From Lyon Airport, I flew directly to Tel Aviv. This was the beginning of six weeks in Israel. I want to dedicate this article to explaining a little bit about my family history and why I have so much family in Israel. My goal, originally, was to backpack the country like I had backpacked so many others on my trip. I had been to Israel six times before but mostly spent time in Tel Aviv and visiting family. I had done the historical and religious highlights as well. This time, I wanted to go hiking and wild swimming. In 1998 and 2004, I took educational trips. Every few years I return and say hello to friends and family. I really do have A LOT of family there and they live in all different regions around the country. I wanted my backpacking route to take me to places I had not seen before, off the tourist path. I tried to map out where family lives that would be hosting me so that I could stay with them as I was passing through.
I wanted to stay in the dessert and meet hippies. I wanted to see if there was a medium size town in Israel where I would maybe envision a new home for myself. During my trip, I visited Jerusalem. This was primarily to see the new light rail line. I will document this experience in my article about Jerusalem but it is worth noting here that I visited the Yad Vashem Archives on a whim. I thought, “Hey, I found so much stuff in Poland… why not see if there’s anything in Israel?” To my surprise, I found an incredible amount of documentation regarding my grandparent’s refugee stories/Holocaust survivor status.
My Grandparents
Who are my grandparents? Three of my grandparents were born in territory that was once Poland. Grandpa’s town of Przasynz/Prushnitz is close to Warsaw and is still part of Poland. Saba’s town of Jozefow Ordynacki/Yosefov is close to Lublin and is part of Poland. Sapta’s towns of Pinsk and Lyubeshiv/Lyubieshuv are part of Belarus and Ukraine, respectively. These grandparents survived the Holocaust because of a chain of events where righteous gentiles protected them, quick decisions on their own and inexplicable lucky moments. They fled eastward/were forced eastward and worked in forced labor conditions. They lost everything and sacrificed their childhoods for the sake of survival. These three grandparents eventually made their way to the United States significantly after the War (Grandpa in 1949, Sabta and Sapta in 1960). My maternal grandmother was born in Brooklyn, but her parents were born in Poland as well and came to the United States through Ellis Island in the early 1920s.
The families I describe are the Broomes, the Hausknechts, the Siegels, the Bieguns and the Grafs. The Broomes and Hausknechts were from an area near today’s Lviv, Ukraine. Their descendants are Americans. The Siegels were from 100km north of Warsaw in the Masovian wojewodtwo (province). I write about them in my blog posts about Masovia. Descendants and survivors of the Siegel family live in France, Argentina and the United States. Based on a discovery I made at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, on my great-grandfather Jack Siegel’s refugee registration card, he wrote that he has a sister in Brazil at the time of the war as well. The Bieguns were from today’s Pinsk, Belarus. Their descendants are all in Israel except for my grandmother. The Biegun name is also sometimes pronounced Begin and it is understood that Menachim Begin is somewhere in my family tree. Finally, the Grafs are from the area around Lublin, Poland which I write about in my Lublin posts. There are many Grafs in Israel and a sprinkling in the United States.
My grandmother Yocheved Biegun and my grandfather Josef Graf met at a kolhoz (or forced labor camp) for refugees in Andijan, Uzbekistan. You see, they had fled extremely far east with their respective families. They eventually found the refugee community there as the Soviets transported them for endless weeks in cattle cars in horrendous conditions. My grandmother said she spent six weeks on trains on the journey from Poland to Uzbekistan. My grandmother’s sister also met her future husband on the kolhoz. I discovered from the translation of my great aunt’s Holocaust survivor testimony that one of the Graf sisters, Frida, is buried in the kolhoz as she died from illness. My grandparents were married officially in Uzbekistan.
After the war, refugees from all over Europe were resettled in a failed attempt to repopulate the abandoned towns of Germany that were lost to Poland. I have stories from my grandmother of the time in Szecin and Posnan. I have records of the Grafs in Legnica. The repopulation project failed due to antisemitism and violence. Polish Catholics were resettled in these towns as well and there was looming antisemitism as confusion ensued about how some Jews actually survived. These Polish people viewed the fleeing Jewish people, yes the ones who survived, as betraying Poland and leaving when they should have been fighting. Of course this is utter nonsense but this is the kind of hatred my grandparents experienced when they were resettled in Poland.
