Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak

Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak
Continued from Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV


Last week, my son departed for a term in Israel with his high-school class. In honor of his trip I decided to complete the series about his great-grandfather,  my grandfather, Baruch Lavi, who started his journey to Israel in Magdiel, the same place where my son is now living and studying. In the last post in this series, I left my grandfather at Usha, a Tower and Stockade settlement in the northern Galilee. Because of ideological differences Usha began as two independent Kibbutzim, but  the conditions made it apparent, that there was not enough land or resources for two settlements. Luckily, the Jewish Fund, wanted more settlements, and my grandfather’s group, was to be relocated to a deserted hilltop near Natanya for their independent and permanent home for the Tel-Yitzchak group. Three and a half years after arriving in Palestine, my grandfather was finally about to fulfill his dream of building his own Kibbutz. This was a much smaller operation than Hanita (see Part IV). 

David Manela (a founding kibbutz member)
 building the tower on ground breaking day
at Kibbutz Tel- Yitzchak
(Photo from Kibbut Tel Yitzchak Website)

At the break of dawn, July 25, 1938, three lonely tucks, overloaded with equipment, approached the abandoned hilltop. The long neglected, arid wasteland, surrounded by the Poleg River marshes, awaited them. In anticipation, the kibbutz members, spent the night next door at Even Yehuda. There they found shelter and collected the building supplies, tents, food, portable barricades and parts of the tower. Among the young men and women pioneers who piled onto these trucks, were my grandparents. They were twenty-five years old. That night, they embarked on what turned out to be, the rest of their lives. This smal group of Hanoar Hatzioni members from Galicia, won a moral victory for their political ideology and the Zionist youth movements in the diaspora. The hot summer sun beat down as they worked furiously to complete their task before nightfall, when the surrounding Arabs villagers were sure to attack. Together they unloaded supplies and erected the tower. They created a chain, passing buckets of gravel to line and fortify the large wooden wall, the main defense surrounding the fledgling settlement. They did this, without British approval and rendered the Kibbutz an existing settlement, overnight, safe from demolition. Rome was not built in a day, but to the Arabs dismay, another Kibbutz was. 

Hadasah Rosevald
(1920-1938)

The early days at Tel Yitzchak were extremely difficult. The hill was bare, and the sun brutal. The members lived in tents or makeshift boxes, turned homes. The first cement building on the Kibbutz was the cow shed. The mud was deep and vehicles struggled to make their way without sinking in it. They lived in constant danger of attack. As a young girl, I wondered how dangerous it really was on the Kibbutz in those early days. Attacks on the Kibbutz I knew, in the heartland of Israel, seemed unreal, but they did happen. In one such attack, on November 5, 1938, only four month after braking ground, two shots were aimed at the guards, from about eight meters away. The guards returned fire. After they heard the Arab attackers retreat they discovered one of their own, Hadasah Rosevald, had been shot. Hadasa, also from Lvov, joined the Kibbutz in September of 1938. During the day, she worked both as the head of communal projects, and as the nurse since she completed a first aid course. At night, she was in-charge of communications. She operated the spotlight at the top of the watchtower which signaled messages to nearby Jewish settlements. She loved sitting by the campfire with the guards and participating in political discussions. As a important leader in the  Hanoar Hatzioni movement, she was returning from a meeting at the Tel-Aviv central office that night. The movement needed her at the central office and wanted her to move to the city. She refused! She believed in doing the hands on work and was proud to hold such important positions, as a woman, on the Kibbutz. That fateful Shabbat, Hadasa headed towards the post, bringing with her food for the watchmen on call. Only nineteen, she was found dressed in her city clothes, bleeding to death from a bullet-wound to the head. The following morning, grieving kibbutz members buried her, very close to the site where she was found. 

