Raquela

by Ruth Gruber

  The adults helped the children prepare for their voyage; they brought them presents and helped them pack their little knapsacks. The camps for once were filled with smiling people. The children would go directly to Youth Aliyah children’s villages and kibbutzim in Palestine, the whole country ready to put its arms around them, adopt them, welcome them home.

  And still the conceiving and the birthing never stopped. More than two thousand girls and boys were born in the prison maternity ward—each newborn an answer to Hitler.

  A few days after the orphaned children had left, the thousandth boy was born. The records of circumcisions were carefully kept.

  Meir Noy, a Romanian musician, composed a song, and Moshe Sakagio, a well-known poet, also from Romania, wrote the words for “A Hymn of Joy to the Thousandth Boy.”

  Soon nearly everyone in the camps and the hospital was singing the song.

  The thousandth boy is born today

  Rejoice! In all the camps

  A mazal tov; a holiday

  The thousandth boy is born

  Men and women of Zion at war

  Soldiers of Eretz Israel

  Greet

  A thousand boys and one more.

  Asleep in his cradle and warm

  The thousandth boy dreams,

  A builder in peace, a fighter in war,

  The thousandth boy is born.

  Men and women ofZion at war

  Soldiers of Eretz Israel

  Greet

  A thousand boys and one more.

  In the swiftly setting sun

  Iron barracks strike gold;

  A regiment of children marches,

  Marches to Jerusalem.

  Men and women of Zion at war

  Soldiers of Eretz Israel

  Greet

  A thousand boys and one more.

  Each day Raquela joined the women in Maternity, singing the new theme song of Cyprus. Nursing and midwifing had never seemed more needed, more meaningful: delivering the babies of survivors, babies who would themselves soon be allowed to grow up in their own state in their own land. But would there be a state? Would fifty million Arabs, surrounding little Palestine, destroy what generations of Jews, like Papa’s family and Mama’s, had created?

  Meanwhile she was delivering babies. Delivering babies was itself an act of faith.

  On Friday, March 12, 1948, the third Arab attack rocked Jerusalem. This time the target was the Jewish Agency Building itself, the heart of the Jewish government.

  Papa wrote Raquela how most of the top Agency officials—Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, the leaders of the Haganah—were in the building when the trusted Arab driver of the U.S. consul general drove his American car flying the stars and stripes into the barricaded and heavily guarded Agency compound. The driver told the security guard he was going to a cafe to get a pack of cigarettes. Another guard was suspicious of the empty car; he was Haim Gur-Aryeh. “You know him,” Papa wrote. “He’s the brother of your nursing-school friend Lea. Haim jumped into the car, drove it a few feet away from the buildings, still inside the courtyard. The car exploded. A whole case of TNT was found in the trunk. Haim was blown to pieces.”

  Thirteen others were killed, among them Papa’s gentle seventy-one-year-old friend Leib Jaffe—one of the pioneers who had helped turn the swamps into farmlands. Leib Jaffe, who loved all living things, was dead.

  Raquela was still mourning Haim’s and Leib Jaffe’s deaths when a letter from Rena Geffen arrived. She opened it curiously. Why was Rena writing her now?

  The letter began simply.

  I’ve just come back to Tel Aviv from visiting my mother in Jerusalem. I walked down the street to say hello to your family; they’re all well. In fact, your brother Jacob was visiting, and he gave me your address in Cyprus.

  Raquela smiled inwardly. What a friendly thing for Rena to do—and in these days when she must be up to her ears in work, to take time out to write. Even Arik hardly wrote at all, occasionally dashing off a few lines to tell her how bone weary he was and how he missed her.

  She went on reading.

  Maybe you’ve heard this from somebody else. If not, I hate to be the first to write you about this tragedy. It’s about Carmi.

  Raquela had been standing inside the door of the maternity hut, reading. She reached out to the potbelly stove to support herself. What had happened to Carmi? What tragedy?

  Carmi had joined the Palmach. He was commander of a convoy that was trying to evacuate the people in Atarot and Neve Yaakov.

