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Q. a AL THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY Institute of Contemporary Jewry Oral-History Division Subject: The History of Modern Jerusalem Interviewee: Lora Edwin Samel Tape Nos: fears Interviewer: Dr. Geoffrey Wigoter Date: 14.3.77 When aid you first see Jerusalem ? I came to Jerusalem for the first time in Pesach 1918. I'd already arrived in Palestine in December 1917 down at Dir El Balach and then to what was called Junction Station in the hills and through there all Jewish soldiers in the British forces in Palestine, including a few Jewish soldiers in the French and Italign forces, came to Jerusalem for the seder in 1918 in the Bucharian quarter. I suppose there mst have been a hundred or so, and from there I walked through the Old City at night. Let's go back a little bit. How did you get to Jerusalem ? ‘Thart—E-don!t+_venember_properly... hen an exmy truck. But I was at the H.Q. so it was fairly easy for me. But all the Jewish soldiers were given leave for Pesach and told arrangements would be made for them to get. there. ° =2- it was given by military chapleins, Jewish military chaplains. Q. Yhen you first caxe to Jerusalem, do you resenber your first sight of Jerusalem ? A, Tes, I remember along the Jaffa road it was extrenely slumy , and this curved road with md, it wasn't a paved road. It was ell earth and had been churned up by all ailitary traneport. Zverything was very run down, but.., everything was very cola in derugalen, eves in the Spring. But what I did enjoy was going into the Old City, alone, on a moonlight night and walking dowm tovanda the aosque area and I was co enckanted by 4t that I wrote a exm ecstatic letter to ny father whO yaa s0 enchanted with it xe got it inte the "Jew Statesman" and I just discovered a letter fron Jona Hasefiold to cy father, is tho Cineach, thanking hin for this effusion. Q. Now when you care into Jerusules, where did you stay there ? A. I can't venember where we stayed. But all I renember vas that the seder wes in thie long room in the Bocharwit’ quarter. I have very, very vague recollections of it. After all it" occured nearly sixty yenze-oso, —betpinfset, just sixty years age. There are photographs "which I think are in ay archives, which I ens showing -—swuceFigome of the soldiers there. Srecrceatay = Qo you remember any of the people there at the time? A. Gein ]t's all there. They're marked out on these : Photographs. : ae eeuke-you This is only a few months after the British " "*_ conquest of’ Jerusalém. Cowld you aozt-ef describe how you found the differént communities here... the state of andi ca ‘+ “Jerusalem at the time ? Well, I really can't say how I found it, but I kmow what 1 discovered later because when i_began to work with Welemann in 1918 in the spring and he came up to Jerusalem with the Zionist Commission I was one of the four military attaches and I was present at all the T_have.a_ completetile of. the, -a.Meetings. In fact_! of the Zionist Commission meetings in Tel Aviv dn which all these problems were discugsed and@ I came up with i Weizmann and met the vaad hair as it were. — ©. .a...00 you remember coming up with Weizmann’ to Jerusalem ? A. I came up with Weizmann for, I remember in particular, | for the laying of the foundation stones et thes... He was Shere 4f I'm not mistaken in the spring of 1918 - it “aust have been April, May, June, something like that and “4r I remember rightly towards the end of his stay one ‘of-his-objectives was to lay the foundation stones and “CE came up with hin and the then mufti, not Haj Amin, _ an one of the people who laid one of the foundation stonec, the thirteenth in fact. But I can't remember the _ details, but all I know is the piace-wae the population had deen decimated by disease, by deportation, vy the sending of all those with Russian passports to Bgypt at the outbreak of the war, they had no food, no medicines and the American Zionist medical unit was hastily despatched to come out and try and help with food parcels-and...