My grandparents in their back yard
under one of the trees the proudly planted
1991

How and when my grandparents met, I am not sure. I know my grandmother Rose Celnik (known as Ruja to all, and Shoshana in Hebrew), was among the founding members. She made Aliya from Tarnov, Poland with Hanoar Hatzioni around 1934, but when exactly she joined my grandfather’s group I am not sure. One of the things that impacted my grandmother the most, and that she loved to tell me about, were the malaria infected mosquitos which where endemic to the swamps in the area. As we walked through the green lawns of the kibbutz, she loved to point out, how when they first arrived, there was absolutely nothing there. On our monthly visit to the Kibbutz my grandparents would greet us as we parked under the tall eucalyptus trees. We could rely on them walking arm in arm receive us. The aged Eucalypti welcomed us with their unique aroma and my grandmother would recall nostalgically: “We planted these tree and many others to dry up the swamps. Back then there was mud, swamps and lots mosquitos” she would say, “and not much food.”

Basic food such as bread was in short supply on the Kibbutz early on. The orange grove was one of the first things they planted. Those oranges quenched their thirst and their satisfied their hunger when there was no bread to be found. At some point the Kibbutz built a bakery. They made enough bread to sell to neighboring villages. Benek (Baruch Sharoni), another founding member, rode the Kibbutz’s horse drawn wagon, on the dirt roads, selling fresh loaves of bread to near-by settlements. As he delivered the bread, he began exchanging books with the neighbors, and that is how the kibbutz's library was born. 

While war was raging in Europe and Israel was fighting for independence, all the kibbutz members were doing their part. My grandfather served as Muchtar, the contact person with the British. I find it funny to think of him communicating with the British, considering his English was very limited. Because of his official responsibilities with the British as a Muchtar, my grandfather was not among the Hagana members who worked in the underground munitions factory on the Kibbutz. Moshe Viser, now the Kibbutz's secretary still recalls Ben Gurion's visit to Tel Yitzchak pre-1948. Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister came to inspect the secret weapons factory. This clandestine factory eventually became part of the Israeli Army's Munitions Industry.

My father (bottom right) with his brother and parents
Around 1950

They lived every aspect of their lives according to their ideology. While they grieved the loss of their families in Europe they absorbed holocaust survivors who were arriving in Israel in droves, and they began having family of their own. My grandfather focus was the Hebrew language. He became a Hebrew expert, and an excellent Hebrew teacher. He taught Hebrew as well as geography at the local elementary school, where he eventually became the principal, educating children from various Kibbutzim and settlements in the area. His proficiency in the Hebrew tongue amazed me. He spoke better than most natives, without any detectable accent. He patiently corrected my Hebrew, constantly pointing out subtleties in the proper use of the language. There are many more stories I can share about my amazing grandfather, but this concludes the series of his early years in Israel, a part of his life which I've had to mostly gather on my own, since he was humble about sharing the details with us

My grandfather (Center) with a group of his students in 1977

Part III: One Ancestor and Israel's Independence

First hut from Magdiel (restored).

Continued from Part I and Part II: One Ancestor and Israel's Independence

This story, is not how my grandfather's sense of humor, and how he laughed at himself for wearing  glasses which clung to his nose by a piece of tape. It's not about how he drove "a Mercedes" around the Kibbutz. After suffering heart failure, my grandfather was awarded a golf cart. He truly enjoyed the luxury of driving it around the narrow pathways and dubbed it his Mercedes. It's not how he wore his khaki colored shorts high above his belly button of his bulging belly and displaying his skinny legs. It's also not about how he kept his false teeth in a cup of water in the bathroom, the water magnifying the dentures and scaring the hell out of young grandchildren. It's not about any of those things, because those things I witnessed myself. They are my memories of my grandfather. This post is a continuation of the series of stories I learned from digging up the past, the pieces of the puzzle I discovered as I researched my grandfather's life.

In 1934 when my grandfather arrived in Palestine, he was part of a core group of Hanoar Hatzioni members who formed an independent settlement in Magdiel, called Magdiel beit. Magdiel, was a small agricultural community in the heart of Israel (now part of Hod Hasharon). This fall, my son will be spending three months studying in Hod Hasharon. Of all the places in Israel, his program is located in the exact same location where his great-grandfather landed in Israel almost eighty years ago. He will find not find the sand dunes and swamps his great-grandfather encountered there, but maybe he can visit the first hut of the settlement, now restored and nestled among the modern apartment buildings.

