Nostalgia Sunday – Prison Service History
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Profiles, Social Justice, War
The Israel Prison Service isn’t the most popular or glamorous of the country’s defense and security forces. But the important work that it does was brought into sharp focus this past weekend with the Carmel forest fires and the human tragedy of 41 persons, of which 37 were prison guards whose lives were lost when their transport bus was engulfed by flames.
It seems only appropriate to present a short history of this unsung service, whose roots may be found, (often quite literally) in the jails cells of British Mandatory Palestine.
We will be like other nations, goes the saying attributed to national poet Haim Nahman Bialik, “When the first Hebrew policeman brings the first Hebrew prostitute before the first Hebrew judge.” The Zionists who envisioned the modern State of Israel were Utopians who believed they would be able to create a moral society without crime or criminals.
For this reason, Israel Prison Service (IPS) historian Naama Telem writes, “…prisons were not built for many years and old and inappropriate buildings, some dating to the British Mandate, were refurbished and used as detention centers… Prison conditions were harsh and very crowded. So much so, in the early 50s of the last century [the authorities] were forced to release a hundred prisoners, because there was not enough room for them.”
Israel’s first prison, called Ayalon, was built in the city of Ramle – also in a refurbished Mandatory structure – and was intended to house 450 prisoners. A second prison, Shata, was opened in 1952. “But it was on July 31, 1958 that the rules of the game changed. A prisoner revolt broke out, led by a group of Arab prisoners. The rebels took control of the weapons room and waged battle with prison wardens.
Two guards, Sergeant Joseph Shevach and First Sergeant Alexander Jaeger were killed [the funeral is pictured at left - RN]. Prison guards were injured. The exchange of fire killed 11 prisoners and 66 other prisoners managed to escape.”
“The Shata uprising caused a shift in the organization’s priorities. If, prior to the rebellion, rehabilitation and treatment of prisoners was the central issue, security was now awarded a place of honor. More and more funds were allocated to reinforce prison walls along with other security measures. The Age of Innocence, which began with the founding of Israel, ended.”
Two years later in May 1960, the IPS took part in another significant event in young State’s life: the capture and arrest of one of the most wanted Nazi criminals, Adolf Eichmann. The country was in an uproar over the arrest and vigilantism was feared. There’s no little irony in the fact that the IPS was called on to provide special protection so that Eichmann could be brought to trial unharmed. And once Eichmann was sentenced, it was the IPS that carried out the hanging – the first and last official prisoner execution in Israel’s history.
The Six Day War in June 1967 forced the IPS to conform to new realities once again, with thousands of Arab detainees suspected of belonging to organizations hostile to Israel entering the prison system. ”This new and problematic population meant the IPS had to deal with problems not previously recognized as well as a growing mass of prisoners.”
“The situation was becoming complex…. following the first and second intifadas… more and more terrorists were behind bars… The IPS had to find more and more detention facilities to meet the needs of the State of Israel. In 2006, handling of all security prisoners was transferred to the IPS and all IDF detainees held since the Six Day War were transferred to IPS permanent facilities. The tent camps that characterized the military prisons are disappearing and a new law allows soldiers to fulfill their military service prison guards.”
Nostalgia Sunday – Haifa’s Golden Age
Filed under: coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Profiles, Travel, War
Haifa is one of Israel’s great unsung cities. Modesty being a Haifan trait, it rarely trumpets the fact that it is the largest city in northern Israel, the third-largest city in the country, has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs and is home to the Bahai World Center. Not to mention that it houses Technion – Israel Institute of Technology which, among its many, many claims to fame, begat Israel’s first high-tech park.
But it was under British rule that Haifa experienced its Golden Age, according to a exhibition now running at the Haifa City Museum. According to the curator’s notes: “This exhibition attempts to document the city’s development, from its occupation by the British on September 23rd 1918 until November 29th 1947 – the day on which the United Nations Assembly voted against the British Mandate and for the establishment of two independent states, Jewish and Arab, according to a partition plan. Two forces were involved in this process, the British and the citizens of Haifa, who created the city as it is still known to us today.”
The exhibition has two focal points: Haifa as an expression of the Empire’s vision of modernity and order, and the unique relations between the Jewish and Arab populations. “During the period of the British Mandate, Eretz Israel [pre-State Israel] underwent impressive changes, in the midst of which the city of Haifa achieved unique and remarkable status. This was due, in part, both to its strategic location and to the special relationship existing among its inhabitants.”
“From the beginning of the 20th century Haifa, its surroundings, and the bay area were a planning objective for the British. The city’s importance derived, even more than its local connotations, from its centrality to the general order in the Middle East. The British Empire saw itself as representing the pinnacle of these positive aspirations – the realization of progress. Accordingly, throughout the period of the Mandate, the British intention was to consolidate the infrastructure of Eretz Israel and of Haifa in particular.”
“Thus the first circle of the exhibition is an attempt to reconstruct the linear pattern of the Mandate regarding the city’s development. This part of the exhibition shows focal events and key figures connected with how the British viewed Haifa and its surroundings, its social groups and their lifestyles.”
“The second circle of the exhibition deals with the relationship between Jewish and Arab. During the British Mandate, a unique economical, social and political phenomenon arose in Haifa. Diverse population groups lived together, subject to a single authority, in an atmosphere of mutual acceptance, endowing the city with a cosmopolitan and multicultural outlook.”