—it was a great relief operation to try and save the rements of the population who had been for five yeare without contact, and everything wes extremely shabby and, even the shops. You-were attached to Yeizmax"on behalf of the British army ? Ahem Do you vant to know how this ..? It's avery funny thing that fether met Sir Mark ‘Sykes, in the House of Commons. They were both “.P.'s and. apparently, I only learnt this such later, Mark Sykes said to ny father "You're looking rather glun Samuel “ and ny father said: “Hy gon has just gone out in the army to the Middle Bast ¢ -And Mark Sykes said “ Just the man we want: " and _. — .-... telegraphed to Allenby to say that Bdwin Samiel was to be sent to General State Intelligence ¢.H.Q. first echelon Whuk=wrr-3 toop end | near Dir El Balach, Yas the expert on Jewish affairs, ene-Since 1 was only nineteen and Imew nothing about Jewish attaingr ee hopetess appointment. But there I was and Ewest-evostually... we settled at : “Vsaratant’ vow Zer#ifin and I began’ to leam Hebrew in Bie Boor Yaacov next door, a little Jewish settlement with an old - Russian teacher and I got as far as bayit lavan im gag ~ adém, when Weizmann arrived and he'd already been in touch with my father end was Very anxious to convert mé~ * to Zionism. He had authority to recruit four eet ~ attaches. One was Ormsby-Gore,. later Lord marshy one was Jinmy Rothschild; one vas @ man called Eric Waley . ‘from crete and Weizmann asked for me as the fourth and deed said alright. And go I was detached from peed’: General Staff Intelligeice with ny green tabs, to-Tel Aviv and all four of us, the military attaches, were Billeted in the upper floor of the Grozovski house, and _two years later the daughter became my wife and that's ‘the romantic... that's the way it happened. 4a you get any specific briefing from the British nov ? Me really was the.man who carried the bouquets and I made all the arrangements for the military transport end this, that and the other. I was the youngest, Ormsby-Gore was really the political advisor, Jimy Rothschild was the ain channe) with. the Jewish communities and Eric Waley | and Your main 6 tHe tien Was Tel Aviv’? : Yes, I Lived in Tel, Aviv.tor three months and then when * Weizmenn left T thought 1t.was about time that I dia” some fighting; so I joined the Jewish batallion/” Aig +e fusiliere. tee te So when Weizmann vent out to Jerusalem he just sort of a went out for brief periods, was that it ? + Oh yes, he came up and down. He had a house in Tel aviv. ~~ T think 4¢ was Hoo fan, originally and he had the tf depiitatiéns ail the time coming to him, the wheten, We Galilee and Sanaria were stili”in Turkish hands. The front was running from Petach Tikvah to north of Ramallah so all we could do wad go atound south, but it made a _gréat impression on me. I have a lot of pictures on this, eee ern mares visiting Rishon Le Tsion with Weizmann and o ny introduction to Zionisn, I've seen pictures of Weismann with some of the elders of the Jeruselen community. Wad it in the b ammo Behool ore..? ; ; ; ¢ There was one long picture of-‘retziant, of Allenby“being ‘received by the Jewish community with Weismann tj ae and eae eee ps ‘the chief rabbis and with Zionists and with_¢omex Ay +i itary “attaches. trem tee te ae eke > 5 oe ‘- *"QvlWexe you present then 7 e+., I mean I know all the photographs and I kmew the aétual, but... There's a picture also with Weizmann ‘ coming down winding’ steps with the Jewish Boy Scouts dressed in blue and white uniforms which had been Ht hastily run up for the occasion and I'm walking behind him with a bouquet. But he personally was extremely kina C to He was @ Kind of foster father and ay other foster father was we eas ena I've just been ‘given 212 my Papers. » Since 1948 even before, to the +". .G4ngach, I haven't zoom here for then and they have a” mesket that's working on them aid claseifying then end some of them that many people wrote to me by sizes name. _va, which was-Eva oe Qgnella, which vas Gésellé “Werburg, and various things of that kind. And secondly, ~ ae letters which were undated go I had to try from internal | =" “Sevidence to say it couldn't be earlier than thie and it 7 eowlén't be later than that, but I still have another “two eppointments with them on this. eli, my eatder vas very odd. 1 started at the General jtaff Intelligence first echelon headquarters of He Allentyivhicls