From its inception the Hanoar Hatzioni group, envisioned an independent Kibbutz belonging to their youth movement and not affiliated to the Histadrut Organization, the General Federation of Laborers in the land of Israel (Israel's Labor Unions Organizations, in charge of workers activities among them settlements). This was to be the first Kibbutz of the Hanoar Haztzioni and a source of pride for the passionate movement members. Remember those youth group summer camps my grandfather headed as part of the youth movement? (See Part I). The youth group was everything to them. The idea that a group of young people can actually have their own Kibbutz was revolutionary and they didn't want to give that up to the control of a the fast growing and powerful labor union. While awaiting a permanent location for their kibbutz, they worked and received support from the more established agricultural settlement of Magdiel. The intense preparations abroad, did not quite prepare these young, pale, urban intellectuals, for the hard physical labor involved in farming the land. When hunger plagued, they searched for supplemental jobs outside Magdiel. My grandfather to enlisted to dig trenches in Cfar Etzion, a settlement planned for newly acquired lands of Gush Etzion.

Baruch Lavi top left with
a group of fellow Magdiel settlers. 

Gush Etzion, nestled between hostile Arab lands of Bethlehem and Hebron, failed to establish Jewish settlements in many years. In 1929 a group of Orthodox and Yemenite Jewish settlers were forced to flee their settlement, Migdal Eder, after only two years. A wealthy Jewish businessman, Samuel Yoshef Holtzmann, purchased the land for Cfar Etzion in 1932 and helped finance the construction which began its in 1935. The laborers were paid seven Palestinian pounds for each hole they excavated. They were laying down the infrastructure and foundation for the planned settlement. According to my grandfather's writing, they were paid for digging seven holes daily. The workers faced the harsh elements during the day. At night they retreated to the nearby Russian monastery for refuge from the belligerent Arab villages which surrounded them. The members of Magdiel Beit, performed this backbreaking work, twice, for several month each time, sending much needed income to Magdiel. In 1935, after the second enlistment, they treated themselves with a field-trip to Hebron. They were amongst the first Jews to step on the biblical lands of Gush Etzion and visit the city of Hebron. Sadly, Kfar Etzion’s fate was not dissimilar to its predecessor Migdal Eder. By 1937, the Arabs, destroyed much of what the philanthropist Holtzman paid for. The next attempts to establish Kfar Etzion, lasted from 1943-1947 and met with one of the bloodiest and painful events in Jewish history. The small religious settlement, found itself on the Arab side of the partition plan. As British forces pulled out, it was placed under a heavy blockade. When the remaining residents tried to surrender to the Arabs, they were massacred. Controversial settlements in what is known today as the West Bank territory, did not resume until after the Six Day War of 1967, and continue to be a sore issue in the Palestinian Israeli peace process today. It is not my intention to get into a complicated discussion of the current political situation in Israel. I do however want to say, that my grandfather was a big proponent of peace. In his lifetime, he got to see his dream of establishing a Jewish state fulfilled. He always hoped that Arabs and Jews could coexist in peace.

Building Magdiel
Baruch Lavi, bottom row, second from the left (with the cap).

Making construction bricks at Magdiel
Baruch Lavi, bottom left.

Despite the difficult conditions at Magdiel, my grandfather was very happy. He enjoyed the company of his ideological and intellectual friends, he loved the camaraderie and the support they gave each other. There was much emphasis on the Hebrew language and its revival, as well as cultural life. There were constant lectures and shows. The men and women worked hard during the day, and took turns guarding at night. As plans continued for breaking grounds, Keren Kayemet, the Jewish National fund sent a representative to Magdiel Beit to discuss among other things, the name of their future Kibbutz. Though the members prepared a banquette for their distinguished guest and impressed him with a tour of their settlement, the visit did not go as well as planned. They wanted to name the Kibbutz, Tel-Yitzchak after of their beloved spiritual leader Yitzchak Steiger. Steiger was a visionary, founding member and leader of Hanoar Hatzioni back in Poland. When he died prematurely in 1936, his friends and colleges were determined to never forget his sacrifice. The general strike which was part of the Arab Revolt, strangled many Jewish communities among them the small community of Haifa. The arabs were not purchasing Jewish products, not selling anything. Basic services such as garbage collection, mostly done by Arab laborers were severely disrupted. At the time, Steiger was part of the Kibbutz Usha's group preparing at Cfar Ata. He was one of the first to volunteer for the dirty job of collecting trash and founded the Jewish trash brigade, infusing his enthusiasm and embodying his solidarity to help the Jews of Haifa. Within a few short days at the job, he contracted typhus and died. The perpetually hungry youths, cleanup every last crumb of food from the unusually elegant banquet. Before departing, Mr. Oshoskin (the Keren Kayemet representative) relented and instructed them to submit the name Tel-Yitzchak to the naming committee. Their request was met with further resistance and they were asked to reconsidered a more historically significant Jewish figure for the name. Exhibiting youthful stubbornness, they  refused to budge and returned to the naming committee several times with only one option, Tel-Yitzchak. History is witness to their eventual success.
To be continued in Part IV and Part V

