1960 Destination Israel

By Elsa M. van der Laaken

"1960 DESTINATION ISRAEL," was written by the author for her children who dont know much about this period of her life.
In 1960, Israel was not exactly a tourist destination. Instead the country was receiving a fascinating influx of Jewish immigrants from all over the world and Elsa, a "goy," was in the midst of them.

The voyage to Israel was at the invitation of a Jewish scientist who had studied in Holland. Elsa van der Laaken found employment in Beer-Sheba and Jerusalem and stayed in Israel for 2 1/2 years. The result was a collection of handwritten journals embellished with photos and historical notes that eventually shaped this book.

The authors writing challenge was to stay faithful to her younger self and her impressions of the State of Israel in its formative years. The story describes a series of events experienced by a young adult ready to grow up and leave home.

To learn more about the author, as well as her WW II memoir, "A Point of Reference," go to www.vanderlaaken.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 24, 2007
• ISBN: 9781453534236

Elsa M. van der Laaken

During WW II Elsa M. van der Laaken lived in a Nazi-occupied building in The Hague, Holland with a Dutch father and a German mother who helped the Dutch resistance. She describes her family’s tenuous situation and defiance against the occupiers. She moved to California after studying psychology and creative writing at Vermont College.

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Contents

THREE SPIRAL NOTEBOOKS

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM

PRELUDE

JOURNAL I

CELINA

TRAVEL PLANS

A SNAPSHOT OF CULTURAL INFLUENCES

MORE DATA

WORKING AND SAVING IN HOLLAND

JOURNAL II

LEAVING IS LIKE DYING A LITTLE

THE SAILING AND ARRIVAL

ROUNDTRIP THROUGH THE GALILEE

ACCO, NAHARIJAH, HAIFA, TEL-AVIV AND REHOVOTH

JERUSALEM

KIBBUTZ KFAR MASARYK AND PURIM

LIVING AND WORKING IN BEER-SHEBA

SEPHARDIM AND ASHKENAZIM

CELEBRATIONS

SODOM, YAM HA MELACH AND SHAVUOTH

JOURNAL III

EILAT ON THE RED SEA

JERUSALEM’S MEA SHEARIM AND THE HULEH VALLEY

ULPAN, SHANA TOVA, YOM KIPPUR, SUKKOTH AND SIMHAT TORAH

CHANGING JOBS

THE NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY

MY PARENTS VISIT ISRAEL

THE EICHMANN TRIAL

MOVING FROM ROMEMA TO KATAMON

A WEDDING IN JERUSALEM

AGAIN BEER-SHEBA

PARTING IS SUCH A SWEET SORROW

GLOSSARY

My gratitude to Celina and Eliezer Shatil

THREE SPIRAL NOTEBOOKS

Three large spiral notebooks lie before her. She spreads them out and looks at the discolored covers in yellow, red and green. The pictures stuck on the front covers show that the journals describe a voyage to Israel.

She opens number I, the yellow notebook. The paper inside is cheap and gray. There are no lines, the handwriting is skewed and in the Dutch language. The pictures and photos show that the year is 1959. Books number II and III contain colorful scenes of the new State of Israel, its Holy Places, bus tickets, invitations, tour events and dried flowers that have crumbled almost to dust. All these illustrations are surrounded by her handwritten stories.

Envelopes are glued inside the back covers containing letters from friends in Israel and her own letters to her parents.

She wonders why she kept these journals and carried them around the world. She starts to read. Soon the stories transport her to the fifties and sixties and she realizes how much she has forgotten of that time. That miraculous period of time between Israel’s Sinai Campaign of 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967 when so many Jewish immigrants came to Israel from all over the world to settle in their own country.

These journals tell the story of a young woman who left home for the Middle East and recorded her impressions. The spiral notebooks describe an important part of her life and of a new country. She would never part with them.

I am that woman.

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM

How the words have echoed down the ages! They close the Seder, when Jewish families proclaim their unity with their forefathers. They end the Yom Kippur Service, when every Jewish community faces the Eternal Judge and pleads for itself and all Israel.

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM! It was more than a hope. It was a wish to fulfill a Divine Commandment. Yet alas! Few had the merit of fulfilling it after the fall of the Second Temple. For since then they and the land of their fathers were alike in exile.

Now a new age has dawned. Thanks to the merits of our mothers, fathers, families and friends we have witnessed the rebirth of the State of Israel. Now we no longer need to hope and wish for the future. Now every Jew can tell himself: THIS YEAR IN JERUSALEM! And Jerusalem means more than itself; Jerusalem means the Holy Land.