  Raquela knew the places well; two Jewish communities in the hills of East Jerusalem, side by side with Arabs.

  The Arabs had turned hostile and threatening. Carmi was in an armored truck leading the operation. He succeeded in evacuating all the Jews. Then he headed his convoy through Sheikh Jarrah to reach our old love—Mount Scopus.

  She shut her eyes. Sheikh Jarrah. Bus 9. How many times had her heart stopped beating as the bus stopped in front of the mufti’s villa and the Nashashibi houses on her way to Scopus.

  She forced herself to read on.

  In the Sheikh Jarrah quarter, Arabs ambushed the convoy. Carmi jumped out of his lead truck and shouted, “Everyone jump into ditches. Save your lives.”

  The people jumped into the ditches by the side of the road and miraculously saved themselves.

  But Carmi was killed. A hero’s death. I am so sad, dear Raquela, to write you this news.

  Raquela ran blindly from the maternity hut to her room. She wept for Carmi. She wept for all the young men and women dying every day. For all who would still die before they could have their own state.

  But now! What about Arik and Gad?

  She sat up in bed. Carmi’s death made it urgent to see things clearly. Was it possible to love two men? Did each one fill a different need within her?

  Arik—the teacher, the father figure, the compassionate doctor, the respected gynecologist intimately involved with her own career as a midwife.

  Gad—romantic, exciting, young. Gad meant fun and adventure. Gad meant release from the tensions of Cyprus and her terrors about the danger in Jerusalem.

  Gad was immediacy, reality. Arik was two hundred miles away.

  A phrase that Papa loved to quote from Goethe’s Faust went through her mind: “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust…” Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.

  “Raquela, are you there?” It was Gad’s voice.

  She wiped her face hurriedly. “Come in, Gad,” she said.

  She had never seen him look this way, his face distorted in agony.

  “There’s terrible news about Mount Scopus.”

  “What’s happened? Tell me, quickly.”

  “ There’s been a massacre. Seventy-seven people killed.”

  Raquela flung herself on Gad. “No! It can’t be. It mustn’t be. Do you know any names?”

  “Only one so far: Dr. Yassky.”

  “No!” The word ripped up through her stomach to her throat. “Not Dr. Yassky.” Founder. Creator of Scopus.

  Gad held her in his arms, trying to calm her.

  “Can you get off?” he asked. “We can go back to the ship and try to get more news on the short wave.”

  “I’m free this shift.”

  “Let’s go, then. I have a cab waiting.”

  They hardly spoke in the taxi. She lay in his arms, her eyes shut; she was in a dark room watching pictures of Dr. Yassky, Arik, Judith Steiner, Mrs. Cantor, all her friends, in still frames, frozen frames on a screen. Maybe, she thought, if she could keep conjuring them up, she could keep them alive.

  Aboard the Pan York, the wireless was tuned to Tel Aviv.

  Raquela settled into a deck chair next to the radio. The wireless operator began turning the dials.

  “Come in. Come in, Tel Aviv. This is the Pan York in Cyprus. Do you read me? Over.”

  “Roger. This is Tel Aviv. I read you fine. Over.”

  “Can you give us details on the massacre at Scopus? Over.”r />
  “I’ve got some newspapers in front of me. I’ll read you one of the reports. Over.”

  “Roger.”

  Raquela strained to hear every word.

  “Here goes.” The radio operator in Tel Aviv began reading: “‘Dateline Jerusalem, Tuesday, April thirteen, 1948.’”

  He described how the convoy had set off from downtown Jerusalem for Scopus: one hundred thirty doctors, nurses, patients, university professors.

  The Haganah escort was in a “sandwich,” a Dodge truck with armored plates; then came the white ambulance also armored, with Dr. Yassky, Mrs. Yassky, six other doctors, the assistant matron, and a patient on a stretcher. Behind them came more “sandwiches”—buses, trucks, another ambulance. All moved down Jaffa Road to East Jerusalem, then turned at the hilly bend in the road to Sheikh Jarrah.