Yitzchak Steiger1904-1936

Holocaust Memorial Day: Learning from the Past, A Vigil Against Hate

Second place winner in the
 Yad Vashem "Designing Memory"
poster competition.

Today is the internationally observed holocaust remembrance day. April 19, marks the anniversary of the beginning of Warsaw ghetto uprising, which was the largest single revolt by the Jews during the holocaust. This week, I've received many e-mails, and read posts commemorating this event. One that particularly stuck me was a poster which won second place in a "Designing Memory" competition, an ongoing initiative of Yad Vashem together with the Israel Ministry of Public Diplomacy. While the winning poster is very impressive, as a genealogist, I felt the second place poster, designed by three young artists, Liav Goldstein, Mati Liberman and Dana Bodansky, captures much of what I think about, when I struggle with the Holocaust as part of my family history. The poster, is a family tree whose members are symbolized through the Jewish Yellow star used in the holocaust by the Nazi's to mark Jews. This poster indicates how whole branches of families where wiped out because they were Jewish. Like so many Holocaust victims, their names, their photos, their stories are unknown.

Today I commemorate the Holocaust, by lighting a memorial candle. My temple, sent this small yellow candle, in memory of Dvur Kralove, from Czechoslovakia who perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 6th, 1944. This simple but powerful act of lighting a candle today, allows me to commemorate Dvur Kralove, a man I never met, and whom may not have any surviving relatives to remember him. In addition, I light this candle, in memory of all those who lost their lives in the Holocaust as well as other genocides, just because they were different. It strengthens my resolve to learn from the past by holding vigil against hate that leads to such tragic loss and work towards creating an inclusive tolerant society in the future.

Despite years of research, my own family tree is full of gaps and voids, caused by this most tragic period of history. Large branches, stand bare, where no survivors were left. Others segments have managed to re-sprout despite all odds. As another small tocan of commemoration, I listed the twenty-two names of my immediate family who died in the Holocaust. I continue to kindle a small hope that someone might be able to recognize them, and share a little more of their story with me. My they rest in peace and never be forgotten.

From Lvuv Poland
Leon Speiser Jampel, Cyla Jampel (Reiter), Michael Jampel
From Tarnov- Poland:
Matias Celnik, Channa Celnik (Rosenblum), Ashzer Celnik, Helena Celnik, Sabina Celnik
From Belitsa, Russia (now Belarus):
Lazar Kranowitz, Leah Neimenshka, Vevel Kranowitz, Masha Kranowitz, Maishe Kranowitz
Braina Botschkowsky (Kranowitz) (1886-1943), Chaim Leib Botschkowsky(?-1942), Feigel Botschokowsky (1927-1943), Mashka Botschokowsky (1929-1943), Henye Botschkowsky, Malka Botschkowsky (?-1943)
Sara Esther Altman (Kranowitz), her husband and child.

"Each human being is an infinity. Today is about Six Million infinities".  Rabbi Wesley Gardenswartz, Temple Emanuel

Michael Jampel (1931-1943)
July 1935, Lvuv Poland
My paternal great-uncle who died at the age of 12.
This is one of only two photos we have of Michael.
He was my grandfather's only brother. My grandfather
never knew how or where his parents or brother died.

Are you planning to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day? I would love to hear what you do.

Never Give Up and Good Things Will Come

My Grandfather, on guard duty at his Kibbutz, 1939.

