City of Oranges

by Adam LeBor

  The White Paper was certainly in breach of the spirit of the Mandate, if not the letter. It was a radical new interpretation of the Mandate, but with the outbreak of war, Britain believed it could not afford to alienate the Arabs. Palestine was the gateway to Syria and Iraq, and these were of vital strategic importance. The shortlived British love affair with Zionism faded, and the Foreign Office grandees returned to their old love: ‘If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs,’ said Neville Chamberlain.1 The Zionists were outraged. ‘Satan himself could not have created a more distressing and horrible nightmare,’ wrote Ben-Gurion. Nevertheless they believed they had no choice but to stay allied with the British. The Jewish Agency gave the British authorities a list of 134,000 men who wanted to fight in the Allied armies – one out of every two men of military age – and 20,000 women. The struggle for statehood continued: the Agency launched Aliyah Bet, a clandestine international rescue operation to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine.

  In the Baltic port of Danzig, far from Jaffa, Zionism and Palestine all seemed very remote to the twelve-year-old schoolboy Frank Meisler. Danzig was a medieval Hanseatic port, a free city state, carved out of Prussia’s coast after the First World War. Like Jaffa, Danzig had once been captured by Napoleon – some of Frank’s ancestors had served guard duty on the city walls – and was now ruled under a mandate from the League of Nations. And like the Jews of Jaffa, those of Danzig were also divided by language and culture. The German speakers came from old and established families and regarded their Polish co-religionists as uncultured Ostjuden, eastern Jews, or even ‘Black Jews’. Most of the German Jews were not very observant, and were opposed to Zionism. The Polish Jews were much more religious and strongly Zionist.

  Frank’s parents were a mix of both. His mother, Meta Boss, was a German speaker descended from Sephardim. In later years, an ancestral memory of the Mediterranean, and a love of light and sunshine, would help steer Frank to Jaffa. Meta’s father, Franz, was a rich landowner and horse-dealer, who drove a silver Mercedes and sent his daughters to finishing schools in Switzerland. As the Polish Jews poured into Danzig, Franz Boss was often asked to contribute to their well-being. ‘Give them double what they ask, that way they will go further,’ he proclaimed. Misha Meisler, Frank’s father, had arrived in Danzig in the 1920s from Warsaw. Like David Chelouche, Misha had initially enrolled in medical school. He too had fainted every time a corpse was cut open. Misha switched to economics, but his real passion was the tango. One day he saw Meta Boss at the glamorous Casino Hotel, in the Baltic resort of Sopot. He asked her to dance. A year later he asked for her hand, a brave act, considering he was a Polish Ostjude. Franz Boss hired private detectives to probe his background. Misha was approved and the newlyweds went on honeymoon to Vienna, Budapest and Istanbul. Somewhere along the way Frank was conceived.

  In 1933 the Nazis won Danzig’s municipal elections. Danzig’s special status and League of Nations mandate initially gave the Jews some protection. But the moderate façade soon slipped. Jews were removed from public office and professional associations, and some were attacked and beaten in the street. Frank was expelled from his German primary school, so he learnt Polish and enrolled in a Polish secondary school. ‘The anti-Semitism there was awful, all-pervasive. They called you a “Dirty Jew” or a “Perfidious Jew”. Nazism was imposed on the Germans, but with the Poles you didn’t have to bother with encouraging anti-Semitism. Whatever happened, it was all the Jews’ fault,’ says Frank, who now lives in Tel Aviv. After a decades-long career as one of Israel’s most famous sculptors, he still oversees operations at his studio and foundry in Old Jaffa. The Danzig where Frank grew up no longer exists, but the sharp wit and dry sense of humour that every port city seems to breed lives on: ‘Actually I always got good marks in school, even though I was Jewish. This may have been because I once caught the teacher kissing a schoolboy.’