do¥ed teda’Dir-Ei Belech toweit. | = ; ._ Shetteshy what is no Beit Shemesh, and then back to Terifin. From Terifin I went to Tel Aviv. when Yeténann left I went to the Jevish battalions and we | went gown to Baypt for training, and the var ended in. } October '18, before it éiidedjin Burope, ‘and there was \ + -no-point ‘tn, ay-continuing so'T cane back and I went to * the political department under Clayton and there I met 3.Z,Lavrence and other fanous characters and I wanted ¢ by then to go into the military adpinistration, behaved I met Hadassah, Weismann and Zionists etcretc. and uy father. said nonsense , you come home and get an ‘education and in those days one did what ones, father sack said. I wanted to be ati electiicel engineer but I wee realised ‘here ther was no electricity and so that put an end to a promising appointment. So ‘I went to altel _. Which was the family college and took a history degree. + T was given a years exexption fron military service sh ie oe I took-the degree in tvo years and thet was packed in. ‘s * * gta -elvendy missed. I only got back to England “in February, although we were the first category for demobilization, teachers and students, and so I ‘9/Samuel— > “ verammed it all into eighteen months and I gat back in a Tuan, . _ October 1920 and went into the etvi administration. - Meanvhile my father had gone, out and advieed on the ; transformation of the military administration to the civil. administration and ap would, think he'd é z ae 8 Paieoiine “for hin ‘to govern. So:I went into Ronald 5Q. This was before your father cane 7 JA. No. My father caine in July '20..I aida't finish at ‘ Oxford and had to wait to bring my nother out. So ve came out in October: We errived in October. Everything of course wes by sea. I joined Ronald Storrs and ve lived 4h the German colony in a little cottage once owned by! * "you know “hoa all’ een packed off to somewhere or other, I sida | 4t were, one of thé Gertians. The Germans for the duration of the war. And I was ‘there for five’ ‘then~I-had-to learn administrative law in order to have a magistrates warrant. So I was very happy there and ‘ay on in Ramallah but I was"holied out” to start the. Aaturelizetion office in Jerusalem ander. ane : nya “. I did that for six months snd then, this must have, been '27, then I was talon into the i eee secretariat much againet my will. I don't like head office jobs, I like being in the field. I worked for three years under chief secretary and Harry Charles Iuke and at‘one time I was is private secretary when ( ————————~he-was-actiig-High Commissiqners I went all thréugh ; | the 1929 riots. ‘I was an eye witness of them and the subsequent inquiries and then in 1931 I think it was, I was lucky enough to be the only Palestine civil servait to 6ver have-got a” Couuonwealth-fellowshipjs—~a a Eathang fellowship to America and I went to New York. The first time I've been in America. I © asked to go to Colgabia, I wanted to be in New York baad and there was no obligation to take a second degree a = go I took economics, 7? economics and American history and I travelled across the United States with oa Edward Worburg for six weeks and for the last three —-montha- of-my-stay Hadassah-came over and we were guests of the Warburgs in 107% fittn frense, now the Jewish Migeum. Whei “I~came back I was sent to Jaffa. 11/Samel ” No, I think I was sent to Jaffa first. I was in! Jaffa ‘27228 then I was in the secretariate. I was district - officer Of Jaffacuidérx Cetibetvéll Crosby responsible for local government in all the municipal areas, the eee local government areas of southern Palestine. Then‘ I ciwént up to the’ secretartat¢ and then T went to Amerfea.. ante “then I came best andy—lét-mi fee yhat happened thens es tren I think I managed to ‘eet “to Galilee and I was. ‘asistant district commissioner in charge of Galilee." L ““There were e sub detriete 7 Paty Tiberias, © Nazareth and Betsan under Keitnench at Haifa and I had three hundred villages to look after, and I was very happy there, I wanted to stay. This was my third + time I got away from Jerusalem, len I was ordered “back as deputy ‘to Bric Milids whe had become commissioner for migration and statistics replacing