Building a nation

TALIA JACOBS

SARAH Saaroni remembers the moment, in 1946, when she first stepped onto the port of Haifa in Israel after a treacherous, 10-day journey from war-torn Eastern Europe.

As a young woman, Mrs Saaroni had been one of the thousands of displaced Eastern-European Jewish refugees, who were smuggled into Palestine after World War II, in what became known as Aliyah Bet.

Standing on the land entrenched in the roots of her ancestors, Mrs Saaroni knew that after surviving the inhumane conditions of the voyage, as well as the terror of the Holocaust, she had finally arrived home.

As she disembarked, her eyes scanned the faces of the crowd that had gathered to greet the newcomers.

And there, among the sea of foreign faces, stood her brother Gidal, who she had not seen for more than eight years. It was the beginning of her new life of freedom.

Her story is one of the testimonies that make up the two-volume anthology, Building a Nation, released recently by the Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV), in association with the Makor Jewish Community Library.

The book was launched in Israel last month by Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s Minister for Absorption, and Australian Ambassador to Israel James Larsen.

A tribute to the anniversary of Israel’s independence, the anthology -— comprising testimonies from more than 50 people who live, or have lived, in both Israel and Australia -— is a compilation of anecdotes from people who have been involved in Israel’s history since its establishment.

“After the Holocaust, I couldn’t talk about my experiences,” recalls Mrs Saaroni, now 83, in a heavy Polish accent.

“But after my husband died, I thought it was wrong that if I died, my children wouldn’t know anything about what [had] happened. So I decided to write down my story.”

In her testimony, Mrs Saaroni, who now lives in Melbourne, documents her journey from Poland to what was then known as Palestine.

She describes her personal struggles during the difficult years before the declaration of the independence of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, as well as her eventual decision to move to Australia.

“After the war years ended I went back to Poland, but it wasn’t home anymore and I wasn’t welcome there,” she laments.

“When I arrived in [what was then] Palestine, it was the only place where I felt like I belonged.”

When Mrs Saaroni arrived in Palestine immediately after World War II, she joined the underground defence movement -— the Haganah.

In the lead-up to the British withdrawal from Palestine, Mrs Saaroni was involved in the defence of Tel Aviv.

But after the State of Israel was declared, and Israel was invaded by the armies of the neighbouring Arab countries, Mrs Saaroni says the fighting in Israel made her “a constant bundle of nerves”.

“Sometimes I woke up drenched in a cold sweat, with my heart pounding after some terrible ordeal,” she recalls.

“Even though we won the war, it was like we were sitting on a volcano that would keep erupting.”

Mrs Saaroni had a second brother who survived World War II in Russia, and then travelled to Australia. She eventually made the voyage to meet him and settled in Melbourne.

“We just wanted to live like normal people without war.”

Like Mrs Saaroni’s story, the personal tales collated in Building a Nation reveal the difficult journeys people made to escape the horrors they had experienced and the sense of hope that carried them forward.

In a foreword to the book, Dr Danny Lamm, president of the ZCV, writes that the story of the modern State of Israel is “a realised dream, a tale of struggle and achievement and a legend of miracles”.

“It is also a very human story or, more accurately, a tapestry of many stories — woven and tangled threads from so many sources which, combined, have produced a vibrant, continually evolving tableau.”

Ester Csaky vividly recalls Yom Kippur of 1973, as she sat in synagogue with her mother by her side.

She remembers the piercing wail of the siren that permeated through the streets of Israel, penetrating the solemnity of the day, and drowning out the chanting of the chazzanim across the country.

Csaky and her husband walked home from synagogue and immediately turned on the radio.

A war had broken out between Syria, Egypt and Israel.

Csaky’s husband Tibi, who had already fought in the Six-Day War of 1967, once again received a letter calling him to service.

“Tibi and I looked at each other and hugged in silence. What was there to say?” Csaky, now 63, recalls.

Tibi was to be picked up by the army at 5.30pm, right outside Csaky’s parents’ apartment in Haifa.

It would be more than two weeks before Csaky heard any word about her husband’s safety.

While Mrs Saaroni was in Israel during the War of Independence, Csaky and her husband moved to Australia after having experienced Israel’s wars of 1967 and 1973.

“Even though I was born in Poland, and now live in Australia, my husband and I speak Hebrew at home and consider ourselves to be Israeli,” says Csaky, in a hybrid Australian-Israeli accent.

“I feel that Israel is in fact my home, even though I have left it for a whole variety of reasons,” she says.

Telling her story for the anthology was important to Csaky, who wanted it to form part of the conveyance of Israel’s history.

“I think that the memories from Israel’s early years need to be recorded, and especially when there are so many negative things happening over there, it’s important that we continue writing and committing ourselves to Israel.”

Building a Nation was published jointly by the Makor Jewish Community Library and the Zionist Council of Victoria, as part of Makor’s Write Your Story project. $36 rrp. Enquiries: (03) 9272 5611.