Page 36 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Winter 20
P. 36
He clearly remembers the enormous I have accomplished? After all that happened,
destruction that London suffered, then. I need to do something different – to go on
Aliyah and build a new society. My luck was
During the final stages of the war, Freddy
reached the end of his high-school studies, that my girlfriend, Hannah, who was already
and began to weigh his future and which in Habonim, and who was a nurse by training,
profession to follow. “Without understanding also saw the situation in the same way that I
what architecture really was, I always wanted did.”
to be an architect”, he says. “I went to AA – Kahana joined Habonim youth movement,
The Architectural Association School of where he met shlichim from Kibbutz Givat
Architecture (one of the world’s leading Chaim and learnt about the collective
architectural schools – M.J.) to see for settlements. His final project for his studies
myself, but I didn’t like the snobbish élitism was the planning of a Kibbutz in England.
and preferred the modest Polytechnic”.
In 1954, after he and Hannah married and
“Strangers were living in the apartment. I having completed his term as Habonim
went to my parents’ shop, now of course Secretary, the couple realised their dreams
under new ownership. I saw that nothing and went to live in Israel.
had remained. I understood and decided to The new dining room in his kibbutz
put it all behind me.”
Freddy and Hannah joined Kibbutz Bet
The war ended. His uncle generously paid for HaEmek in Western Galilee, a kibbutz
his studies and watched him succeed. In the founded in 1949 by survivors of the camps
second year of his studies, he was approached and partisans from Hungary. They had
to represent the UK students of architecture moved into the houses of an Arab village,
at the founding congress of the "International Kuwaykat, whose inhabitants had been
Union of Students" in Prague. From his point expelled during the War of Independence.
of view, it was a return home after the The original group left after a short time and
Holocaust. The congress bored him (“From were replaced by Olim from Britain and
morning to night there were speeches, mainly Holland.
from the Soviet bloc”) and, as soon as it
finished, he was free to visit his childhood Freddy changed his name to Kahana.
home. “Strangers were living in the His first work as an architect in Israel was to
apartment. I went to my parents’ shop, now design the cultural centre of his kibbutz. He
of course under new ownership. I saw that worked for thirty-five years in the Planning
nothing remained. I understood and decided Department of the Kibbutz Movement,
to put it all behind me.” together with architects like Hanan Havron
Kahana already knew that his parents, and his and Vittorio Corinaldi, who were
beloved aunt, had been sent to Theresienstadt kibbutznikim like himself. Kahana prepared
and from there to Auschwitz, where they many plans for kibbutzim, including living
were murdered. “I asked myself, if I become quarters, educational and public buildings.
an architect and remain in England, what will Among others, he designed the communal
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