After these programs collapsed, the Displaced Persons camps were set up throughout Europe to house the refugees. The Siegels, Bieguns and Grafs were all transported to a series of DP camps throughout Germany, Austria and Italy from 1946-1948. My aunt was born in Austria. My dad’s first cousin was born in Germany. By this time, new couples had formed and the families had survived the war together. They were eager to start new lives live independently. The families were split up after Uzbekistan, on their own accord, but after the failure of the Polish resettlement and moving to DP Camps, the families wished to reunite again. The refugee crisis in Europe had such lasting effects, it would be a topic in US politics well into the 1950s. The International Tracing Service (ITS) was created as a result of this refugee crisis to reunite families torn apart by the war itself and by the failure of the resettlement programs. In the Yad Vashem Archives, I discovered the letters written to ITS by my ancestors searching for their brothers and sisters. The searches were successful. In June of 1948, the Israeli War of Independence had been won and the Grafs and Bieguns immigrated to Israel and started a new life in Haifa.
The Grafs and Bieguns only had my grandparent’s marriage as a uniting factor but there were 9 surviving Graf siblings and 4 surviving Biegun siblings. Some of them became friends with each other and are in each other’s social circles. Interestingly, this dynamic exists today with my family in Israel, even though my grandparents who are responsible for this bond have not lived in Israel since 1960. It’s been really confusing when a cousin from one side of the family knows about a great aunt on the other side of the family, given that I am documenting the family tree and I’m constantly trying to keep track of the branches.
By the mid-1950s, it seems that the European refugee crisis was indeed still a political issue. Some families that were lucky enough to receive green cards for the US in the aftermath of the war were upset that their families were still separated. Some refugees had figured out a way to make Poland work for them, but things weren’t looking so good as Poland was Communist and allied with Russia. In 1960, President Eisenhower instituted a program where refugees that had been resettled in the US after the war could choose one entire nuclear family branch from outside the US and give them green cards. In the story of the Grafs, my great uncle Zachariah Graf was lucky enough to receive a green card to the US immediately after the war. He never lived in Israel. In 1960, out of his 9 brothers and sisters in Israel who he had survived the war with, he chose grandfather Josef to bring to America.
My grandparents were incredibly conflicted about what to do. On one hand, they were being offered a golden ticket to America. Uncle Zachariah was promising a better life and guaranteed work for my grandfather. Life in Haifa was hard. They lived in temporary housing structures. Conditions were poor. On the other hand, they would have to leave the family behind. There was also the risk that things would not be so great in America.
That’s the end of the family story with regards to how we came to America. It is because of this decision that my grandparents made that I am an American, that I speak fluent English and that I was educated in the American education system, along with the rest of my immediate family. It’s incredible to think about this chain of events.
In my previous 6 times in Israel, I had only stayed for a 1-2 week duration. This six-week stay was the longest period of time I would spend there. Staying in the country for a longer period if time is something I had been dreaming of doing for about 15 years. I kept putting it off because I placed my job responsibilities before my personal happiness.
During this trip, I stayed in hostels, Airbnbs and my cousin's moshavs *all over the country*. I went hiking and swimming and also did a bit of partying. There were some things I saw this time around that I had never seen before: namely the mixing of Jews, Arabs, and Africans all enjoying Israel’s public nature parks. At Sachne, Gan Hamaayanot and Dead Sea at Ein Gedi, there was incredible diversity of people. (Of course the streets of Tel Aviv are another incredible story of ethnic mixing). At the Dead Sea, there were Palestinian license plates on the cars in the parking lot. All of these people were swimming in the same swimming pools. (In the US, racial separation used to exclude blacks and Jews from swimming in the same swimming pools as whites as recently as the 1960s. In my neighborhood on Staten Island there are "swim clubs" that cater to Catholics-only to the extent that Jewish people had to open their own swim club to find a place to swim for the summer). I am simply sharing what I saw and not trying to make a broader comment about Israel being ideal. It’s not ideal for me but I wish it were. I think it is an absolutely fascinating place.
I started in Tel Aviv and would come back Tel Aviv a few times and use it as a base.
Here’s the route I took around the country. You’ll see I started in Tel Aviv and made my way to Modiin, the Dead Sea, Ein Gedi, Jerusalem, The Center, up to Haifa, Acco, The Jezereel Valley, Beit Shean, Tiberias/Lake Gaiilee, Katzrin, the capital of The Golan Heights, Metula (the Lebanese Border), Odem (the Syrian Border) and back to Tel Aviv.
My travels around Israel in October-November 2018.