasting experience, we both got jobs on
The Palestine Post (later, The Jerusalem Post), she
as features editor, I on the news desk. Some
months later I was also hired by Reuters.
We lived with the Ben Zvi’s for several months
until we moved to temporary quarters with JNF
head Avraham Granot’s family, whose daughter
was working in the States. Those were Tzenah
days. Friday afternoons we would get a shout
from upstairs that the water was hot and that it
was time for our weekly five minute showers.
When, eventually, Dassah was in her ninth month