Hye” decause the work was far beyond HYymsend O- administrative ability, There were ning months delay C72 _u_an getting decisions on appligstions for certificates. itis reducéd it to six weeks and I was one of the people who had to carry out this art. H yore had _® Christian assistant called Bagloock and they shifted "both of then and put in a Christian head with a Jewish - A" ~ . sasststant who were maiigé sana nyselt and I spent five years in the inmi gration department. So the first ~", fourteen: years T was im-Areb-areas with Arabloply and.” I really hadn't bothered about Hebrew. I was working ta : Arabic most of the time. As soon as I went to the e _ immigration department dealing with Jewa, and Z-mot ; Henrietta Szolé end Ua Sndo and applicantp 7 ‘began. to learn ‘Hebrew with Sukeniik dnd then Schwarbi and © << then ali these people. and for the eocond fourteen . years of tly life I was working largely in Hebrew. In '39 the second world war began and there was no longer | in “ncidently, during those five years I went to Eastern Europe officially to try and speed up immigration. The British passport control offices in | *_ strenghh of the certificates. I went to Germany under Hitler to negotiate with the Germans which was an * / _eyeopener., I got as far as Vilna, I'd never seen / anything like Eastern Europe - the povérty there a “then when world war two came and immigration was | closed down by the war, I went into the imperial 4 censorship, postal censorship, telegraph censored in Jerusalem, under a man who was ex-officio chief censor —13/Samel =the deputy Post Master General who was very able and Tenn, ny OVeRtUBLIY Bédame contzéller of censorships for, the ‘ _ Whole Riddle, sast, jn all the Britioh cen er ora ‘areas and I became chier ‘consdr in Palestine. At the end of, the war they didn't quite imow what to do with me so I suggested I might run the broadcasting and they then set it up as a special department, So-there's-wHat’S— , Yes. I-want to go back to the earlier part. Now.. the time of your fathers living hére- not so much the political side, the experts will ask you about that -eort of bt ‘the social aspect, the life, He Lived all the time on ~ the Augusta Victoria, ail/the time that he was here ?. All the time. And the next high commissioner, Plumer, did too until '27 when. f Could you describe the building dnd-ell that, who Was * of c - there, mM Owe Yes, well first of all my father had a wing where he £o.. lived and then the other ‘three wings were offices, “But “soon after my father arrived his mother died so he was in’ mourning, here and December the 6 th. was his first 7+" : public reception which happened to be ny wedding. So “Hadaseah and I were married in the big hall and some ‘eight Hundred peofle ware invited from the whole of Palestine and a Mabe who attnong Twas a very humble + #4 14/Samek ~ I found myself.the crown prince which had ita , difficulties with dii“kinds of People who were extrenely. nice to.ne 4m hopes ; that T would pat in‘ @ good word for them. And when uy father left 1 was dropped heavily. q ‘Yes, we have actualiy*in the film archive a Little - Hee strip of your wedding in the Arabic dress that you ee wore. » Yea, ttat’s a very odd thing. I imey nothing about this that because I was the crown prince that the district cotimiasioners who were invited to bring ¢ ‘delegations Prom tet HotabISS; Bech thotight they should bring preéents in the. old Turkish eystem. Host . of at was the brassware but the man in Beersheba, ‘ vedey livick,was a nan of inagination and he decide’ y to get the sheike of Beersheba to-oreate mé an iu honorary sheik of the tribes of Beersheba. So ‘they'd » Prepared beautiful robea, sort of second hand Laweence with a kaftie end aia g Paya and they sont to Denascus and brought @ sword and red boote with iron heels and immediately after the chupa I was seized by . @ band of wild mon 41 thought I'd been kidnapped - and they took me to the corner, undressed me and shoved all thie on and brought me back and my only wedding Peete picture is, as I said, a second hand T.2.Lawrence ~ ‘which Hao” “Given people Very oda ideas, Incidentally’ ve" 45/Semel ’ =. «sat led to all kinds of misunderstandings latér; one ‘ es é ete 7 ; been