WARNING! Researching dead relatives can be a lonely endeavor. If you are thinking of researching your family history, consider yourselves duly warned. The genealogist amongst you, surly know what I'm referring to. For the record, please note: as difficult, frustrating and lonely as this pursuit may be, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND GENEALOGY! 


Personally, I am far from sharing Tim Tebow's religious beliefs—and as a Bostonian, I could not be happier that the Patriots just ended his amazing run—but I share in his message: Never Give Up and Good Things Will Come. Genealogy is a form of detective work requiring spending long hours alone, perseverance, attention to details and exceptional deciphering skills. Those around you, will rarely understand this crazy obsession with the past. Luckily, for you and for me, the internet is full of other's like us. The good news is, there are millions of Americans—and many more millions around the globe—researching their family history. In my immediate family, everyone is far to busy living their lives. Justifiably, they have little interest or time to study the lives of those who came before them. Yet there is a whole community of professional genealogist or self declared genealogy addicts who are out there sharing their work, offering advice, posting blogs and supporting this amazing and important process. While the process can be frustrating and guaranteed  to lead you into many dead ends, I promise it's a journey worth taking. To illustrate how perseverance will result in great discoveries, I want to share  with you one of my most remarkable discoveries: records in the Yad Vashem (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority museum in Israel) database exposing information I feared lost forever. Read on, and remember DON'T GIVE UP!

It was two o'clock in the morning, and once again, I was staring at my computer screen, looking for clues about my great-grandparents who died in the holocaust. Four of my eight great-grandparents, lost their lives prematurely in the holocaust. My father, lost all his grandparents before he was born. So little did my grandparents talk about their lost family, that my father—now in his sixties—just did not remember the first names of his long deceased grandparents.  "How can you not remember your own grandparents names?" I kept asking. They were people, full of life! They were trapped by history. Living in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Someone needs to remember them. These missing ancestors were a huge hole in my family tree and my heart. All I had to go by, was their last names. Yampel and Celnik. 

My Great Uncle William Celnik who
Survived Auschwitz and his wife Edith Rose.
 .

On my father's Kibbutz, almost his entire generation grew up without grandparents, uncles or cousins. Like many Kibbutzim, Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak, was founded by young Eastern European pioneers who came to Israel as part of the zionist movement in the early 1930s. As idealistic teenagers, my grandparents left their families and comfortable middle class Polish homes, in pursuit of their dream: creating an independent Jewish state in what was then the dangerous, wasteland of Israel. During World War II, they lost everyone in their family except one of my grandmother's brother's who survived Auschwitz. In 1942, when most European Jews—among them my family—were obliterated by the Nazi's, my grandparents were in their late twenties and had not started a family of their own. They never determined exactly how they died. For them, there was no closure. No funeral, no shiva (traditional week of mourning), no grave to visit, no death certificate, not even a clue as to where or when exactly their loved ones perished. As I think about the strength it required to commence a family while you are mourning such unimaginable loss, I am overwhelmed. 

I must have searched the Yad Vashem site hundreds of times prior to that night. I searched there and on many other sites, ancestry.com and JewishGen to name a few. Without a first name, or any other identifying clue, it is almost impossible to identify a lost one. I kept probing my father for information and insisting that there must be somewhere we can bring to light the names of his grandparents. After all, they were his grandparents, not some distant relative. Earlier that day, my dad walked in triumphantly and said:" I found some documents. I hope they help." In his hand he held two death certificates belonging to his parents. My expert eyes scanned these documents in amazement, and immediately picked up a very important fact he had completely over looked. Both death certificate, written in Hebrew, listed the name of the deceased's fathers: Leon Yampel and Matias Tzelnik. Finally, I had names. This was a huge breakthrough! Armed with this new information, again I entered YadVashem.org, hoping to discover something about the two men who gave me life, and whom I knew nothing about. I looked and I looked. Nothing. I tried different spellings. Nada. And then, as I was about to call it a night, I noticed an option on the search engine which said witness.

It took a little more exploring to understand what this witness option was all about. Yad Vashem, collects testimonies of holocaust victims. These documents are called Witness Pages and are a kind of combination of a birth and death certificate. Despite the German's compulsive record taking practices, millions died during the war without a trace. The Witness Page is a testament to these victims lives and the fact that they existed. Normally these forms are completed by a relative or person who knew the victim and therefore witnessed their life. I had an epiphany. My grandfather, must have documented losing his parents, brother and in-laws.