Come to Israel in springtime. Come by sea to Haifa and gaze awestruck at Elijah’s Mount Carmel. Or come by air to Lydda and see the figs ripening on the trees. Listen to the singing birds. Smell the Lily of Sharon and the Rose of the Valleys, the scent of jasmine and the fragrance of orange blossoms, and know that you are in the midst of the Song of Songs.

Exact quote from:

The International World Fair: EXPO 1958, Brussels, Belgium.

Israel Booth, October 5, 1958.

missing image file

Map of Israel.

PRELUDE

In 1950 my life in Holland seemed organized, good and quiet on the surface, but my internal turmoil was growing. Holland, still cleaning up after WW II, removed the rubble of bombed houses and repaired the roads. New and modern buildings rose up in the empty spaces. But it took so long. I was an impatient fourteen-year-old with growth spurts. Slowly, products of first necessity entered the Dutch market but few were marketed for teenagers. They had no buying power with their meager pocket money. Everything seemed such a slow process to me.

On Saturdays, my school friends and I went downtown in The Hague. Looking at clothes was fun but we never bought. That task we had to do with our mothers. We bought cheap lipsticks in bargain stores and applied them in public restrooms. We felt like grown-ups as we walked giggling through the streets and entered the movie theater to see the matinee. My favorite film stars were Deanna Durbin, Doris Day and Gregory Peck. When I became a good swimmer, I admired Esther Williams and saw all her movies. We made sure to wipe off the make-up before going home for dinner. We never sat in a restaurant, but bought candies or patat, the crispy twice-fried French fries in a pointed bag, and ate them while we walked around and looked at the novelties in the shop windows.

Saturday night and Sunday I stayed home and played card games with my parents. We played sets of Je ne tiens pas, a board game, which meant: don’t get upset, but we did when the game did not end in our favor. We were upset in a good-natured way. We made a mess peeling roasted peanuts during the game, and listened to the radio’s Saturday night comedy shows.

Still in high school at the time, I was restless. One of my legs belonged to a good girl still living at home with her parents while the other leg reached for the outside, desperately wanting to explore the world.

I had decided my parents were too old for me. Father and mother had married late in life and had aged considerably in the war years and from sickness. I compared them to the younger parents of my friends. I thought my parents would never understand my thoughts and desires. Sometimes I asked my mother questions that she found difficult to answer. She told me her mother hadn’t explained anything about sex to her and she learned from books. She added that divorce was only for the rich. You should try to talk and solve your problems within your own family, she said.

My school friends and I tried desperately to find answers to our burning questions in the forbidden books of our parents. We would giggle about our findings in whispers. I would never admit to them that I had believed babies came out of belly buttons!

In my mother’s women’s magazine, I looked first for the problem pages. In a section for young people, a Dear Abby person answered questions. I wanted to leave home and wrote to her, then waited anxiously for the answer. Her kind and understanding reply told me to stay home a little longer because my ideas were sure to change. Disappointed, I hid the letter and tried to put my energy into other activities. I concentrated on competitive swimming.

I made it onto our local water polo team and became a good long-distance swimmer. I changed to a new piano teacher and learned to play difficult classical pieces. On Sunday, I played jazz when my parents were out. I formed a combo with a clarinetist, a base player and a guitarist. Our Sunday practices were loud outbursts of energy that made my parents stay away. Acting on stage with an amateur theater group was a challenge too. And sure enough, by the time I was eighteen I found my earlier letter written to the Dear Abby person very childish!

I sat for my High School State exam and was surprised that it did not cover biblical studies, one of my favorite subjects at my religious school. I loved the old-testament stories but no one had told me that religious studies were an optional subject and would not be included on a State exam in a country with religious freedom. I felt cheated because I had studied hard. Little did I know that these studies would be useful later on!

I passed the required subjects in the written and oral exams and started looking for a job. My parents told me if I wanted to continue my studies they would support me, but I wasn’t very keen. I wanted to earn money, buy lots of new clothes and shoes and go out with my friends. I wanted to make up for the very difficult and lean war years when we wore patched-up clothes and had no shoes. Also, I thought it would be financially too difficult for my parents to support my further studies, but I never discussed this with them.