  A mine in the middle of the road exploded. The convoy was trapped. Arabs lying in the ditches tossed hand grenades and fired guns at the stalled vehicles.

  A few managed to turn and dash back to the city. But most were sealed in, paralyzed in the narrow road.

  Raquela held the arms of the deck chair so tightly her knuckles turned white.

  “Do you still read me okay, Pan York?” the Tel Aviv operator asked.

  “Roger. I read you okay. Over.”

  The operator in Tel Aviv continued the account.

  “‘A few tried to jump from the buses. They were instantly gunned down and killed. The rest sat for hours in the armored buses and ambulances with no air, no food, no light. As time passed, hundreds of Arabs streamed out from neighboring areas and the Old City with more guns, hand grenades, and Molotov cocktails. British soldiers watched from their post less than a hundred yards away and did nothing.

  “‘From the rooftops of Mount Scopus, doctors could see the whole action. They telephoned downtown. The British army controlled the road. The Haganah demanded it be allowed to send men and arms to the rescue. The British refused. They told the Haganah the sight of armed Jews would only inflame the Arabs.

  Static pierced the room and penetrated Raquela’s body.

  “‘Mobs of Arabs encircled the buses, poured gasoline on the thin metal plates, put torches to the gasoline, and the people inside were all burned alive.

  Raquela cried out in horror. Dear Lord, she prayed silently, don’t let Arik be in one of those buses.

  Gad leaned over and stroked her shoulder tenderly.

  The words kept coming from the set. “‘For seven hours, from nine-thirty in the morning, the convoy was under fire. It was about three in the afternoon when Dr. Yassky turned in his seat in the ambulance, next to the driver. He put his hand on Mrs. Yassky’s arm. “Shalom, my dear. This is the end,” he said.

  “‘A bullet penetrated the floor of the ambulance and hit him. He fell back in her arms, dead.

  Raquela slumped in her chair. “Dr. Yassky,” she moaned. “Dr. Yassky.”

  “‘Half an hour later, the British appeared on the road in tanks and armored cars with mortars and machine guns.

  “‘The Arabs fled.’”

  Tears rolling down her cheeks, Raquela walked to Gad. “Can we ask him—does he have the names of any others who were killed?”

  “Tel Aviv. Do you have the casualty list? Over.”

  “Roger. Seventy-seven names. Do you want them all? Over.”

  Raquela nodded. “Please.” Her voice was strangled.

  She listened to the list. She could see them. Doctors she had worked with in the white hospital. Midwives. Nurses. University professors. Some she knew intimately. She kept brushing the tears from her cheeks.

  “That’s it.” The wireless operator in Tel Aviv finished the list.

  Arik’s name was not among them.

  NINETEEN

  MAY 14, 1948

  Late Friday afternoon.

  Raquela sat with the doctors and nurses in their hut in the hospital compound. No one spoke. They leaned their heads close to the radio.

  For days they had been waiting, arguing and debating three questions: Would Britain pull out of Palestine on Bevin’s target date—May 15, 1948? Would the Jewish state be proclaimed? Would the Arabs invade?

  David Ben-Gurion’s military advisers told him two things were certain: The British would pull out. And the Arabs would invade.

  Fifty million Arabs in seven neighboring Arab states, five regular Arab armies, a million Arabs in Palestine—against 650,000 Jews.

  Yigael Yadin, the Haganah’s chief of operations, summed up the army’s position: “We have a fifty-fifty chance. We are as likely to win as we are to be defeated.”

  Ben-Gurion made his decision: the state would be born. And it would come into existence on Friday, the fourteenth of May, because the Sabbath fell on the fifteenth.

  Now, in the hut in Cyprus, the radio came alive. Ben-Gurion, standing up in the little museum in Tel Aviv, was speaking in a high quiet voice.

  “ I shall read the Scroll of Independence.”

  Independence!

  After two thousand years of exile. Independence. Tears streamed down Raquela’s cheeks. She did not notice. Her whole body listened.

  “The land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people.”

