The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

while I acquired my meager vocabulary more during religious studies in Yugoslavia: chair, desk, WC, bench and synagogue. Plus, I knew the letters, though I didn't know still reading. I couldn't go to the studio and study in a neat way because I didn't have how to pay for school, as well we were very preoccupied, Leon and I with our family livelihood. My husband did all the tailoring work required - repairs, making shirt collars, ironing and more, while I worked in the house of one of the police officers. Then I worked in the orchard in Beit Hanan, picking and packaging oranges and any casual work. At one point I was assembling electric accessories at the "Techramic" plant in Ness Ziona, and I even traveled from Ness Ziona to pick grapes in Lachish - took us standing in trucks in the morning, and back the same way. I worked in every job that happened in my way. The only job I didn't hold anymore one day was in the middle of the summer when they pruned the orchard trees and they set up a fire, and my job was to keep the fire from spreading. Each time trees were added and the flames were already rising to the sky, when suddenly a spark flew out of the flames and started a big fire. I started screaming until the workers came and said, "What are you shouting?" They extinguished the fire with their feet but I was still upset and said to myself, enough. For this job I am not coming back. Many of our friends were new immigrants who came with us in the same ship from Yugoslavia, and many that I knew in Bergen-Belsen. Among the surviving members of Bergen-Belsen were Isaac Cohen and his wife Rachel, who moved from Beer Yaakov to Kibbutz Givat-Brenner, who were like a family to me right after the hardships we went through together. My husband Leon received them too as soul mates. However, we have never talked about our camp days. All of us wanted to forget what we were going through and we were more or less satisfied that we survived the war, and even without talking, we had a firm destiny between us. Through them I knew Isaac's aunt, Victoria, who lived with her family in Jaffa, and other friends who connected us to Jacob Gilad, owner of the Giltex a pants factory for children and youth. So we moved to Jaffa in August 1956, into an Arab house that we bought for 1,500 IL as key fees, and we paid a monthly rent of 4 IL to Amidar. Meanwhile, Samuel finished kindergarten and four years of primary school in elementary school, and in the summer of 1956 we sent him to Givat-Brenner to stay with Isaac and Rachel as we take care of the move. The couple had two daughters, one Samuel's age and the other was younger, and the three of them spent a month pleasantly playing and go wild on the kibbutz lawn. Only recently I heard that as part of Samuel's stay in the kibbutz, Yitzhak gave him a book on sex education, which probably enriched his summer experience.

Jaffa

Our first home in Jaffa was an abandoned Arab house on Beersheba Street 27, near where Paula Ben-Gurion House was later established. In those days, the neighborhood was mostly made up of Bulgarian expats. I didn't have trouble communicating with our neighbors, since I spoke Serbian, a language similar to Bulgarian, and I understood Spanish. Most of the population was secular and even the synagogue rabbi would come on Saturdays when he by a motorcycle. Everywhere, horse-drawn carriages were seen leading commodities, from

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