I soon found a job at the business of one of my father’s friends. I learned bookkeeping and found it extremely boring. The pay was good and it allowed me to buy the clothes and shoes I had longed for. I also took my mother shopping. Mother never spent a penny on herself and I treated her to great afternoon teas in the new self-service restaurants. She took great delight in that and so did I. And I made sure to see every epic movie with my friends. We saw The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur and Gone with the Wind in the new cinemascope presentations. In the summer we cycled to the beaches, got sunburned in our new swimsuits, and looked at interesting, muscular boys.

When my boss’ son started to pursue a co-worker with whom he desired an affair, I got worried. He was a married man with children and my colleague, who had become a friend, quit and left suddenly. I was alone with the whole bookkeeping of the business and didn’t trust the creepy son one bit. Would he want an affair with me? I decided to find another job. By then I had concluded that office work was not for me and I must study for a profession to make life more interesting. I enrolled at an evening college to study chemistry and worked at a new office job during the day.

Before passing my chemistry exam, I found a challenging job in the laboratory of TNO’s Paint research Institute. TNO is Holland’s Institute of Technology for the Applied Sciences, partly funded by the Government and partly by Dutch Industries. TNO tested paints to see if they were made according to the Normal Standards and provided analytical results for evidence in disputes.

It took me about an hour to cycle to work and we worked Monday through Friday and Saturday morning too. When the five-day-workweek was introduced we started earlier each weekday to make up for the lost Saturday hours. At lunchtime we made soup in laboratory glassware and ate our homemade sandwiches because there was no cafeteria at the workplace. For relaxation we played bridge or ping-pong until the siren warned us that the lunch break was over.

My dream of leaving home and working abroad never wavered although it was pushed in the background while I grew up and earned a living. I paid my parents for my room and board. Some of my friends had found jobs in other cities and were independent. I wanted to do that as well, but decided against it. I loved my job and felt I couldn’t rent a room in the same city where my parents lived. That would be hurtful. After all I was their only daughter.

Then, in 1958, an opportunity came my way that would change my life, fulfill my dream of independence, make travel possible and widen my horizons.

JOURNAL I

1958-1960 Preparation for the journey

CELINA

Celina Shatil, an Israeli scientist, came to work at our laboratory in Delft. She had received a scholarship from NATO and would be with us for six months to learn the latest techniques in Paint Research.

Celina was charming and bright. With a beaming smile she asked a lot of questions about work and the way of life in Holland. She spoke English, German, Modern Hebrew and Polish, her native language. She was very, no, extremely proud of her new country, Israel. If you gave her the slightest notion that you wanted to know more about the new State of Israel proclaimed in May of 1948, she answered with detailed information and gave her political views as well.

She adored being in Holland, a small country like Israel and remarked, I love the old patrician houses and the marketplace in Delft. It reminds me of the architecture in some villages of my home country. I enjoy going to the museums to see paintings by the old masters. I never have time for this at home. We work very hard in Israel, the women too. I see that women in Holland like to stay home when they have children. We can’t afford that in Israel, women have to work and also join the military. My husband and I have done our military service and work very long hours.

Celina came to Holland during a time when we didn’t have extensive social programs for foreign visitors. She was booked in a hotel and was basically on her own. At work we gave her information about money, food, clothes and tourist attractions. I listened carefully to everything she said about Israel.

After she had worked for a while in our section, she told us sad stories of her youth. In Poland she had to flee with her family from city to city to avoid persecution. She ended up in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp where nearly all her family perished. We didn’t ask for details, it might be too painful. WW II was still fresh on our minds in Holland. We tried to understand and imagine what she went through in those years.

Celina and I went to concerts and operas and she also visited my home in The Hague. We showed Celina around and she enjoyed everything so intensely that we also enjoyed it as if for the first time.

One Sunday afternoon she visited the Sunday school where I had taught the senior group about the Modern State of Israel. Celina explained the divisions on the map and the duty of the armed men and women who protected the holy sites and the frontiers of the new state.

It’s wonderful that you have Sunday Schools here in the West and that children can learn about the Old Testament, the history book of Israel. At present modern people in Israel don’t want to be so religious anymore. Some argue that they have been persecuted and suffered because of their religion. Therefore being not religious might give a better life.

A new thought. When she visited my family she invited us, saying, you must come and visit me in Israel, you are very welcome. I enjoyed myself so much here and the trip is not so expensive as you think. My husband and my daughter will look forward to your visit.

Did I hear it right? It was an invitation. Would I be able to accept it? I pushed the thought away. Impossible; the country was too far away, the trip outrageously expensive and how could I look after myself during a long stay? How would I get a visa and a travel-permit? In 1958 enemies surrounded Israel on all sides and would love nothing better than to push the citizens of the new State into the sea. Israel was not yet a tourist country and was dangerous to visit.

