by Dita Kraus
The food was brought from the kitchen on trolleys with shelves, on which the main course, meat or fish, was already on the plates—soup plates. One ate the soup after the main dish, to save washing another set of plates. The side dishes, potatoes, noodles, or rice, stood in unlimited amounts on the table. For the vegetarians among us, there was a portion of quiche or fried breaded cauliflower. The vegetarian would call out “Bimkom,” which in Hebrew means “instead,” and receive the meatless dish.
After the meal I had to clean the tables, lift the chair legs up, and wash the floor. And there were also always some latecomers who had to be served. Then the tables had to be prepared for the next meal.
Friday evenings the dining room was transformed into a festive hall. White tablecloths covered the tables, with flowers everywhere. Everyone entered freshly showered, the chaverim wearing their well-ironed white shirts, and the chaverot in their best dresses, saying “Shabbat shalom” to one another. The food was also prepared with special care and served in the finer dishes. There was often a cultural program after the meal.
I was not the only waitress, of course; there were several of us on duty each shift. One time the kibbutz committee decided to employ a labor-saving specialist to teach us how to be more efficient and to reduce the staff. He followed our work in the dining room for more than a week, taking notes. He then proposed a new schedule.
It didn’t work. The trouble was that he had modeled his arrangement on my performance. It turned out that my colleagues were not as quick as I and could not fit some tasks into the labor-saving specialist’s calculations. The outcome was that two people were employed to do what I had been doing alone. Nobody said it aloud, but I knew they were all annoyed with me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A New Job for Otto
After Otto’s stint as kitchen boy, he became sanitar, together with our next-door neighbor Chanan. Their job was keeping the communal bathrooms and toilets clean; emptying the trash cans; exterminating rats, cockroaches, and other vermin; and unblocking clogged-up water pipes. It flattered them to be so indispensable. The chaverim always needed their services urgently, begged them not to delay and come immediately, the sink was overflowing, the ants had invaded the food storage, a cockroach was seen in the toddlers’ home. And the two sanitars, sitting on their wagon with the equipment, drawn by the kibbutz mule, would answer with serious faces that first they must finish the more important tasks, cleaning the bathrooms or emptying the trash cans. They would often get bribes in the form of eggs—from the chicken coop boss—or a cup of genuine Brazil coffee from Anita, the newcomer from Latin America, who was hysterical because she had seen a mouse under her bed.
The job, however unsavory, had one big advantage: namely that they were their own bosses—nobody interfered with their schedule, and the sadran avoda could not call them up to fill in for some missing worker. Otto was very happy with his work and became quite knowledgeable in matters of plumbing and sewage. He was not a handy person by nature, but his motto was if a stupid plumber can do it, I can certainly do it as well.
Sometimes his job necessitated delicate discretion. One day a certain chaver took him aside, so that no one could overhear them, and asked Otto if he had anything to get rid of lice. “Not in my hair, but body lice.” A few days later, another chaver came with the same complaint. And when the numbers rose, Otto started to make discreet inquiries and managed to find the source of the spreading epidemic. She was a pretty, young, single newcomer who had recently joined our kibbutz. With some lotion secretly supplied to her, the problem was solved.
Yet he didn’t remain a sanitar for long, and it was my fault.
One afternoon, the current sadran avoda came to our room looking for Otto. He was out somewhere, so he turned to me, asking if it was true that Otto had studied English at the university back in Prague. “That’s right,” I answered proudly.
“Do you think he could teach the kids English at school?”
“Of course he could,” I replied, without a moment’s hesitation.
“Tell him to see me tomorrow morning.”
I could read the relief in the face of the sadran avoda.
So from one day to the next, Otto rose from the lowly job as sanitar to the elevated position of an English teacher. He received two respectable shirts from the clothes store to replace his blue worker’s outfit and began his new career.
In fact, it was not an English teacher that our kibbutz needed but a Hebrew literature teacher. The neighboring Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh had a wonderful literature teacher: the writer Hanoch Bartov. Their school principal was ready to lend him to us, but his condition was that we provide an English teacher for the school in Ein HaHoresh. Both sides agreed and the switch was approved. Thus the two teachers would walk several times a week over the fields and through the orchards that separated the two settlements, to teach in each other’s kibbutz. In the morning and again in the afternoon, they met in the middle of the way, circling the large puddle in the footpath in winter from opposite sides. Yet the matter was more complicated.
The Ministry of Education in Jerusalem was duly informed of who was to be the next English teacher for grades five to eight at Givat Chaim’s elementary school. He was, however, not Otto Kraus but Chaver Yaacov. Chaver Yaacov was a licensed teacher with years of seniority who hated teaching and worked in the boiler room. And no wonder: English was the most unpopular subject in Israeli schools, because of the British occupation. Refusing to learn English had been a way to demonstrate Jewish defiance. Many a teacher fled from the rebellious classes, and there was a permanent shortage of English teachers. For instance, the one before Otto quit after being locked in the broom closet by his students.