  She nodded. Papa’s family had been there for generations. Abraham had been there, and Isaac and Jacob. David and Solomon. The birthplace of the Jewish people. The land promised by God.

  “Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.”

  They were the people of the Bible, reclaiming their right to the Land of the Bible, the Book they had given to the world.

  She could almost see Ben-Gurion as he talked, the leonine head, the strong face framed in the cowl of white hair, like a prophet himself. Now his voice was filled with promise:

  “The State of Israel will be open to Jewish immigration and for the ingathering of the exiles.”

  The exiles! The fifty-two thousand men and women who had been imprisoned in Cyprus; the two thousand babies she had helped deliver in the prison maternity ward. The tens of thousands in the DP camps. The thousands more fleeing persecution in Europe and pogroms in the Arab lands. Now they could all be ingathered.

  The dark night of the Holocaust was over.

  The quotas and the certificates and the illegal ships were over.

  The State of Israel was open to Jewish immigration.

  The words washed over her, but she had stopped listening. She was thinking of Dr. Yassky and Carmi, and the hundreds of young men and women who had been massacred bringing food to save Jerusalem.

  The road to statehood had been strewn with blood.

  But was not every birth shrouded in blood? Who knew better than she? And how much more blood would be spilled in this birth?

  “We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

  Peace…cooperation…the advancement of the entire Middle East. Was it possible? Was it a dream? Why not?

  Ben-Gurion’s voice rang out:

  “We hereby proclaim the State of Israel.”

  Raquela stood up with Dr. Toaff and Esther and all the doctors and nurses.

  They sang “Hatikvah,” the “Song of Hope.” It had never seemed so meaningful.

  Raquela and Esther hugged each other. Dr. Toaff kissed them both, laughing and wiping his eyes. “Do you realize”—his musical Italian accent was thick with excitement—“now we’re a nation like all other nations? For the first time in two thousand years, we won’t be standing before kings and rulers with our hats in our hands. We’re in charge of our own destiny. Children, we should celebrate.”

  “I must tell my women first,” Raquela said.

  Raquela bounded across the compound to the maternity ward.

  “Women!” she shouted. “Listen. Ben-Gurion has proclaimed the State of Israel.”

  The women jumped out of bed. Some had just delivered; some were
heavy with babies ready to be born. They encircled Raquela, kissed her, hugged her until she was out of breath.

  “Wait a minute,” she finally gasped. “I only delivered the news. I didn’t deliver the state.”

  “Raquela, Raquela,” one of the women sang out, “we’re going home. Our babies will grow up in Israel.”

  When the excitement died down and the women returned to their beds, Gerda asked Raquela, “Do you know when they’ll let us out of here?”

  “I’ll go to Caraolas in the morning and bring back whatever news they have.”

  At seven the next morning she taxied to the camp. Inside the gates she stopped in her tracks. A mass of people swept across the campground, marching, stamping, parading. Banners waved in the air: LONG LIVE ISRAEL…LONG LIVE THE NATION OF THE JEWS.

  The paraders, dressed in their Shabbat clothing, wove in long lines about the tents and huts. Fiddlers played. Adi Baum pumped his accordion. Drummers beat rhythms on makeshift drums.

  Thousands of people were marching in different lines. Raquela joined one of the lines, marching happily until her group spontaneously formed a circle and danced a hora, faster and faster. Adi Baum joined them, playing his accordion; then, the folk dance over, he led them in a parade again, toward the watchtowers.

  Joyously waving their banners, the people called out to the soldiers, “Long live Israel! Now you too can go home.”

  The soldiers leaned out of the watchtowers, smiling broadly, waving back.

  Raquela caught sight of Josh and Pnina Leibner and their children marching in another line. She stepped out and hurried toward them; they too stepped out of line.

  Raquela and Pnina hugged each other. “Israel.” Pnina said it was if she were trying out a holy word.

  Only yesterday they had called their land “Palestine.”

  But Palestine was derived from the name “Philistine,” the people who were constantly at war with the ancient Israelites. No, the name “Israel” was right. For thousands of years they had called it Eretz Israel—“the Land of Israel.”