My Grandparents' Journeys from Safed and Vienna

By Eli Leyton

My brother recorded my parents lives more than thirty years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524683221

Eli Leyton

I was born in Israel, and we came to the UK when I was four years old. I practiced medicine for many years and in retirement decided to write up my parents history. Both are interesting due to the era and places they were born. My father from the orthodox and poor community of Safed and my mother from the prosperous and elegant Vienna. They both arrived in England for vastly different reasons, he came to educate himself and she, as a refugee, escaping the atrocities of nazi persecution. It is hard for me to comprehend how extraordinarily difficult their lives had been before they came here. But settling as a foreigner in this country during wartime would not be easy either.

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© 2017 Eli Leyton. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/01/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8323-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8324-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8322-1 (e)

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To my daughters Heidi and Michelle and my wife Nancy.

In loving memory of my wonderful parents.

Contents

Preface

My Grandfather’s Story

Prologue 2012

Chapter 1     Safed

Chapter 2     1918

Chapter 3     My Jerusalem Years

Chapter 4     Zionism, Betar, and the Hagganah

Chapter 5     I Am Now a Teacher

Chapter 6     England

Chapter 7     Various Letters

Chapter 8     Birmingham

Epilogue

My Grandmother’s Story

Prologue 2013

Chapter 1     Early Life

Chapter 2     My Teenage Years

Chapter 3     My Final Few Years at School

Chapter 4     Nazi Austria

Chapter 5     England

Chapter 6     Working at Knowle Mental Hospital

Chapter 7     Birmingham

Chapter 8     Emigration to Israel

Chapter 9     Return to England

Postscript

Epilogue 2013

Preface

W HEN WE WERE in our early thirties, my twin brother, Michael, decided it would be a good idea to tape-record our parents’ life history. He had a friend whose father had died at fifty-one and who was upset that he knew little about his father’s earlier years. These tapes sat in my cupboard for nearly thirty years as a project for my retirement. When I came to play them, I was thankful that the recording had not degraded during that time. It was a journey of discovery for me: I did not know or could no longer remember some events. I was sad that my parents were no longer here, as I needed them to answer the many questions I had after listening to the tapes. My research over the next five years was very interesting. I am also grateful to my cousins Alec Spencer and Yacov Pedhatzur-Wiedhopf, who filled in parts of the family history and supplied stories about my parents.

In writing this book, I have kept the accounts of my father and mother separate, and I have added a prologue and epilogue for each from the perspective of my daughter Heidi, who visited both Israel and Vienna with me.

My Grandfather’s Story

Prologue

2012

I T WAS THE time of the year when I was due to meet up with my father. I had moved to Berlin five years earlier, much to my parents’ disdain. My father had said to me that my grandmother would turn in her grave if she knew, but I was young, and the Second World War had happened a whole lifetime before I was born. There was now a new generation in Germany that had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Many Germans felt guilty at how their country had behaved during the war.

I was 32 years old and still single. I tended to meet my dad three times a year, and he suggested that this time, rather than him coming to Berlin, we should meet somewhere else, preferably warmer. He was born in Israel, and I had never been there. He wondered if it was time for us to go and stay with his cousin, Yaacov. I leapt at the opportunity.

I remember my grandfather quoting from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. My father came from a long line of people born in Palestine, while my mother was from Wales. As a child, I grew up with these two identities, understanding little of why or how this happened, but more to the point, wondering, Who am I?

My parents splitting when I was 10 years old was just another factor in not understanding my background. I remember that my classmates, after I came back from holidays abroad, would call me names, as my skin would be much darker than theirs. To me, I had a beautiful olive skin that I liked. My poor mother would be asked if I and my sister were adopted, something that she found very hurtful. My father told me he’d had the same problems at school – and in those days, there would be only two or three Jewish children in the year, and almost no other ethnic minorities.

He would hate any anti-Semitism, as he tried as much as possible to blend in. Though he was Jewish by birth, my grandparents brought him up to understand that there were many religions throughout the world, all of them believing in the same God; that we should all live in harmony; and that religion should not affect anything that happened at school or our day-to-day lives. I know my grandfather followed Judaism in an intellectual way, but he was non-practicing, and as a result, my father had little interest in religion. Therefore, being teased at school was something he found hugely annoying.

He played for all the school teams and invited friends over to play. But I know that this anti-Semitism, though not severe, was similar to racism, and it affected his psyche forever after. Marrying out was part of his rebellion against it, but in the end, it contributed to my parents splitting up. It is hard to escape one’s upbringing.

My father’s mother was a Viennese refugee who left her parents and country when she was 20 years old to come to England in 1939. Her parents stayed on in Vienna and had their lives terminated in the death camps in 1942. What must it have seemed like to come to a new country, not speaking the language and feel not wanted, and the nerve-wracking wait, not knowing whether her parents would survive? I remember her telling me that one Christmas, she took herself to bed fully clothed, as she had no money and could afford no food.

