The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

but we worked, and we knew that most the people around us do not live better. We all got the same shack. This was what the settlement in the country had to give in those days. These were not days of generous absorption baskets. Five hundred thousand people have absorbed millions of immigrants and neither had they. They also attached a penny to penny. Next to our barracks was a family called Shochtaowitz. I used to go to them for laundry and ironing and sometimes when it was a Saturday or a party - also wash dishes. Half a pound of those days was enough for two days to buy milk, ice, bread and a little margarine. There was nothing to talk about eggs, since it was the austerity period and the eggs were given against slips. But we were not hungry: we ate bread and margarine, bread and salt with a little oil, and once in a while we win a raffle and got a box of milk or egg powder. Today you can hear people complaining, but then no one complained, no one said, "Oh, how hard." We didn't ask "Where are you going on vacation?" When we met, we asked - "How are you? Do you work?" - We were pleased to have a roof over the head. Whoever had contacts or an old family in the country he was going out, finding an apartment and working place more easily; but those who had not, went wherever he was sent to. After a few months in Beer Yaakov we were offered to move to a shack in the Amidar neighborhood of Ness Ziona. (AMIDAR is an Israeli organization that ought apartments to help poor. The name means “my people live in”). We were told that it is quite close to Tel- Aviv, and without knowing anything about the place, we agreed. And so, half a year later we left Beer Yaakov with 4 IL (Israeli Lira, Palestinian Pound, equal to one British pound or Sterling, up to 1952) - l per capita that we received from the agency and a few movables - an iron bed for everyone, a table and three chairs. With this furniture we moved to Ness Ziona. In June 1949, we entered our new one-room apartment with a kitchenette and a shared bathroom outside, and we paid to Amidar 4 IL for renting, every month. The huts were split in two where we lived together two Yugoslav families, one from Vojvodina on the Hungarian border, and we were from Sarajevo. Our neighbors were also Holocaust survivors, though not from Bergen-Belsen. Here, too, we got a folding agency bed and a straw mat. The kitchen was very small - half a marble and a sink. Later we purchased a kerosene burner and a pot for cooking, and I used to do it outside shack because of the constraints of the place. The days were the hot summer days. The pipe that provided us with water did not pass underground and therefore provided thru day only boiling water. We used to cool the boiling water in the "fridge" we had at that time - a crate containing an ice block - in order that we can use for bathing and drinking. We would wash mainly at night, after the water in the pipe had already cooled down. However, in winter, the water had to be heated on kerosene burner. On top of everything, the shack was running for flea and once in a week or two we used to go to Kibbutz Effal, (where Ramat Effal is today), and wait at my brother-in-law, Binko, home - while the fleas were destroyed. It was not an easy life at all, and yet, after years of escape and wander, I appreciated the fact that I finally had a home, and I was glad to leave the immigrant's house, in Beer Yaakov. Shortly after moving to Ness Ziona, my husband Leon was called to the army, and I was left alone with Samuel in Ness Ziona. At this point I have not yet mastered the Hebrew language. Leon, who was hard of hearing, caught accidental words from conversations, Ness Ziona

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