by Ruth Gruber
I said, “Dr. Weizmann, the two South Americans don't have an ounce of anti-Semitism. They couldn't be better friends.”
He patted me on the back. “My child, there is no such thing. Every goy carries anti-Semitism on his back in a pack.”
I said, “Dr. Weizmann, I worked for two people in my life. One was Harold Ickes. The other was Helen Reid. They don't have an ounce of antiSemitism.”
He shook his head. “Dig deeper.”
I did. I'm still convinced neither was anti-Semitic.
An Orthodox Jew greets me in Safed, one of Israel's holiest cities, 1951.
A typical prison fortress built by the British in Israel, 1951.
Families from Romania reunited in Haifa, 1951. Some had not seen each other since the beginning of World War II.
Romanian immigrants arriving in Israel, 1951.
Many children prospered in Nitzanim, a Youth Aliyah village. Several in this 1951 photo grew up to be officers in the Israeli Army.
I asked Ben-Gurion one day, “What's the future for Israel?”
He answered, “Go to Beer Ora in the Negev. You'll see pre-Army youngsters learning to become soldiers.”
I lived among them. They shared their food and water, and I watched them become soldiers.
Tel Aviv, 1952. The Kapulski Brothers Bakery, near the Hadassah Hospital, was famous for its cookies. The doctors went there to buy cookies and to sit and chat.
Tel Aviv, 1952. Some fashionable women meet for lunch.
Tree seedlings are grown for distribution to towns and kibbutzim, 1952.
I wrote an article for the Herald Tribune's Sunday paper called “Israel Has Yankee Ways.” An American I spoke to who made raincoats said he would send money to his favorite kibbutz, Kfar Bloom, which was made up of many young Americans. In gratitude for how they were making this kibbutz a showcase, he sent them pink satin blankets.
The Kibbutzniks debated for weeks: should they sell the blankets and use the money to build up the kibbutz? They sold the blankets. In the article I said something about how modern they were but they still didn't have flush toilets. Every time I was in Israel, I would visit my friends in Kfar Bloom and they continued to be hurt by that observation.
So they said, “Wait till we show you what we've done.” Each cottage now had a little bathroom with a toilet. I said, “Oh, let me in.”
They replied, “Come back next year. There will be water.”
An Israeli farmer brings his produce to market, 1952.
Iraqi Jews settle in a temporary development town, 1952.
Young people from a kibbutz on an outing in a truck ironically named “Titanic,” 1952.
David Ben-Gurion talks with Helen Rogers Reid, owner of the New York Herald Tribune, and Paula, BG's wife, at the Sharon Hotel in Herzlia outside Tel Aviv, 1955.
Helen Rogers Reid, wearing her trademark beret during her 1955 visit to Israel.
Gen. E. L. M. Burns, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld met in BG's office in 1956.
The Israelis bought arms and aircraft from Czechoslovakia; even non-Jewish pilots were flying over Czechoslovak planes. The Czechs remembered what the Germans had done to them.
Ben-Gurion made Golda the first minister plenipotentiary to the Soviet Union. It's almost an ambassador. When she arrived there, the Jews went on holiday—every Jew in Moscow wanted to meet her. Ben-Gurion gave her high positions. She later became minister of labor (1949–56), foreign minister (1956–66), and prime minister (1969–74).
Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, opened a clinic in Beersheba, which saved the life of Golda's daughter, Sarah. The clinic got a call from a small village about a young woman who was very sick. She was pregnant, and no one knew what to do. The doctor asked, “Do you have a car?” “No, but we have a truck.” “Well, put her in. We'll drive from Beersheba, you drive from your village, and we'll meet halfway.”
When they met, he examined her and realized that the pregnancy was ectopic. The fertilized egg had lodged in a fallopian tube instead of the uterus, and the chances of her survival were slim.