  In 1935 Frank’s father Misha and his uncle Fimek fled Danzig, after being tipped off by a friendly Nazi that they were about to be arrested, and they settled in Warsaw. Frank and his mother visited Misha, but she refused to move to Poland. In Danzig Frank joined a youth group called the Jung-Jüdischer Bund, the Young Jewish Union. The JJB was not a Zionist group but a middle-of-the-road social and educational organisation. ‘Usually there was no talk of Palestine or Zionism. The only time I heard it mentioned was when a friend of my mother’s family came to lecture on her experiences there. I heard about sun and beaches and that you float in the Dead Sea,’ says Frank. ‘My father and his brother once announced in their youth that they were going to Palestine and my grandmother became hysterical. We had some political consciousness because we once hid a young man trying to get to the Soviet Union, who had been in a Nazi camp.’

  The JJB were aware enough to strongly dislike the Danzig branch of Betar: ‘They were supposed to be our sworn enemies. There was an innate hostility in our club towards Betar. They modelled themselves on the Italian fascists, but to me their uniform was closer to the Nazi one.’ The leader of the Revisionists was a man called Hermann Segal, known to the Danzig Jews as ‘Lord Almighty’. Segal had murky relations with several high-ranking Nazi officials. When a wealthy Jew was imprisoned, Segal acted as the middleman, somehow facilitating his release by using the jailed man’s Swiss bank accounts. Not everyone liked Hermann Segal. But he would help save Frank’s life.

  By the summer of 1939, as war approached, the Zionist Ostjuden and the liberal German speakers had finally ended their squabbling. News came that Britain was accepting Jewish children as refugees. Segal negotiated the sale of a collection of Judaica which had been willed to Danzig’s synagogue by Lesser Gielinski, one of Frank’s relatives. The collection was purchased by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. As Danzig’s Jewish community collapsed, the Nazis offered a pittance for the land on which the synagogue stood. It was accepted. Both sets of funds were used to finance the Kindertransport to England, and to pay for several ships crammed with illegal Jewish immigrants that made their way to Palestine. Everything then happened very quickly. Misha Meisler sent some money to London, where his wife had relatives. Frank went to Warsaw to see his father and have a set of clothes made. Uncle Fimek designed him a blazer, blue with yellow stripes. Frank returned to Danzig and received a British visa.

  One sunny afternoon in August 1939, Frank went to the bus station in Danzig, together with his mother and cousin Erich to start the journey to London. He joined fifteen other Jewish boys and girls, two Jewish officials, and a Gestapo officer wearing knickerbockers who shook hands with all the children and sat down with them on the bus. ‘There was not much drama, or crying and weeping. As children you don’t see it as a drama, it’s only in retrospect. It was a bit like going on holiday, a strange kind of holiday. Children perceive some events more deeply and others in a more shallow way.’ Frank watched from the window as the bus pulled out. ‘I waved at my mother and Erich. I watched them become smaller and smaller until they disappeared from view.’

  The bus crossed the Polish corridor, and the children then boarded a train for Berlin, where the Nazis were testing air-raid sirens. From Berlin the Kindertransport went by train to the Hook of Holland. The Gestapo officer left the party at the Dutch border, wishing the children a ‘Gute Reise’, a pleasant journey. Frank arrived safely in London. There the British, like the Nazis, were testing air-raid sirens. A few letters came from Danzig, then nothing. Misha and Meta Meisler were reunited in the Warsaw Ghetto, and deported to Auschwitz. Frank Meisler never saw his parents again.

  In January 1941 the Bulgarian government implemented racial laws against the Jews which were modelled on Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws. Yaakov Yosefov would never wear a yellow star. He left Pazardjik for the Bulgarian port of Varna, on the Black Sea. Varna was the departure point for Palestine. Ships sailed from there to Istanbul, and on to the Mediterranean. The journey was extremely dangerous. Most of the vessels were vastly overloaded and barely seaworth
y. The previous December the Uruguayan-registered SS Salvador had left for Palestine with more than 300 refugees on board a ship designed for a few dozen passengers. The ship sank with the loss of more than 200 lives. When Yaakov arrived in Varna he found that a Romanian vessel called Dorian II had docked, carrying 160 refugees from Poland and Romania, including the survivors of the Salvador. A substantial bribe was paid to the Bulgarian officials to let almost 200 Bulgarian Jews on board.