What must it have been like for my father to have no grandparents? I took it for granted when we went to either set of my grandparents’ houses on a regular basis, but my father would have experienced none of this while knowing his friends were going off to see theirs. It is only now, as a grandparent himself, that he has experienced the joy of grand parenting and experiences how much his grandchildren enjoy seeing him.

When I asked my father if he feels more Austrian or Israeli, I expected him to feel half and half, but this is not the case. Should he feel just a small part Austrian? Again, he does not. Many Jews only came to Austria at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth as a result of the violent pogroms in Russia. They experienced widespread anti-Semitism in Austria. My grandmother used to describe how Jews were beaten randomly in the streets. They had to carry ID papers and wear the yellow badge, referred also as the Jewish badge, in order to shame them. They could then be easily identified in public places.

Other than those who escaped, the vast majority of his mother’s relations died in the Holocaust. My grandmother never returned to Austria. When her brother went back to visit, he found their apartment occupied by new people. I can understand why she had no love for that country and why my father has no sense of loyalty to it. They were never wanted there.

Going to Israel was going to mean so much more for me – finding the roots of my father’s family that both I and he missed. Perhaps I might start to understand who I am. To me, that matters. Over the years, I had heard stories from my grandfather about Israel. He regarded himself as Palestinian, and that seemed all the more mysterious, as I could not relate to any of these places. It is amazing that the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions have grown out of that tiny country. There is still a battle over it, even though with all that religion, it should be at peace.

I had seen many photos of Jerusalem, but I needed to take in its majesty and atmosphere. I discussed taking my boyfriend with me, but we both felt that this was a personal journey that I needed to do just with my dad. There was too much family history to concentrate on, and I thought it better not to be distracted. It would also give me some prime time with Dad.

Going to Israel would be a journey of discovery. My father had told me what a beautiful country it was and a little of where he came from, but I could not imagine what he was referring to. I boarded the flight from Berlin and landed in Tel-Aviv. This country was so steeped in history, but what I felt on arrival was none of this. It was like a feeling that I had come home, that this was where my roots lay – a feeling that I had never felt before.

CHAPTER 1

Safed

I   WAS BORN in Safed in northern Palestine in 1908, before the First World War, into a very religious Hasidic community. In those days, Palestine was part of the Turkish Empire – a backward country with a different civilization and culture.

The Ottomans had conquered Palestine in 1517 and were to rule for 400 years. The Jewish community in Safed numbered several thousand people. Over the past few centuries, there was a small group of Jewish people living in Palestine. There was no Zionism in those days, no movement to revive a Jewish state in Palestine. People migrated to Palestine simply because they felt the religious urge to settle there, not so much to live there but to die there.

The Jews of Palestine before the state of Israel was born in 1948 were not living widespread. They were concentrated in the four holy cities of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron. Safed was the capital of northern Galilee. The Jews there were very religious and lived on charity – halukka – dating back to the Middle Ages when Jewish academies in Palestine were supported by voluntary contributions from congregations abroad. All the Jews dressed in long black gabardine coats with their heads covered, their long hair locks, and their beards unshaved. It was difficult to distinguish one from another. Everyone wore black.

This was the same uniform they had worn for two hundred years in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. Wearing this dress would have been unbearable in the heat of the summer. The houses were cooler, though the only air conditioning was leaving doors and windows open. Thankfully, burglary was not a problem. They were nearly all very poor, so there was nothing to steal.

The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 because they refused to embrace Christianity, and those who did were persecuted just the same. They settled all over the Middle East. A few of those came to Safed. They were the Sephardim; Sephard is the Hebrew name for Spain. The Ashkenazim came three centuries later. Ashkenaz was a great grandson of Noah, and it is thought that descendants migrated to the Rhineland in approximately AD 300. The region was called Ashkenaz. The Jews from there are called Ashkenazi and were probably settled before the establishment of Christianity and before the Celts, Balts, and Slavs.

These Jews in Safed were great scholars who established schools of learning. One of them, Joseph Caro, was the author of the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law now used all over the world; anyone wishing to became a rabbi must know it. His house was just over the road from mine. He established the precedent of Jewish charity from abroad, and the reputation of Safed as the home of famous Talmudists and cabalists brought in much financial support.