about '21 1 ‘think = ana weet was living there. _ i was in the offite, i hea a Little motor cycle; T jaen't entitled*to-a car, and. Hadassah Fang up-to says i as ey come quickly. ‘There's a whole lot of Bedouin AMY ‘* *° arrived with camels-and they're eating up the tulips." i -+ «50 I got 64 my motor cycle aria came down and she'd » thade them coffee and we chatted and smoked, you know... I thought 1t was impolite to raise the matter and y eventually 1 said : "What car I do for you 2" and they said:"Well our district commissioner has got one of our girls into trouble and we want him removed." I said: : Well 3 look here, just wait a minute, he's there and I'm here, What do you think I can-do 2" And they sald: 7 "Well aren't you the High Commissioners son and what did we give you these robes for ? " So I rang up Wintour s Deega, who as I sald was a kind of foster father to me, and explained my predicament and he gaid: "Well, as a matter of fact we are reducing establishments because of the financial situation here ed Kenny Livick is one of those people due to go." I said: “ Well, can T tell them this ? * He said: " Well, it will be ‘% see why you ghouldn't. * * It's all So I went .back out and_said 16/Samel arranged." Well, it's oda, ‘they kissed my hand q-tot ontheir camels and wont home again. That was ‘ tor my sasnir left there masa wee police foree in -Beersheva ent? lumer was then High * me . ‘ethps gave him e letter of introduction td me, he = an friend of my fathers, And so I ‘took him axound” Palestine end I was very impressed of aourse. I _imew who he was and I'd never met him before, and he was rather formidable. Re jee eh. I, took Nebhitl. had just been opened and she was there and she ~ "iim to Migdel where Eva entertained him through lunch, on his way with an ‘Arab guide to Damascus. And there's a picture in my Sewinewtt an the shores of the sea of Galilee'w ar Photographed and I got £5 for it from a egeye,.. ny firet earings. : = Q: You mentioned before that in the early deys when you fret came , there was no electricity here. When aid _ electricity, come ? Tt mist have been, I sitipone 125104, T Gan date dt exactly. The concession had to wait until the ‘y mandate was officiéiliy’ wpproved and I renember~I'¥9 just reviewed #artin Gilberts purty, volume about Ont yi set oe { Churchill "one of the ‘things -he hi to argue was ** whether the concession would be desuéd or not in spite of Arab protésts, And it was issued, so it wee issued after '21 and I suppose about '22 they "began building the staticng so probably electricity began flowing '23 = '24. a Q.. Throughout the whole country it came right away 7 Through Jerusalem, Jerugalem vas a separate thing ? . No, no. Jerusalem had a separate concession and there * yas a Greek sue call ‘ualfeonatis, and there was a huge legal. dispute.that went to the.internatioral court and they decided in favour of Haromatis, that 4 C. *, 22/Saimel it Was legal. So Jerusakem was e separate entity zs +" and the station bullt in Jerusalem was built by - Yolionatie and ne had the ares’ Ramallah, Bethlchen oF _° and Jerusalem. Ilhoq oply ete? afttet the orate thee tesa s8eyAH SesHe Wost Jerusalen veo Jérusalen gti11, carriédon-under Jordan using the anodes a lines. : carrying, these goat skin bags on their back from cisterns under the and distributed free of charge to the Moslem poor. The British had, ‘during the var or immediately after the war, put pg E Sf 4m a pipe from Axl and pumped it up to, * ~ -Jerusalem ana then they extended 4t downs the 2 “=, Hebron road to Solomois Pools and Soloions Pools. . Gr was the big collécting area and that was punped to > Jerusalem, Then they began pumping from all the wells ‘ C i around, ~down in the valleys around Jerusalem. That ‘ wasn't enough so eventually they embarked on this huge acheme for bringing it fron Roo al fax ; to the four pumping stations. i dest in | + Atfend ewe haa ‘arlittie ‘hand ip and when we wanted + woter we iadai-thd water, “ @4@ thet last through thé dumiier ?,Was there enough watextheze £0 last the, sition 2. ate ei) [P you Ta Fan out of.4t you had to buy water. “It was very» expendive, We had { no munning water in the'House, We. had ao bath. ve = was the leundry with “perce Boiler » 80 if°wo “> ig wanted to have baths in the morning we'd heat it up ~ with hot water: ond-we had e-hip-bath arid Hadessah .. had a bath and then we threw that awey and then I had _ “ @ bath and then we wrapped up in dressing gowns and {Qs The iauelity of te water in the cistern - was that Hd fedtiniing quality ? ‘ 4 Well, yonrpies,dibdy\etetn,.. they oflea the - ‘ nothing could got in, dead rats ond things of that kind, We all suriived - possibly we were better i: o~hardehip-than we -are-noy. ~ fhe Ee “Anithe watendyys to drink wateryy1tono “AZ No, you don't drink-water fiom the top. You drink it from the ‘bottom, He pipe goes wight the’ way downs ciel i This levels and it never gets to~the point-wiiere you're drinking oily water. You've drinking water whieh hae not got the larvae of mosqittoos broodisig., Fhe electricity when at trot Game wos éxtremely inefficient, even nore 24 l ; : ue Pietbrincenenin va! than; now. It kept on eoingboté ‘and'on and trees MA. Ge ad falting on “the wires. Things were incredibly cheap: + I mean, workmen getting 10 piasse & day, Bven An ‘0 “when-T-was~dn: thé- censorship-ny British exaningrs Arab rdote ? SAS for tas I remembers yeo;: That was ‘the one in Et ee ‘Brenner was kilied 7 = hence no. ite was Kitied in Jattas Bat,Jabotineky vas involved. ‘A-No, ‘that was before: That was in 1920, that was he Britioh Civil Administration, No, that was the year and a half that-I yas in Ingland. “bofore: 1929 rlote. Yea. That was very horrifying, It's quite untrue that the Arabs be orgénized | ada proteat denonstrati ‘This 19 a longstanding traditional. procession trom Wai Huy to the mosque, which had’ teen & Antrodueed hundreds of years earl: ¢ in order to , bring Moslem crowds into seku mat the tine of the Christian Zaster, not fixed to any Moslem festival. So that the Christians, especially the Russlan-pLlgrins =-sonetines-theve voul4. be-16,000 of them =~ wouldn't. be tenpted to seize the city. So. ‘this was e-devise/ss a political counter ‘measure one did it just opposite. Ibe thing ds tt. walt a. ‘ by the Hostem authorities, Well, it was used by inciting speeches to influence the crowd and when they came out of the mosgiie at the end of the ceremony they just made ‘ for any Jew they could see with knives and I was then 4a tho District Commissioners office. . Where was that ? et Sehmidts school, next door to the, Dominicans. And I ‘was out in the. entrance and’ I saw Jews running out of ~‘-nithe-0ld City-and-being, stabbed by crovas, not crowls “tut two or three men would catch a Jew and-atab hin and ‘tay I'm talking now. about 129, the Watling Wall. Goes “-r vWetewnen anther the secretariat was in that + building and the District Commiosioner was below and the secretariat was up_on top) Iwas in, the_secrotariat ___. “and I was standing with Iuke and Saunders who wag thé aie beud-ot u@ Fexssales, head of the police forte in : | general and they were helpless because Plumer who was 7 | High Commtosioner by then, had reduced the garriaon | to 120 British troops. They were nothing. There was a police forge afd no garrigon and when the riots broke ” “out and they travelled from place to place - they 7 travelled from Jerusalem, next Hebron went vp. amt . and then they travelled up to Safed and then it broke wets a6 Slow. Ther Was no place where they could draw troops from end-they. had to bring them from Gibralter and Malta and they came by sea. There were no -) ,- @4blinés then and it took three or four days before they ~~~ “arrived and then thete was a dear old general, a very oe devout Christian called bovt# wno had no idea how to “down civil disturbances and he had to secure my ole Sflenks. $0 he was in Jerusalem and the riots broke out in Safed, 80 instead of going to Safed he sent a ‘i ve detachment of troops to Nablus and when they got ‘to 4 8a “Syapius he ‘then sent another one to Janin and when he'd . sent to Janin eventually they got to Tiberias and by _-the_time_they_got to Safed all the trouble was over. It couldn't have been nicer but he was hopelessly incompetent. Serthe Thetnos of the gaurizonays It was then decided to set up the Britiel.police ona , Pe _ large scale and eventually the two battalion system, - one Britich battalion