Page 49 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - October 19

A DIFFERENT KIND OF COLLECTIVE
- MOSHAV HABONIM
JOYCE SHIMONI (SIMON), NEE LEVART
I machine that cut the flax that the German
was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to a
traditionally attuned Jewish family. Zionists
and socialists involved in Poalei Zion and in
“Tarbuth”, a cultural society of similarly thinking
people. My brother Alec was just over two years
older than I was and from the start, we were
imbued with a pride in being Jewish and a future
relating to the two 'isms. We both joined
Habonim, went on hachsharah, came to Israel and
started out in kibbutz, albeit Alec was always a
few years ahead of me. When I joined the
Movement at the age of 15, I was delighted to find
friends made during evacuation days. Our
inspiring madrich was Wrotz (Avraham
Wrocslavsky), and through this group, I gradually
came to the decision to make aliyah, with
hachsharah as the intermediary stage. However,
before joining Habonim I had opted to leave
school, feeling completely disorientated after
living in several regions during the war and
attending many different schools. I chose to go to
Commercial College for a year, which will
explain why I was elected as treasurer on
hachsharah and took over from Cyril Simon with
such dire results.
In 1946 at the age of 19, I was directed to
Newport Pagnell, joining several other chaverim
who had been sent from Bosham to replace the
group about to leave on illegal aliyah from the
Hechalutz hachshara. Members of this group did
'war-work' under the auspices of the War
Agricultural Committee and couldn't just
disappear. However, they could be replaced
numerically without the authorities catching on!
Therefore, I spent six months there before really
joining the chevra at Bosham. Actually I did more
farm work in Newport Pagnell than I ever did
later, such as driving the tractor that pulled the
49
prisoners-of-war had to tie and stack. A rather
satisfying situation.
In Bosham I did many different jobs. Two of them
have stood me in good stead to this day. One was
cooking with Steffi (she of the enviable reputation
in Kfar Blum). The other was learning to use a
sewing machine, taught by none other than Cyril
Simon, a one-time tailor's apprentice who also
initiated me into the secrets of being treasurer of a
very small treasure. Being so small, it gave us
time to get to know one another and our friendship
grew.
Came the day when Niumka arrived with his list
of chaverim to leave on aliyah. Since this was
Cyril's group since 1943, he was stunned not to be
on it. Niumka explained that he had chosen him to
stay behind as liaison with the younger chevra at
Bosham and to run the market-garden which was
a source of much needed income to the hachshara.
Only later did we find out that his decision was
made easy by some chaverim being more aware of
our feelings for each other than we were
ourselves. However, we did wake up to them
eventually, married in Glasgow in February 1949,
and left for Israel in March. Together with Renee
Rosenberg, Leslie Green and another Joyce whose
surname I can't recall, we were probably the last
of Habonim to leave Britain illegally. We left
ostensibly for France and joined the survivors of
the camps in Marseilles. We sailed on the Negba,
'sleeping' like most of the olim in the 'hold', and
reached Haifa on March 26 . We docked, we
th
were sprayed, and we were released in Israel. I
was terribly disappointed not to find my brother,
already 3 years in the country, on the pier to greet
us. We made our way to Hadera where the women