  The Dorian II set sail for Palestine at the end of February. ‘The journey was very difficult. The ship was a wreck. The sanitary conditions were terrible, there was nowhere to sleep, and if you found a bunk it was tiny,’ he says. ‘But I did not care at all about any of that. I was very, very happy. We were all singing songs, and we were going to Palestine.’ The following night, on 1 March, as the Dorian II stopped at Istanbul, the German army entered Bulgaria. The borders were sealed. The Dorian II spent a week in harbour in Istanbul, but its passengers were not allowed to go ashore. ‘By the time we got to Istanbul most of the coal and water had already been used up. The Jewish community sent out a small boat with water, and we loaded it on board in buckets.’

  Six days later the Dorian II set sail again into the Mediterranean. This was the most perilous stage of the journey. At night the ship laid anchor, and the crew shone all the lights onto the Panamanian flag, hoping that would protect it from the Allied warships and Nazi submarines that crowded the sea lanes of the Mediterranean. Yaakov and the other passengers spent the night on deck, sharing what little food there was, and singing songs. Conditions on board steadily deteriorated. ‘Sometimes there was barely any water and so only the children received some. Then the crew said we had to hand over all our jewellery and valuables, or they would not continue. So we tied them up, and the Swedish captain and a single engineer kept the ship going. I was shovelling coal into the boilers. When the fuel oil ran out we used cooking oil. When the coal ran out we burnt packing crates and furniture.’ Still the Dorian II chugged its way towards Palestine.

  On 25 March the ship approached Haifa. A Royal Navy vessel came alongside. The Jews on board did not have immigration certificates or permits. Under the terms of the White Paper they were illegal immigrants. But the Dorian II presented the British authorities with a dilemma. In November 1940 the ageing liner Patria had been intercepted by the British. The Patria was held at Haifa port with 1,900 refugees on board. The British planned to deport them to detention camps in Mauritius, where other Jews were being held. The Haganah sabotaged Patria. Its aim was to prevent the Jews’ deportation, but the operation went horribly wrong. The ship sank and 267 Jews were killed. In addition, sending the Dorian II’s passengers to Mauritius, or anywhere else, would demand considerable British resources. The vessel would have to be escorted in a guarded convoy, putting British seamen’s lives at risk.

  The Dorian II was towed into Haifa port. Two British boats moored alongside, to thwart any potential rescue or sabotage attempts by the Haganah. Yaakov, like all the passengers, was exhausted, filthy and hungry. They had been on board for over a month. Every day a fresh rumour swept the boat: they would be deported to Cyprus, they would be imprisoned, they would be sent back to Bulgaria. On 2 April 1941, Yaakov Yosefov stepped down onto the soil of Palestine. ‘It was a very happy day. We all went through a lot and we were exhausted, but I felt my dream had finally come true.’ It was not quite the reception for which he had hoped. Bulgaria was at war with Britain, so Yaakov was an enemy alien. He was washed down with disinfectant, immediately arrested and taken to Mizra prison, near the northern port of Acre.

  There Yaakov learnt about the new Stern Group, or Lehi as it was known in Hebrew. In 1940 the Revisionist Zionists had split after their militia, the Irgun, suspended its struggle against the British until the war’s end. A minority faction, led by Avraham Stern, a young, charismatic Polish Jew, vehemently opposed the ceasefire. Lehi declared war on Britain, whom they believed was the greatest obstacle to a Jewish state. Lehi even sent out unsuccessful feelers to the Axis powers, on the old Middle East principle that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Lehi also had good relations with anti-British Arab extremists, from whom they bought explosives and weapons. Both groups saw themselves as fighters against western imperialism. These apparently arcane schisms on Zionism’s right wing would have a profound effect on the development of both the Yishuv and the Israeli state. Most of all, on Yaakov Yosefov’s future life. At Mizra he talked long into the night with Bulgarian Lehi members. He was already a member of Betar, but Betar was no longer radical enough for Yaakov. ‘Prison is the best place to learn about these things. Everyone chose the side they wanted to belong to. I chose Lehi.’