More about the history of Haifa during the British Mandate is available on the municipal tourism board site – along with an archive of old photos and postcards.
The Haifa City Museum is located in the former Templar school and community center buildings in the city’s German Colony and features temporary exhibitions devoted to the history of Haifa. Museum hours are posted online and guided tours are available.
Nostalgia Sunday – The Modern Israeli Woman In Old Newsreels
Filed under: coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, War
A few months ago, I posted an item about the Women’s Corps, timed to coincide with an exhibit about those brave women of pre-State Israel who volunteered for the British Army. Their service formed the basis for Chen, the Israel Defense Forces’ women’s corps.
But I hadn’t yet discovered a wealth of old newsreels produced by now defunct news service British Pathe, with its archive of 90,000 videos, stills and stories spanning 80 years, from 1896 to 1976. And how delightful to find a newsreel about the very same Women’s Corps, Girls from the Middle East Join the W.A.A.F. The British Army recruited all over the region, “Way out there,” the announcer snidely puts it, “Where men are men and women are not far behind!”
RECRUITING IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The film (click on the image to view) makes the past come alive with various shots of the women recruits being signed on at a Middle East camp of the W.A.A.F. (Womens’ Auxiliary Air Force). They unpack their bags, make their beds and smoke cigarettes before getting changed into uniforms, shedding high heels in favor of sensible shoes, and beginning to march.
A decade after the founding of the state, British Pathe was there to chronicle the development of Chen, the IDF Women’s Corps, in this newsreel entitled Girls Train to Defend Israel. Notice that times have changed — no snarky editorializing from the male announcer. Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.
ISRAEL – GIRLS TRAIN TO DEFEND
British Pathe also has additional outtake footage of women soldiers, including a very young Yael Dayan. Definitely worth a look.
ISRAEL PROMOTES WOMEN’S ARMY
Nostalgia Sunday – Shaare Zedek Hospital’s Schwester Selma
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Medical Breakthroughs, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles
I didn’t know Schwester Selma but there is one time when perhaps our paths might have crossed. That would be in 1973, when my sisters and I were rushed to Jerusalem’s old Shaare Zedek hospital after a car accident (we came out with minor cuts, bruises, a few stitches in my sister’s forehead and a lifetime of self-enforced responsible driving ahead of us). Schwester Selma served from 1916 as head nurse and retired in 1973, so who knows?
The country’s first trained nurse, Schwester Selma was one of those legendary Jerusalem institutions from the pre-State era that people of my mother’s generation knew well, their children knew somewhat and their grandchildren know not at all. I encountered Schwester Selma’s biography while looking into the background of a series of photos documenting the old hospital building, which believe you me, was nothing like the new one – I can still remember the patchwork of floor tiles – but thank goodness the hospital was easy to reach and not in the middle of some out-of-the-way forest like some other Jerusalem hospitals I could mention if I cared to.
Here it is on Jaffa Road. The building now houses the Israel Broadcast Authority offices.
Then, as now, Shaare Zedek prided itself on being the only centrally located hospital in Jerusalem. There were the Misgav LaDach birthing hospital and general hospital Bikur Holim was under construction but Shaare Zedek was pretty much it during the World War I when Selma Meyer arrived to do her wartime service in Palestine (the Turkish Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany during the war).
Her autobiography includes a couple of juicy tidbits about illness and cure back in the so-called Good Old Days: “There were two epidemics right them. We were the only Jewish hospital in the new city. The old Bikur Cholim had also started building in the new city, which, however, could not be continued because of the war. Typhoid, typhus, and meningocael meningitis, all very severe cases, were hospitalized with us. Thousands of typhoid cases were passing through our hospital, probably caused by dirt; there was hardly any water. Additionally the people suffered terribly from hunger; there was hardly anything to eat.” Out of discretion to the reader, I’ve cut out the part about the lice bath.
It must have seemed like heaven for patients to come to a place like Shaare Zedek, which had a European-trained staff and clean sheets. There was no running water, but who had running water in those days?
After all, Jerusalem was no modern city. “There was still no transportation. The transportation of patients was therefore still very complicated. If somebody had to be brought it would have to be done by stretcher. We did not have enough personnel to send along and therefore the relatives had to help or hire two porters.”
During the global polio epidemic, Schwester Selma ran the country’s only isolation ward. “In those days the isolation department was even more primitive than the main house. The bathtub was made of tin, on wheels. It used to be filled with water that was brought in and then wheeled into the respective room. The toilets had no plumbing. Of course there was no heating system. In spite of all this I can maintain with a good conscience that we ran this department as a real isolation station even if this demanded many many efforts, which were well worth it in every respect.”
Schwester Selma founded the country’s first nursing school in 1934 over the objections of her hospital director who believed that too much theory and not enough practicum was a bad thing in a young nurse. But Selma, together with one father who wanted to make sure his daughter got a good education, prevailed. (Selma seated 2nd row, 3rd from left).
In recognition of her achievements, “Schwester” Selma Meyer was named a Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem (Yakir Yerushalim). She died in 1984 at the age of 100.
More amazing photos of Shaare Tzedek hospital and other Jerusalem landmarks, can be found at Photography in Jerusalem, an online archive sponsored by Hadassah College Jerusalem and educational website Snunit.
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