(Author: David Solly Sandler, Vol. 73, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2018)
Seventy-one years ago, an historic UN General Assembly resolution was passed to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The voting took place late on Saturday night on 29 November 1947, South African time. Telephones rang late into the night and there was great rejoicing as the news spread.
In January 1948, four emissaries from Israel arrived in South Africa, followed by four more the following month. The emissaries set about recruiting Jewish ex-servicemen as volunteers to defend the soon-to-be-declared Jewish state. Volunteers were despatched clandestinely to Israel with the active support of the South African Zionist Federation.
By April 1948 there were over 5000 young men and woman from Zionist youth movements under training on weekends, many on the farm of Koppel Bacher (father of Ali) located outside Johannesburg on the way to Krugersdorp. While shooting was forbidden, training was held in the assembly and disassembly of small arms and many instructive lectures were given. Only a small percentage of these youth were sent to Israel, after they protested that only ex-servicemen were being sent. In Germiston, a secret pilots’ training school was established and attempts were made to buy aircraft to be sent to Israel.
South Africa, with 810 volunteers, was by a considerable distance the largest per capita contributor to the total number of Jews in the Diaspora who served as volunteers in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. 24 of these Machalniks, as they were called,1were from Arcadia (the South African Jewish Orphanage in Johannesburg). There were approximately 300 Canadian volunteers, 350 British, 600 French, 950 US and 600 from other countries (including 16 listed as Australians on the Machal website).
The story of the South African volunteers is comprehensively told in the book South Africa’s 800 by Henry Katzew.2 This article will focus on the story of just one of these volunteers, the artist Eli Zagoria (1922-2013).
Born in Riga, Latvia, Eli Zagoria immigrated to South Africa at the age of 14. While still at school and in the care of Arcadia, he was encouraged to pursue his artistic talents. During World War II, he served in a medical unit and was captured at Tobruk. As a prisoner of war in Stalag IVB, Germany, he met a British prisoner who was an artist. He became Eli’s first art teacher and advised him to take up art as a profession. After returning to South Africa in 1946, Eli was given a full three year scholarship in the Art College in Johannesburg. He then volunteered for service in the Israeli army in the 1948 War of Independence. Once again, he served in the medical corps.
In 1949, Eli married Estelle Kaplan, with whom he had three children, Michael, Ilan and Karen. The family spent seven years in Israel and 23 years in Zimbabwe before returning to Johannesburg. In 1992, they settled in Perth, Australia, where Eli continued to work as an artist. He estimated that he had completed over 15 000 portraits during his lifetime. Eli Zagoria passed away early in 2013, leaving his wife of 64 years, three children and seven grandchildren.
Extract from the memoirs of Eli Zagoria
Israel had just been born and was already fighting for its life.
The Zionist Federation in Johannesburg put out a call for men with wartime experience to join the Israeli army. The influence of my formative years in Riga with Hashomer Hatzair was still strong, so once again I came forward, gave notice and flew off to Israel via Italy.
Soon after my arrival in Israel I was sent to a camp near Haifa and helped to establish a medical aid post attached to a regiment with half-tracks and a couple of armed cars. The half-track vehicle had wheels in front but tracks at the back. Dr Rosenberg was our M.O. There was a motley crowd of Americans, South Africans, British and Sabras (a native born Israeli). All had combat experience and there was a minimum of drill for its own sake. It was hard to distinguish men from officers.
Within weeks our unit left its base in the early evening and drove in a long convoy into the hills of Western Galilee. When it became dark, the whole convoy switched their lights on and continued along a narrow twisting road towards Safed (Tsfat). At the outskirts of Safed we stopped and rested a while. All the men got out except the drivers. I was a driver as well. Most of the convoy was ordered to return to base camp in total darkness, not showing any lights whatsoever. The road kept twisting and turning around the hills, and even at a snail’s pace it was very hard to see the edge of the road. Men were walking in front of a vehicle to give directions but not all had co-drivers to do that. Several vehicles were lost that night when they tumbled down off the road.