This attitude lasted long after the British were gone and changed only gradually when the Israelis realized that there is a world out there with people who don’t understand Hebrew. The kibbutz, of course, preferred receiving the salary of senior teacher Yaacov to that of Otto the beginner, who even had no proper teacher’s license. Yet the arrangement lasted just one year. When the headmaster of the Givat Chaim School heard how popular Otto had become at Ein HaHoresh, he decided not to waste this boon and kept Otto in the school in Givat Chaim.
Since Otto wasn’t a graduate of some teachers’ college and hadn’t been indoctrinated with theories about teaching recalcitrant children a foreign language, he invented his own curriculum. He used songs and jokes, and in a short time the kids started looking forward to the English lessons. The parents were surprised at Otto’s popularity, recalling the many teachers who fled after their first week in class. The highlight of his success was the end-of-school-year-play called How the Elephant Got Its Trunk, based on the story by Rudyard Kipling, which the children performed in English. It was about a curious little elephant who wanted to know what the crocodile ate for dinner. “Come nearer, little elephant, and I will tell you,” said the crocodile, and the elephant came nearer and nearer, until the crocodile got hold of his nose and pulled and pulled, and as the elephant pulled back, his nose became longer and longer, and that is how the elephant got its trunk.
Even now, after sixty years, you may ask the grandmothers and grandfathers of the kibbutz, and they will tell you how the elephant got its trunk. In English.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Locusts
In those days there was no way in the kibbutz to make a public announcement. No one had a telephone, and there was no intercom; television was as yet unknown in Israel. In lieu of a public loudspeaker system, there was a piece of iron pipe that hung by a chain on a pole in front of the dining room. In case of fire or another emergency, the nearest person banged on the pipe with a hammer or anything that came to hand; the sound was heard in the farthest corner of the kibbutz, and everybody came running.
One day the alarm was sounded, and the cry was “Locusts!”
Indeed, we heard the approaching hum like a thousand beehives, and soon the sky became dark with a huge cloud of locu
sts. It was imperative that they not land on our fields and in our orchards. A few members had experienced locust invasions before and ordered, “Take pots and pans and lids from the kitchen and make as much noise as you can.”
We dispersed all over the area, shouting and yelling, banging the metal lids with ladles. Everybody was there, school kids, little ones, men and women; all left what they had been doing in order to save our crops and gardens. The plan was to let the locusts settle late in the evening, because when it is cold they do not feed and they can be sprayed and destroyed. It took the whole afternoon, but we succeeded. There was a smaller cloud of them the next day, which was chased away without doing much damage.
Among the newcomers in our kibbutz there were a few Moroccans who were happy when they saw the locusts. They picked up the insects, thrust them into pots, and quickly slammed the lid over them. They claimed that they were a delicacy.
One of them, Shoshana, the mother of a boy who was in the toddlers’ home with our Shimon, invited us to come over to her place and share in the feast. I shuddered at the thought, but Otto did go. He said the roasted locusts were among the most delicious foods he had ever tasted.
I have already mentioned some of the places that provided the necessary services for the kibbutzniks, such as the bakery and the seamstress’s workshop. We also had our own laundry, with huge washing machines, which washed all our clothes. There were separate bins for white towels and bed linen, for dirty overalls, for socks and stockings and for more delicate blouses and shirts. At the beginning of the week, we sorted our dirty clothes into the bins, each item marked with a personal number, and on Friday we fetched the clean, folded pile from the shelves in the clothes store.
There was an electrician, Hans, who not only maintained everything that was connected with electricity but also repaired broken sockets or short circuits in our rooms and fixed our hotplates. We had a carpentry workshop, where three or four chaverim produced little chairs for our kindergartens, built wooden fences, and attached legs to broken chairs. A skillful person could go there, pick some discarded piece of wood, and fashion a toy for his children or a shelf for his room. Otto made a beautiful crayon box for Shimon’s birthday and a board with letter tiles made of plywood for Scrabble, the newest popular game.
There was also the shoe-repair workshop, which I’ve already described, and the tractor mechanic’s garage. In later years, when I came to visit old friends in the kibbutz, I heard that they had a resident dentist and even a cosmetician and hairdresser.
We were more fortunate than many other kibbutzim in that we had our own doctor, Dr. Ebl, who lived in Givat Chaim with his family. He was a colorful character, whose many pronouncements made the rounds of the kibbutz. I suspect they were being embellished as they progressed.
He was from Vienna, a veteran of World War I, of which he repeatedly reminded his patients. If you complained of a pain in your shoulder, he would immediately tell you that when he served in the field under Kaiser Franz Josef, he had such severe pain in his shoulder that what you described was nothing compared to what he suffered then. Any disease of a patient, he’d had it, too. The only exception was Fruma, who complained that she could not get pregnant. But he consoled her, saying, “You are lucky that you are not a cow.”
“Why?” she asked, perplexed.
“A cow that cannot get pregnant is slaughtered for meat.”
It was his kind of humor. Another chavera reported the following conversation:
“Doctor, I have such pain in my back that I cannot lie down.”