They rushed her to the small hospital in Beersheba. A handsome young man said, “I'm Sarah's husband. Can I call her mother?” He was a Yemenite Jew. The hospital worker said, “Of course,” and gave him the phone. That's when it became clear to the hospital that this young woman was the daughter of Golda Meir. “I'm stopping everything,” said Golda. “I'm coming right to Beersheba.”
When Golda got there she was told to wait. “We'll tell you when you can see her.” Golda—a woman of granite, a tough, hard lady—sat on a bench in the courtyard, weeping. She stayed awake all night. They tried to give her food while they kept working on Sarah.
Golda was finally told that she could see her daughter. The doctors in the Hadassah hospital had saved her life.
A soldier guards the road outside Beersheba, 1956.
Golda Meir, then foreign minister, arrives at a government meeting, 1956.
New immigrants from Europe received their ID cards aboard a ship about to reach Haifa in 1956.
The immigrants, old and young, sick and well, kept pouring in by ship, 1956. They voluntarily gave up their homes, their countries, their languages to become citizens of Israel.
Arab refugees returned to the Arab town of Nablus to be reunited with their families, 1967.
Cairo, 1977. Families lived in hand-constructed homes within this cemetery. They built schools in the cemetery, and spent their days and nights living in communities inside the cemeteries. It was a city within a city.
Anun visits the Jewish cemetery in Cairo, 1977.
In the highlands of Ethiopia, men and women gather outside the synagogue in Weleka after the Sabbath service, 1985. The name falasha, meaning “stranger,” is derogatory. I prefer to call them Ethiopian Jews.
At the Friday night service in the Ethiopian village of Ambober, the Jewish congregation welcomes the Sabbath queen with prayers and wine, 1985.
An Ethiopian Jewish mother held up a photograph of her children, who had already migrated to Israel, 1985. She asked, “Will I ever see my children again?” A year later, they were reunited in Israel.
Of all the countries in the world, Israel is the only one that sent white men and women into Africa to bring out black men, women, and children—not to sell them, but to rescue them. Learning of the secret rescue, I went to Shimon Peres, who was then the prime minister, who said, “We aren't allowing any reporters.” I said, “Shimon, I promise I won't write a word until you tell me every Ethiopian Jew is safe. But meanwhile, I want to see it now, while it's happening.”
I learned that a group calling itself NACOEJ, North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, had gone over to try to help the Ethiopians. I went to their president and said, “I'd like to go with you.”
When I arrived in Ethiopia, beautiful women and men wrapped in huge white shawls surrounded me at the airport. They were living in huts, which they called tukels, made of mud and straw. Young people were risking their lives to get out of Ethiopia. Some were caught by Arabs and put into slavery. Those who managed to make the whole trip from the highlands of Ethiopia down to Sudan were housed by representatives of Jewish agencies.
I went back to Ethiopia the next year. The first year I was there was the famine. The second year was the floods. We were climbing those hills, falling down, getting up to the top. We told the people, “You haven't been forgotten. We're going to get you out.” And we did. And we are doing it to this day. From the handful who were there when I made my first trip in 1985, there are now more than 100,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel. They became part of that Jewish community made up of an ingathering from all over the world.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set in Caledonia, a typeface designed by W. A. Dwiggins (1880–1956). It belongs to the family of printing types called “modern face” by printers—a term used to mark the change in style of the
type letters that occurred around 1800. Caledonia borders on the general design of Scotch Roman, but it is more freely drawn than that letter.
Composed by North Market Street Graphics,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley & Sons,
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Designed by Anthea Lingeman
Copyright © 2007 by Ruth Gruber
Introduction copyright © 2007 by Richard Holbrooke
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schocken
Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Schocken Books and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gruber, Ruth, 1911–
Witness: one of the great correspondents of the twentieth
century tells her story with 190 of her own photographs / Ruth Gruber.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49880-9
1. Documentary photography. 2. Gruber, Ruth, 1911– I. Title.
TR820.5.G78 2007 070.4′9092—dc22 [B] 2006028597
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