By Shlomo Maoz (Osmos)
In 1945, immediately after the end of World War II, the Jewish Agency organized a group of children from Greece - Holocaust survivors - to bring them to the Land of Israel.
During the war years, most of us children had to hide in various places throughout Greece to escape the Germans. I, for example, changed my name to a Greek-Christian name to avoid being discovered, and that is how I survived. That time was extremely difficult. Our family was split up, and during my wandering, I often suffered from severe hunger. In April 1944, my father was caught and sent to the Birkenau extermination camp, from which he never returned.
At the war’s end, we returned to Athens, and, as mentioned, the Jewish Agency arranged our immigration to Israel. In August of that year, we sailed from the port of Piraeus in Greece as a group of 250 children, heading for the port of Haifa. We stayed for three days in the Atlit transit camp and then dispersed to various places around the country. Fifty-four children, myself among them, arrived in Ein Vered. We were children of different ages, from 3 to 15 years old. The very young came with their older siblings, but most came alone. Some of the parents who had survived the Holocaust arrived in Israel a few years later.
We reached Ein Vered in trucks that dropped us off in the main square by the community center. Nachman, who was in charge of taking care of the children (then referred to as “the refugees”), assigned the children to local families. I was fortunate - Nachman, for some reason, chose to take me into his own home. The values I absorbed in his household have stayed with me to this day.
Although the standard of living back then was far from what it is today, food was plentiful - unlike the constant hunger I endured during the war years.
We used the rest of the summer break to study Hebrew, and with the start of the school year, we began attending the regional school in the Tel Mond bloc, in grades 1 through 5. The very young children attended the village kindergarten.
I remember that during that time, we would often return late to class because we were watching the training of the “Ghafirim” (mounted policemen who served in the British Mandate police) who practiced near the school. Their horsemanship fascinated us, and we couldn’t stop marveling at their skills. Among them were several founders of the village, like Rosenblatt, Kadri, Gersten, and others. At first, we had some difficulties due to the trauma we had experienced during the war, but we quickly adjusted and were fully integrated among the village children. Together, we took part in many wild adventures - too many to recount here.
About two years after our arrival, some of the older boys moved to Kfar Yehoshua, and others went in 1952 to the Kfar HaYarok school, where they joined the first graduating class.
Over the years, nearly all of us dispersed throughout the country. One of the children from those days still lives in the village and operates a farm. Some of us still keep in touch. I, for example, maintain ongoing contact and regular mutual visits with Nachman’s family to this day, and I often visit the moshav.
From: Bilha Nachman, 2000, “Stories of Ein Vered – Seventy Years of the Moshav 1930–2000”, Ein Vered Publishing.