  After six months Yaakov was transferred to Atlit detention camp, near Haifa. It was a forbidding-looking place, surrounded by razor wire and high fences and patrolled by British soldiers. Men, women and children were housed in spartan army barracks. But they were fed three times a day, and Jewish medical staff, social workers and teachers were allowed in. When two Jews escaped and morale soared among the prisoners, the camp authorities ordered every barracks searched. They found nothing but one man was taken away. Yaakov and his comrades marched out to the camp’s offices to rescue their friend, a brave but hopeless gesture. The commander demanded that they return to barracks. They refused and stood their ground. Two vans appeared, carrying special police units trained to break up demonstrations. ‘We all linked arms and began to sing the Hatikvah, the Zionist anthem,’ recalls Yaakov. ‘They came at us with wooden staves and beat us. The injured ones were sent to hospital. The rest of us were sent to Acre prison. We were the only Jews there and our conditions were very bad. It was January and very cold, but there were no blankets, mattresses, or showers. Our food was three pitta breads a day.’ Twice a day the prisoners were let out to exercise. Rommel was advancing across north Africa and many in Palestine feared the Nazis would soon take Cairo and break through to Palestine. In the prison yard, the Arab prisoners whispered to Yaakov and his comrades that the Germans were coming soon, and then the Jews would all be done for. Yaakov spent sixty-two days in Acre prison before he was brought back to Atlit.

  Many Arabs supported the Nazis, who they believed would defeat the treacherous British and French, and finally grant them independence. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem (and uncle of Yasser Arafat) greatly admired Hitler. Soon after the outbreak of war he fled, disguised as a woman, to Iraq. There he issued a call for jihad against Britain. The subsequent Iraqi uprising was put down with the help of David Raziel, the commander of the Irgun, who was killed in the process. The Mufti travelled to Berlin, to meet Hitler and be received as an honoured guest. Hitler was ambiguous about promising an independent Palestine, but agreed to set up two Muslim SS divisions in the Balkans, the Bosnian Handzar and Albanian Skenderbeg divisions. The Mufti stayed in Berlin until the end of the war.

  Al-Husseini was a divisive, hard-line figure, driven by a visceral hatred of Jews. But Falastin, and many of its readers, took a different view. Palestinian Arab leaders published a statement declaring their absolute support for the Allies, and calling on the Arab population to do the same. They also asked the British government to re-assess its position over Palestine, and grant the Arabs their ‘natural and political rights in their own country’.2 But for now, the understandable anger of the Palestinian people should be redirected to assist the poor and the needy, they continued. Falastin’s editorials took the same position, using arguments drawn from the Quran to explain that, despite the British oppression of the Palestinian leadership and their betrayal of the Palestinian cause, Arab and Islamic values prevented the Palestinians from supporting the Nazis. Like many Jews, Falastin also attacked the American government for its hypocrisy over Jewish refugees, in that it decried Nazi persecution but kept the door firmly shut. The newspaper appointed itself Jaffa’s civic voice and conscience. Its articles called on the Mandate authorities to organise civil defence training, compensate orange-grove
owners who had lost money, and also ensure work for Jaffa’s labourers.3

  The war brought great hardship to the Hammami family. Jaffa’s citrus industry collapsed, and Ahmad closed down his company. Before 1939 much of the fruit had been exported to Europe, but this was now impossible. The orange farmers sold a small amount locally, and some was turned into jam or marmalade. But this amounted to a fraction of their former sales. Thousands of tons of oranges were dumped and buried. The stench of rotting fruit hung over the city. ‘My father’s income dropped drastically and our lives were greatly disrupted. Everything was rationed and there were severe shortages. All the cars and trucks were taken away for the war effort,’ recalls Hasan. ‘My father became a wholesaler of dried goods. It was all right for one or two years, but then it became more difficult as the supplies began to dry up, and rationing was more severe.’ Ahmad then took a drastic, foolhardy and very brave decision. ‘My father showed what he was really made of. He went into a trade of which he had no experience. He organised a sheep drive. He got together a crew, found an old small truck, and vehicles were very hard to come by then, and set off for northern Iraq,’ explains Hasan. Ahmad said goodbye to his family, hugged and kissed Nafise and the children, and set off for the desert. Each feared that they would never see the other again. Ahmad made it to Iraq and purchased several thousand sheep. Now all he had to do was get them, and himself, back to Palestine in one piece.