The following day before the sun set, we did the identical trip again, with lights blazing, towards Safed and other villages held by the Arabs. To me the whole exercise seemed idiotic and a terrible waste of petrol, vehicles and effort. Much later I learned the reason. This was a totally different sort of war. It was confined to narrow roads with steep sides, flanked by olive plantations. Unlike in the desert of North Africa, movement had to be along the roads only and therefore was much more dangerous.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] Eli Zagoria (standing, hand on hips) in 79 battalion, Israeli Defence Force, 1949. The next incident was rather strange. This was a more conventional ground action, also at night somewhere in the Western Galilee. I walked with the rest of the men over some fields into plantations and open ground. Another guy and I were told to remain near a road while the rest went on. There was some light from the moon. We remained there about an hour. The whole operation as far as I was concerned was total confusion as to what we were supposed to do. A vehicle came along the road. The driver asked us to look at two wounded men in the back. He said he was going for some supplies to a town not far away, where there was also a hospital, and asked me to accompany him, which I did. The two men did not seem to be badly hurt, but they needed reassurance. My Hebrew was extremely poor – almost non-existent. They knew more English than I Hebrew. Driving without lights the driver took us to the hospital. The wounded men were taken, the truck went off and I tried to make my way back to my unit. After walking for about an hour and feeling completely lost, a huge shape came rumbling along the road behind me and came to a halt. It was a large breakdown truck with a tall crane. I climbed into the cab with the lone driver. He thought I knew the way or what was going on. At least he seemed to be familiar with the area. I could not tell him where my unit was but we decided to stay together as I might be of some help later. His task was to recover an armoured vehicle that had gotten stuck somewhere, and we drove slowly looking for it. As dawn was breaking, we found ourselves among the hills on a road with a sheer drop to one side. There was not a soul in sight. As we proceeded around the curving road, we saw the armoured car. It was perched on the edge of the road with its front wheels in the air over the drop into a large valley below. I cannot see how my companion would have managed without me to attach and pull the car back on the road. This was enemy country, so we kept the vehicles between us and the vast open area to which we were exposed. Eventually, after much manoeuvring on the narrow road, he took the armoured vehicle in tow and we made a hasty retreat. In broad daylight now, I also saw my unit as we drove back. This was the extent of my action in the Israeli War of Independence. I returned to the base camp near Haifa and continued with the dull routine of attending to the daily sick parades and patients. About this time I learned that the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv was looking for artists and architects for a military project. I obtained leave from my M.O. and went to Tel Aviv, taking with me a number of photographs of some of my best work at Industrial Displays that I had made before leaving Johannesburg. I do not know how many other artists in the army applied, but do know is that I was accepted to join a special small unit attached to the Ministry of Defence to work in Tel Aviv. Obtaining the permission of my M.O. was the most difficult hurdle. I finally convinced him he could manage without me and in case of the remote possibility of further action, I would return immediately. The whole of the northern part of Israel from the sea in the west along the Lebanese border to the uppermost corner at Metula was firmly under our control by then, even though this area had more Arab villages than any other part of Israel. The special unit consisted of the director, two architects and myself. The idea was to prepare plans and drawings for what was to become a victory exhibition for local but mainly international visitors. My art and exhibition experience as well as the photographs I had shown them had clinched the job for me. Moshe, the young architect I was to work with, was a Sabra born in Jerusalem. He had recently done a post graduate course in America with the famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The first job was to find a suitable area for such a project. It was agreed to investigate the area north of Tel Aviv along the sea shore. So I went on my own one day with the bus and a lot of walking to the area to make sketches of suitable spots. As I was sketching among the sand dunes, two armed soldiers approached me. I was not in uniform. My story seemed far-fetched and the area I was drawing was restricted. Would I come along with them? They took my sketches and escorted me to their unit not far away. Having repeated my story to their security officer who also did not believe me, he telephoned the Ministry of Defence. Nobody had heard of me and there was no one there who could confirm what I said. It was late already. So in the nicest possible way I was under arrest for the night. In the morning another call confirmed my tale, but I was also told that the area was too near a large power station and could not be used. Back at the ministry, everyone had a good laugh at my arrest. Detail from mural by Eli Zagoria in the Noranda (South African) Shul in Perth, Australia
During this period I became friendly with another South African, Solly Ossin. He had been in the same unit that I had served in the Galilee, although we had never met. He and several other South Africans, all members of the Habonim movement in Benoni, were now serving in Israel, and had plans for settling there. Their idea was to establish a brand new settlement on kibbutz lines but with some major differences. Simply put all the members, either as families, couples or singles, would live as private units but all the work and duties would be as in a kibbutz. They called many public meetings in Tel Aviv at the premises of the S.A. Zionist offices and explained all the details to prospective members.
The scheme was well received and many American, English and South African volunteers in the IDF joined.
The war seemed to be over for the time being. The more I thought about my work at the ministry the more sceptical I became about the whole business. I thought anyone with half a brain would be mad to embark on the enterprise I was involved in. I finished my working drawing of the mural to scale It took about three weeks work and decided to keep it. Should I prove wrong and the project was still on, the design would still be intact with me. Later, I visited the Defence Ministry and as I expected my small unit had disappeared. I kept my big design, and still have it to this day, in a roll.
David Solly Sandler grew up in Arcadia, the South African Jewish Orphanage, and immigrated to Australia in 1981. He worked as an accountant until his retirement in 2007, since when he has compiled and published numerous books on aspects of South African and Lithuanian Jewish history. These include Memories of Arcadia (2 vols), The Ochberg Orphans (2 vols.), The Pinsker Orphans and Memories of Oranjia, Our Litvak Inheritance, Our South African Jewish Inheritance, The Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) book and the Memorial Section of the Rakishok Yizkor book. He has also reprinted This was a Man (about Isaac Ochberg) and South Africa’s 800 (on the 1948/9 Machalniks).
NOTES
- Machal (or Mahal), from Mitnadvei Chutz LaAretz – “volunteers from outside the country”.
- Katzew, H, South Africa’s 800: The Story of South African Volunteers in Israel’s war of birth, (Revised and Reprinted October 1998, edited by Joe Woolf). To order this book, contact David Solly Sandler on sedsand@iinet. net.au. All proceeds go to Arcadia Children’s Home in Johannesburg.