We thanked Celina. It was nice of her to invite us, but it must be eastern hospitality and her way of being polite. I kept remembering it and thought about it like a dream that might one day become reality.

If you can dream it you can do it. This expression turned over in my mind. Who would want to visit Israel, a new country with so many problems? In those days international travel was only for the rich or for those emigrants with a great desire to leave a broken Europe behind.

After Celina returned home, we started a lively correspondence and I picked up enough courage to visit the Israeli Embassy in The Hague. To get to know a country really well you must live in it for at least a year. Would that be possible? I did not have the money to live for one or two years in Israel and to do so, I would have to find a job there.

I asked my questions at the Embassy but they could not help me. I was not Jewish. I could visit Israel as a tourist if I could show a paid roundtrip ticket and a smallpox vaccination certificate. Only then a proper visa would be issued. The roundtrip ticket price was astronomical. And for a permit to stay longer, or for work, I had to apply to the Ministry of the Interior once I was in Israel. The main point was clear. I was allowed to travel, and the rest I could arrange over there.

It was not easy. First I had to change my European passport for a World passport. For that in the fifties, you needed various declarations and no debts with the tax office! I received an offer from a Dutch Language Institute and realized I had to freshen-up my school English. After Ivrith, (Modern Hebrew), the business language in Israel was English and I was very rusty in English. Other languages such as German, Yiddish or French were spoken too, but preference was given to English. I enrolled in an advanced English course and started to save for my roundtrip ticket.

I wrote a polite and diplomatic letter to Celina, telling her my plans. I asked if she could help me find a job because I would like to stay for a while but could not afford to be a rich tourist who is swimming in money. She answered with a stream of enthusiastic and welcoming letters. Eliezer, Celina’s husband, and her daughter Orna were already looking forward to my visit. They would research job possibilities for me. But first they would try to find a place in a kibbutz where I could stay for a while to acclimatize and learn all about kibbutz life.

Suddenly it gripped me: travel fever. With Celina’s welcoming letters I knew that I would go to Israel one day. I had traveled to Belgium and northern France, camped in Germany’s Black Forest, the Harz and Switzerland. All these trips were on tour buses and close to home. Now here was a chance to travel far away, to the Middle East. I was excited, but decided to keep my secret until I had acquired greater knowledge about the new State of Israel and the challenging trip.

In October 1958 I joined a group of work mates and visited the Expo World Exhibition in Brussels, Belgium. I explored all the booths of the Middle East and learned much more.

TRAVEL PLANS

To travel by plane was out of the question. It was so expensive. I visited the best travel agency in The Hague, checked the cost of surface travel by land or sea and questioned all the possibilities. It was a relief to know that my ideas were not out of reach. I could already make a reservation for a four-berth-cabin on the ship Theodor Herzl leaving Marseilles in southern France on December 13, 1959.

The written quote arrived in April. A berth was reserved and the total cost for the roundtrip Marseilles-Haifa was one hundred and twenty-six U.S. dollars. The Israeli Navigation Company ZIM stipulated that this special price was valid only for one year. I started to save with a vengeance. One hundred and twenty-six U.S. dollars was a lot of money in those days.

In the meantime letters arrived from Celina with advice that I must inform the Israeli Embassy that I had work in a kibbutz near Haifa. The job was at the Askar Paint Works and Chemical Products Ltd., a factory in the kibbutz settlement, run by its members. A guest room was already reserved. Celina had been busy on my behalf and said some enthusiastic kibbutz members wanted to welcome me. She thought that I would arrive that summer; a financial impossibility.

I read the itinerary of the quoted December sailing. After leaving Marseilles, the ship sailed for five days on the Mediterranean Sea to Haifa with a one-day stop in Naples. I must arrange my travel from The Hague to Marseilles by either car or train.

For employment in Israel, I needed officially translated documents that explained my education and former work experience. I contacted an official translator and made an appointment with Dr. Ir. M. Kanner, the director of the Chemical Institute where I had studied. He was Jewish and immediately prepared to help. He asked many questions about my plans, gave some good advice and promised a letter of recommendation. He urged me to visit him before I left because his sister lived in Israel and he wanted to send her something.

He asked: Can you stand a very hot climate? I answered that I did not know. If I were you I would travel at the end of January, beginning February. That is the coldest period and then you have time to acclimatize.

It was a good idea.