מאגר סיפורי מורשת

How did I get to live in Israel

My first contact with Israel occurred when I joined Habonim at the age of 9. Even at that age I told my parents that I would live in Israel. My parents separated when I was 14 and so, my thoughts of living in Israel became more of a reality. At the age of 17 I went to live in hachshara in Victoria for 18 months, which was preparation for life on a kibbutz. I married Sharkie who I met on hachshara at the age of 19 and we travelled by ship for 6 weeks to Israel.

We landed at Haifa port on 18.8.1964 and went straight to kibbutz yizrael. My first sight of Israel and my falling in love with everything was the vision of Emek Yisral, mayan harod, the Gilboa and in the distance the town of Nazareth etc. All so well written about in the Bible and so marvelously wonderful to see. The Kibbutz was situated on the site of King Ahab – another wonder for me.

I left the kibbutz and my husband after a few years and arrived in Tel Aviv without any money and no place to live. Some wonderful people helped me find a place to live and a place to work. As soon as I contacted the British federation and I eventually went to work at the Jerusalem post, where I stayed until the birth of my first child, Dana. I had married my second husband a year after arriving in Tel Aviv.

We went through the six-days war in 1967 and the exhilaration that was felt in Israel was wonderful to experience. To this day my feelings for Israel have not changed, even though I was widowed at the age of 48 and had to bring up my four children on my own with subsequent difficult financial situation I was in.

I now live in a retirement home in Kfar Saba and can say that it was one of the best decisions I could ever have made.

The second story: roots

My late husband Immy was born in Slovakia in 1935. He was an only child to very religious parents. When the second world war reached Slovakia, his parents had to flee the village they lived in and his father decided that he was going with his family and whoever else wanted to go with him to the forest.

Another ten adults and two other children joined him and the rest of the village went to the mountains. None of them survived the ordeal, but the people who went to the forest all survived the war. They even came across German soldiers who laughed at them and told them to run. They succeeded in finding a hiding place in a railway station and hid there in a secret room, even though the soldiers arrived at the station and spent the night there.

 After the war ended, immy’s father sent him to a yeshiva in Bratislava, but he was very unhappy there. He had no proper education and in the end it was decided to send him to England to live with his cousin Tibor. He arrived by train to Ireland just before Passover at the age of 12, and his cousin came to fetch him from there. He remained in England till the age of 31, when he was forced to come to Israel to care for his aged parents who had come to Israel after the war ended in Slovakia.

 The reason he didn’t come to Israel earlier was because he studied in English and it was felt that he should not be uprooted again. He studied textile engineering at Leeds university and worked with his cousin until his aliyah to Israel on 8.8.1963 and my grandma Angela arrived in Israel on the 8.8.1964.

My grandparents met and married in September 1967, straight after the 6 day war. They had four children: Dana, Keren, Guy and Yonatan.

הזוית האישית

יעל הנכדה המתעדת: סבתא, היה כיף להיות איתך בבית הספר. אני שמחה שתיעדנו את סיפורך במאגר המורשת.