“You must sit on a chair with a straight back.”
“But the pain continues even when I sit.”
“Then I recommend that you walk or stand.”
“When I walk or stand, the pain is even more unbearable.”
“If you cannot lie, sit, walk, or stand, the only thing that remains is to hang yourself.”
I am not sure that was exactly what Dr. Ebl said, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Yet he was a dedicated practical physician with a lot of common sense.
Dr. Ebl liked Otto, and they often chatted, the doctor happy that he could talk with him in German. On one occasion, Otto spoke about my recurring migraines and stomach problems.
“Herr Otto,” Dr. Ebl said, “take your wife and children and leave the kibbutz. When you live outside, she will be well.”
It made sense. After seven years I still didn’t feel settled down. For me life in the kibbutz was something impermanent, a kind of transition period. It would be unreasonable to wait longer in the hope that I would start feeling at home in Givat Chaim. It had to be admitted: I was not a kibbutz type.
However, this was not the only reason that Otto decided to look for another place for us to live. He too had a dilemma with the kibbutz movement, and that concerned his writing.
About a year after we came to the kibbutz, he started writing a novel called Mountain Wind. It was about a fictional kibbutz somewhere in the Galilee region, populated by characters, each with his or her problems. Among them was a child: an asocial loner, who did not fit in with his group. The cause for his almost autistic behavior, hinted at by the author, was that children spent just a few hours a day with their parents and slept in separate children’s houses. It was an issue about which there were different opinions within the kibbutz, with some claiming that it was unnatural for children to grow up in a collective, away from their parents from the day they were born. However, the ideologues of the kibbutz movement and their adherents believed that not only was it not harmful, but it actually created healthy, unspoiled, and socially integrated individuals.
When Otto submitted the book to the publishing house Hakibbutz Hameuchad, the editors were not happy with what they perceived as criticism of the educational precepts of the movement. They met with Otto and tried to persuade him to make changes in the book. They wanted to publish it but were apprehensive of what it might do to the reputation of the kibbutzim in Israel. They sent one of their editors, the writer Alexander Sened, to talk to Otto.
Alexander was tall and lean with reddish hair and thick glasses. When he arrived in Givat Chaim, I thought that his face looked familiar. Suddenly I remembered where I had seen him. I took out our photo album and showed him a snapshot of Otto and his friend Metek taken by a street photographer in Prague a short time before our Aliyah. The man walking behind them was Alexander. It was true; he had been in Prague on a mission at the time. What an amazing coincidence!
The two had a long discussion about the novel, but Otto would not be moved. Alexander offered him an attractive proposal as incentive. The publishing house would enable Otto to study for a year at any university of his choice. This sounded very appealing, and they decided to talk it over again. For that meeting, we would go to Revivim, the kibbutz in the Negev desert where Alexander lived with his wife, Yonat. Alexander and Yonat were not only a couple; they were a team, writing books together.
I will never forget the place. A green settlement with plantations irrigated by saline water, but around it in all directions, nothing but the dry brown desert as far as the eye could see. The members themselves also drank the same water, so their coffee tasted salty. They depended on their well, because the National Water Grid that was being built had not yet reached the southern regions. “But we are used to it,” they’d say, smiling.
But, memorable as the visit was, it did not achieve the hoped-for result. Hakibbutz Hameuchad decided not to publish Otto’s novel.
He offered it to a private publisher, Hadar, and a contract was signed. Now Otto had to make up his mind about which of his two life dreams to give up: the Zionist dream to be a pioneer in the Land of Israel, or his dream of being a writer and publishing books. Publishing the novel against the wishes of the kibbutz meant that he could not stay in Givat Chaim any longer.
It was not difficult to find work as an English teacher. There were several offers, but in the end we decided to move to Hadassim, a children’s village with a high s
chool.
In most cases, when people decided to leave the kibbutz, it was considered a kind of betrayal. The old-timers would accuse them of using the kibbutz like a springboard, just to learn Hebrew, get acquainted with life in Israel or acquire a skill, and finally to selfishly abandon the community.
We were surprised at the expressions of friendliness and regret at losing us when the members heard of our decision to leave. What flattered Otto most was the praise of one of the oldest and most valued female members, who told him, “I respect you, not only because you were a good teacher, but mainly because you were a good laborer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Hadassim
We had found our new home when Avi Fischer, our friend from Prague and from the Kinderblock in Auschwitz, heard that we wanted to leave the kibbutz and came to Givat Chaim to tell Otto that his school was looking for an English teacher. Avi himself was now a teacher in Hadassim Youth Village, where he also resided with his wife, Hanna, and their three children.
Hadassim was an unusual institution. It had been established a short time after the end of World War II in order to absorb children survivors from Europe. Located among citrus orchards, not far from Netanya, the campus consisted of dormitories, school buildings, sports facilities, a large dining hall and kitchen, parklike lawns and trees, a swimming pool, and several semidetached bungalows for the teachers and staff. It was supported by the Canadian Hadassah-WIZO organization.