KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
In 1946, there were twenty-six thousand Displaced Persons in the cramped British internment camps at Cyprus, which “were made as forbidding as possible to discourage would-be immigrants.” 1 Thousands of refugees all over Europe and Israel were trying to find their lost family members and listened to the radio program Who Recognizes, Who Knows? every day, hoping against hope to hear news of relatives and friends who might have survived. Pre- sumably, this was the case at Yagur, too, with adults and children huddled around the radio. Despite their traumas or because of them, the children at Yagur barely talked about their families or personal lives. “Everybody thought that his experiences were his own private problem,” said Chana Haklay. “It was only later, when the Eichmann trial made it legitimate to talk, that we opened up, and we only spoke then to prove that we did not go ‘like cattle to the butcher.’” “We had tolerance for others,” added Behira Zakay, “when some of us were wetting in bed or shouting at nights...sometimes years after we had come. The war taught us to be tolerant.” Rubinstein said, “At the kibbutz, nobody talked about how things really were for us. Nobody asked about the families we had lost. It was not en- couraged. I had nightmares...and still have them. Until today, they never stop.” Ezra Sherman, who was acquainted with the Dror group in Ger- many, had immigrated to Palestine illegally with his older brother and then rejoined the group in Yagur. He said, “Most of us were left by ourselves now. We had survived in the forest or in a village. It was a trauma for a boy of fifteen. We didn’t talk about it, even between us. Somebody might ask you something, and you would answer here or there, but you would never, never sit down and tell your stoiy. I didn’t talk about it until the last ten or fifteen years. We were busy with ourselves. I was less than fifteen years old but I was thinking like a man of thirty-five.” Rubinstein remembered sharing the last room on the second floor of the building with Kalman Offir, Ezra Sherman, and Mor - decai Aviv, and said that it was difficult for the refugee children to story.
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