KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
or anything else, you got it. You were never questioned. And to the best of my knowledge, no one deliberately took advantage of the system. Laundry was identified by its owner’s number, sewn in red thread inside each garment. My number was 476. We left our dirty clothes at a central place and then on Fridays, we picked them up at the laundry, where every member of the kibbutz had a shelf labeled with his or her number. Waiting at your spot would be your clean, ironed, and folded laundry. Because the kibbutz did not want to create a hierarchy or rul- ing class, the constitution of the kibbutz decreed that no one could serve as head of the kibbutz for more than two terms, or two years. At the weekly membership meeting, we debated the kibbutz’s in- ternal problems, such as whether to buy a new truck, install air con- ditioning in a particular room, enlarge the library, put up another building, or accelerate some programs. Everyone in the Dror group was treated fairly and with respect, and we had a good life. We were an independent unit within the kibbutz, but we were friendly with all the kibbutz members and had a good relationship with them. The Germans had robbed us of four years of our lives, but at Yagur we regained our youth and started to behave like normal teenagers again. Although the kibbutz had no hierarchy, a number of national leaders were members or were associated with Yagur, including Eliyahu Golomb, the father of the Haganah, and Yitzchak Tabenkin, a labor movement leader, whose wife lived in Yagur. Tabenkin’s son, Josef, became the head of the Palmach. Israel Bar Yehuda, who later became Israel’s minister of the interior, and Moshe Carmel, who was commander of the Northern Front and later became the minister of transportation, were members of Yagur. Uzi Gal, who invented Israel’s famous Uzi submachine gun, was also a member of the kibbutz. He was one of about eight people working in the tool shop when I worked there and was about three years my senior. During this period, he and I worked side by side in the tool shop and ate lunch and dinner together. He was secretly
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