KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
alemanV (“Together with everyone!” in Yiddish). Then everyone started to sing HaTikva, the Israeli national anthem. “It was the first time we’d heard such a big crowd singing HaTikva in public, freely,” recalled Haklay proudly. Once the British realized that Kibbutz Yagur’s members would not leave the dining room voluntarily, they threw tear-gas canisters and oil through the doors and windows. Some people collapsed in near-suffocation. Others were wounded by glass from the bro - ken windows. In the chaos, children were screaming and some fled, but the staunch resistance continued. Chaim T. described the nightmare in the Yagur Book as follows: “Only little air for breath- ing was left.... One of the teenagers [had] survived only yesterday from Nazi extermination camp...and the scene reminded her of gas chambers.... [She] got into a state of shock and started to scream hysterical, heart-wrenching screams. Her eyes were wide and en- raged as a frightened animal’s. Her instructor hugged her and tried to calm her down, but there was no way to control her. Once out- side she broke away from her instructor and jumped upon the sol - diers, hitting them with tight fists, spitting straight in their faces and screaming at them, ‘You are Nazis! Dogs! Murderers!”’ As the soldiers forced them onto trucks to take them away, Hak- lay remembered, “We spat on them and threw salt into their eyes.” They were taken to Jelamy, a nearby police station where Eich- mann was later held during his trial, and locked into holding pens, one for the women and children, one for the young men, and one for the old men. That night, the children, as well as most of the women and old men, were taken back to Yagur, where they were kept under heavy guard for nearly a week. The younger men were jailed. In the Yagur Book, a fourth grader wrote this poem: Yagur Book, aleman!”
Soldiers came with tanks and guns, They searched, destroyed rooms, They also arrested children, they arrested members, We are sad but we are not crying.
348
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online