(Author: Audrey Benedict Meyersfeld, Vol. 73, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2018)
“There were many South African nurses amongst the ranks of Mahal. Perhaps the best known were Sisters Audrey (Bennie) Benedict and Marie Roux, non-Jewish theatre sisters whom Jack Penn had brought from home. Highly skilled medics, Bennie and Marie quickly became passionate Zionists. It was heart-warming to hear them holding forth in fierce defence of Israel’s policies and inalienable right to independence”
David Susman1
I am greatly honoured to have been asked to share some of my memories of those historical months in Israel in 1948. Firstly let me stress that I was only one of the thirty-odd members of the nursing fraternity who volunteered to serve, and who all did a magnificent job.
But let me start at the beginning. I was returning to South Africa from the U.K. From press reports in London, I was well aware that storm clouds were gathering over the Middle East and as a [non-Jewish] Zionist sympathiser I wanted to be there. This was January 1948, so when the state of Israel was declared on 14 May, I approached the Zionist Federation in Johannesburg and offered my services.
I had worked with the plastic surgeon Dr Jack Penn during the war years as theatre sister, and he was instrumental in persuading the SAZF to send me over. So in late June, with Dr Penn’s theatre sister at that time Marie Roux, we were on our way. With us on that Dakota were young South African men on a similar mission. We landed on a small air trip outside Tel Aviv and I was soon in trouble, since my name ‘Benedict’ was to foreign ears too similar to ‘Bernadotte’2, and I had no visa for Israel. That night was spent under guard. By noon next day, however, Dr Meltzer had been contacted and given the assurance that I was no Mata Hari. We were thus allowed to proceed to Haifa, in an ambulance.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] Dr Jack Penn (1909-1996) We started work the next day at the Bat Cholim hospital. The surgeon to whom I was assigned was Dr Cyril Kaplan, with whom I had worked in Durban during my training. Other surgeons with whom we worked, in addition to the South Africans, were British, Canadian, American, Russian, German and Romanian. As you can imagine, language posed quite a problem! Sadly, the hospital was in a sorry state – the British had left behind wanton destruction. Lifts and sterilizers were not working and we were very short of surgical supplies, instruments and drugs. Bandages and linen had to be reused, but we managed and amazingly without sulpha drugs, antibiotics and often without gloves. While we were there, Count Bernadotte was assassinated and I attended the post mortem. I was later introduced to Dr Ralph Bunche, who succeeded Bernadotte as head of the UN delegation. In mid-September, Marie and I were transferred to the Italian hospital, also in Haifa, and we were billeted with an Arab family. We became quite friendly, sharing the basement when an air raid siren sounded, and their coffee. Our work here was entirely military. This was a clearing station for casualties from the north and the Gallil, so our work was speeded up to the tempo of war. We were still very short of surgical supplies, and with the Hamsin3 blowing, and no air-conditioning it was exhausting. Dr Chaim Sheba visited our hospital frequently and gave me my Hebrew name Bracha. An important part of my work was to train girls with no nursing experience as theatre assistants. These girls were from D.P. camps – the tattooed numbers on their arms were a constant reminder of that. They were quick learners, and we shared a wonderful comradeship. They in turn taught me basic Hebrew, and together we worked out how to translate surgical terms into Hebrew. We all felt a sense of taking a small part in the making of history, and this buoyed us up to greater efforts. The South African surgeons, including Doctors Jack Penn, Arthur Helfet, Jack Wilton and Cyril Kaplan to name a few, gained a reputation for saving and reconstructing shattered limbs rather than resorting to amputations. I had the greatest respect and admiration for them. I was once given three days leave and hitched to Tiberius to visit Dr Wilton, who was doing a magnificent job in his little hospital. He arranged for me to visit Degania, one of the oldest kibbutzim on the border, which had borne the brunt of repeated attacks from the Golan Heights. Happily, we were allowed to spend a memorable and quiet Rosh Hashanah there. Then I went on to Mayem Baruch, where I met a number of South Africans who had joined the kibbutz and were playing an important part in the military. On my return to Tiberius, renewed fighting had broken out, and Dr Wilton asked me to take a seriously injured patient back to Haifa for intracranial surgery. That was a nightmare journey, trying to keep a blood transfusion and intravenous drip going and administering oxygen and other medication with only the aid of a flickering torch. We arrived in Haifa at dawn, but sadly our patient didn’t make it to the theatre. There were many more heartaches like this, but never at any time did the faith and courage of the Jewish people flag. On one occasion I was sent up to Jerusalem, travelling in an army vehicle under enemy gunfire on the Burma Road. As Mount Scopus was out of bounds we operated in a church, “The Christian Mission to the Jews”, scrubbing up in a Christening font and sterilizing our instruments in a pot of boiling water over a gas ring. Despite all the tribulations and hard work, I will remember my time in Israel for the rest of my life, and feel truly blessed and honoured that I was allowed to play a very small part in the establishment of Eretz Israel. I returned to South Africa in December to work again with Dr Penn, now as matron of the Brenthurst Clinic. But I missed the theatre and Marie, who had returned from Israel with Dr Penn, was the theatre sister. Dr Penn made frequent trips back to Israel to operate and consult, and I was fortunately able to accompany him on two occasions, renewing contact with some old patients and meeting new ones from time to time. Certain patients requiring long-term surgery were sent out to us in Johannesburg. At that time we were using a relatively new type of anaesthesia originated at East Grinstead, the famous plastic surgery hospital where Sir Archie Mcindoe performed miracles. The patient’s blood pressure was lowered to allow easier surgery. However, it was imperative that post-operation cases be kept in bed at rest until the pressure returned to normal. Imagine my shock when doing a round of post-operation cases to find one such patient, a certain Colonel Moshe Dayan, sitting up in a chair. “Please go back to bed immediately”, I ordered. With a twinkle in his one remaining eye he growled, “This is the first time I have been ordered into bed by a woman”. Sister Ruth Benedict served as a volunteer nurse in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. This article has been adapted from an address she gave to the Jacob Gitlin Library, Cape Town, in August 2004.
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