For many years, grandfather worked as an archivist at a small holocaust museum on his Kibbutz called Massuah. His job was to record every article that appeared in Israel's newspapers related to the Holocaust. Reading the newspaper at my grandparents home was never any fun. Huge rectangular sections where missing from where a holocaust article carefully removed. In their home, there was an unspoken rule not to discuss the holocaust. As a little girl, I loved my grandfather's stories about the early days of hardships in the state of Israel. My saba (grandfather in Hebrew), loved tell stories about swarms of malaria infested mosquitos attacking him as he dried out the swamps by planting eucalyptus trees. But if I asked about Poland and his childhood, he would simply brush me off. "That was so long ago, I don't remember." he would retort and quickly change the subject. Yet, the newspaper, riddled with holes, was an ever present reminder to me, that my grandparents never forgot. They carried the weight of the holocaust on their shoulders silently. They wanted to shelter us, never to burden us children with such a heavy cargo. This restraint silence explains my father's inability to recall his grandparents names.


When I saw the witness option, on the Yad Vashem search engine, I knew that my grandfather, with his dedication to documenting the holocaust, must have filed a testimony page in Yad Vashem. Instead of looking for Yampel or Tzelnik, I tried a new approached and searched for Baruch Lavi, the witness. (My grandfather, Born Zigmond Yampel, Hebrewtized his name, around the foundation of the state of Israel. This was another attempt to leave Europe behind). To my amazement, instantly, sixteen records appeared. I looked at the list of names, and there they were. My four great-grandparents, and four great-aunts and uncles, each of their name appearing twice. I clicked on the first one, and read the summary. Then I clicked to see the original document. What I unearthed, was a Witness Page filled out by my grandfather in 1955. By then, after years of searching, he must have given up hope of finding survivors. This document may have been the only piece of closure he had. His familiar hand writing, recorded his fathers name, Leon Yampel—transcribed Jampel (J is pronounced as Y in Polish, a fact I did not know at the time), no wonder I could not find it—date of birth, names of Leon's parents, occupation, last known address, and where Leon may have perished.

Yad Vashem Witness Page for Leon Jampel my great-grandfather

My grandfather's brother Michael Jampel
Who perished in the holocaust. He was about
12 years old when he perished.

Alone, at my desk, tears streaming down my face, I read about my relatives. My beloved grandfather, who did not want to talk about the past, left these records behind for me to discover. That night, I felt he preserved this heritage only for me. I was the only one interested, the only one asking for stories. He understood, that one day, I will be ready to carry the weight of remembering. He understood, that one day, we, his descendants, will need to know. In 1999, when in his eighties, he filled out these forms again, forgetful of the 1950s duplicates. Luckily for me, the new expanded questionnaire provided additional information and clues. My saba wanted to leave his parents legacy even if it was to painful for him to talk about them. He knew then, what I am only coming to understand now: you can not rush people into the discovery of their past. The understanding that family history is one's own history, comes time and maturity.

My great-grandmother Anna Celnik (Rosenbloom)
Holocaust Victim

This gigantic breakthrough for a genealogist—finding information about eight lost relatives—meant little to everyone else around me. My dad was very moved of course. My husband congratulated me, but most people did not understand the gravity of this monumental advancement. From these records, I was able to retrace my father's family four generations more. Through much persistance, I began to learn about these relatives, found three surviving photos and reconnected with the descendants of my great uncle who survived Auschwitz. I even found the concentration camp uniform which he donated to the kibbutz museum.

William Celnik's Auschwitz uniform
(photo curtsey of Massuah)
Note the red triangle overlaying the yellow
triangle designated him as a
 political Jewish prisoner.

Many question remain unanswered in my mind. I know very little about these forefathers. I know even less about the circumstance of their death. I am far from closure. So I keep looking for clues, digging for leads. Most importantly, I NEVER GIVE UP and I believe GOOD THINGS WILL COME.

What has been your most amazing genealogical discovery? Please share with us in the comment section. Have you reached a dead-end? Do you need help? Write me a comment!