Isaac Luria, considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah – the mystic movement of Judaism – settled in Safed in 1570. He is buried in the old cemetery there. One of the leaders, Ari, is also buried there. They and some poets used to go on Friday nights out of the city to the hill overlooking the area and compose Friday evening songs. One of the songs was called Lecha Dodi, which means Come, My Beloved. It was composed in the sixteenth century by a Safed Kabbalist and is still sung in every home and synagogue throughout the world on Friday nights. Before this, Jewish prayers were miserable and groaning; this was a song of hope and awakening. Its main point is:

Arise! Leave from the midst of turmoil;

long enough have you stayed in the valley of tears;

Shake yourself free, rise from the dust: rise up and shine;

why be downcast? Why groan?

It gives the people hope of a new way.

Israel Najara was another poet from that era who settled in Safed for a while and composed songs that are still sung in every Jewish home on Shabbat. These were three great contributions from Safed: the Shulchan Aruch, the Lekhah Dodi, and songs by Israel Najara.

In 1837 there were only about 10,000 Jews living in Palestine, of which the largest number, 4,000, lived in Safed. Some of them were owners of small businesses. That year there was a major earthquake in Safed; the city is located on the Syria–Africa fault and is one of the cities in Israel most at risk. Probably half of the population of 4,000 died. Most of the Jewish quarter was destroyed. Much money was donated by Baron Rothschild and Moses Montefiore towards the rebuilding. There was a wave of immigration to help repopulate this important city. Amongst them came some of my ancestors from Podhorets near Tarnapol in Ukraine.

My great-grandfather, I am ashamed to say, I know very little about, other than he was a rabbi and we shared the same name: Yonah Podhorzer. He married Sarah, the daughter of Rabbi Yechiel Asher Shmuel Kahana-Shapira from Jerusalem. They arrived in Jerusalem at the end of the eighteenth century. My other great grandfather was chief rabbi of Galilee for over forty years. His name was Raful Silberman. He was a native and died during the last year of the First World War. The Silberman family arrived in the 1500s from Poland.

We had a very large family and lived in a secure world. There were two grandfathers who lived virtually in the same street, along with uncles, aunts, and cousins. When there was a wedding in the family, there was always much excitement and a large crowd of us – maybe a hundred – would gather. That is why so many cousins married each other. But the whole town was like a large family, as we knew everyone.

My grandfather, Rabbi Elazar Yaacov Podhorzer, had a religious institution in Meiron near Safed that he managed. He was also a pharmacist. He took care of orphans. He was self-made. He was handsome and well-spoken and had a good sense of humour. He married Ruchama Silberman, the sister of Elazar Silberman, who was my other grandfather.

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My parents were first cousins. Even though they knew each other well, it was an arranged marriage, as were all religious weddings. But at least they loved each other. After my mother died, we used to go around every day to my grandfather. He must have been very intelligent, but being born in Safed in those days with only a religious education, to a certain extent his had to be a wasted life.

Hardly anyone would leave the community. There was no paved road out of Safed. This is where one was born, lived, and died. There is a 1751 English poem by Thomas Grey called Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. He describes the drabness, the monotony of the village people whose life was restricted and uneventful. This is what you see when you go to the cemetery in Safed and ask yourself how many Milton’s and Shakespeare’s are buried there – who, being born in different circumstances, might have been as able as Milton or Shakespeare. How many greats might have come out of our family had they been given a chance?

My father was educated as a rabbi. He lived in an environment that required no special education other than as a religious Jew. He and my mother were first cousins. Safed at that time had one doctor, one chemist, a few small shops, and no school. That might have continued had it not been for the First World War. When it ended in 1918, Palestine became occupied by the British. The British and the Jewish immigrants brought in new life.

I, myself, signify the watershed between the old and the new. My father belonged to the Old World, but because he was gifted and because his father, Elazar Yaacov, was a very open man, my father was taught English and German by a private tutor who secretly came to the house through a side door. My father taught himself to speak and write modern Hebrew beautifully. He even mastered Arabic, which he learned from the neighbours and spoke like a true Arab. He learnt the fundamentals of Russian, which very few in Palestine managed.

His grandfather, Raful Silberman, chose my father as his personal secretary because of his exceptional intellectual abilities. From there, he continued to be very involved in community affairs and soon became the head of the Jewish community in Safed. The British civil servants who administered Palestine at that time liked him very much because of his abilities and his highly-developed sense of humour. Consequently, he knew the British governor, who had confidence in him. When leaders of the Jewish Palestine community wanted an interview with the governor, they would come to my father for help. Had he received more than a religious education, there would have been no limit to the qualifications he might have obtained.

Despite being born in Safed, in a very primitive environment, he still managed outstanding achievements. During the interwar period of 1918 to 1939, he was chairman of the Jewish community and then intermediary between the Palestine Jewish community and the government. In the 1930s, he was responsible for bringing electricity and water to Safed. During the war, my father was a key figure in organizing protection of the Irgun and the Hagganah (the underground and the Israeli army), when they were in serious trouble.

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My father on the left in 1929

After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, my father became the first mayor