in Jerusalem and the second * British battalion in Haifa. Ryt-yox seoNe yous Bete ( END ~ SIDE 1 ) here one of the things “he had to do was ‘to out down =EcSicor oxpenditure_and that was why they had to make these 7 was dismissed because they abdlished his post. He os director of commerce and industry dnd as there was no fe industry and very Little commerce they didn't want to shave, they couldn't afford to have.... the wiole hag mdget for the Palestine Governiiént in 1921-22 which “* "2" vas the ‘first full year, was one million two hundred Ay Nothing. Tt was just e miserable... h was living © ¥ on tourion, . i Qivae there much tourism ? Yes, Well as much, as mugh as anywhere. I mean people came to Jerusalem. and ineide the old city.There was practiéally no manufacture here. There was Bethlehem and all these shops were selling tourist trinkets in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, i How did people travel ? Were there taxis, plenty of ~ taxis at that time ? How would you get from Jerusalem Where did they stay ? zi ‘They stayed in a few hotels around about, in D An dody you'd have to hire a car or if you had a car’ -o— dt took four hours fen Jomraaler Jour. from Tel Aviv to Jerusalen and you had to stop at Dab £1 vad i “ e)-forip rest and b) to let your engine cool-and that vs thee little cafe that wes: so popiiiar because - JOH had to stonsfiobody could drive on. those roads, z was } Immediately after. the Britich occupation of the 2 seountry and up to the end of the war, the roads vere ground into nothing and they brought up tene of thousands of Sgyptien road labovers who were working ali tid time, eli the vay up and déwn the main roads, There was'no xoad, as you know, from Tel Aviv to Taite, She only way you could get from Tel Aviv to Haifa was | to’come to Jerusalem and then ate Nablus and then Janin “and then to Haifas a Mie Mae last thing. The only contact with Jewish ” peligious leaders were the chief Rabbinate ? Rabbi Kook - did you know him ? imiew Kook and I knew Meiz. In fact-‘they te married us, both of them together, Then they were_oh, speaking torns, and of course, various official ~ functions I was théte. I-renonber ay father-wantedus “to invite the chief Rabbis ‘to come an hour earlier ¢ 4 * vecause they always arrived an hour late. So if he. So they would turn up et eight and be very surprised » s'? Seuko tind thet they were on time. It was partly pridé I eo. think that they didn't want to atrive, they had to be 7 a celebrity like the queen - alwaya woome in at the end., I rehember another thing that my father hdd ‘hs Well, he said " Ow ". Another person of course whorl 'T. wu: jenni saw something of was Einstein, I was present at the -° ~ meetings when Einstein was there. We came in '24 and a“ *. gavé the’ inaugural leoture end he stayed-with my parents and he'd run through terrible distress after World War tig. ~ . and I remember when he was served with an orange, he said PRE a 4m German :" Ein gangen orangen fur mich selbst 21. ’ ae txait’ and childish va) = + and his wife used to have to tell-him whet to’ do all > the time. ue Hie Qs the hag? watbianre what about kashrut in the High ¢ Commission. Was thére any....? aad 4 ‘ A, Oh yes, though thére was officially for all government. 4 ft house receptions, there was only kosher food... my | = 4 . ” “mothers aeas of kashrut - she was supposed to pe *%: "| Horta br few In fact we were taken to the new-S-. synagogue every Séturday all through the year as children. But when she went out to dinner and she was served rissoles, OI would notice she'd take the ham out and put it at _. the side and eat the rest. I mean that was for her . Kashrut. It wasn't what you might call glg@tl/kosher by ae any. means. But I can't remember who the staff were. I kmow' that they had an Italian or Maltese butler. I ° think they had Arab cooks but they were just told that Le. you can't do this, that and the other, but it wasn't 4 Ef Beng Cee Keally very... . ‘ oH Qs They would be supervised ? There would be supervisors when the chief rabbis were coming ? aa I don't think so. I think when the chief rabbis came _ they gave them fish, you know, that kind of thing. “QU Did~the-af@Bhia“Oe-thers.\ sdat-Of the? orthodox rabbis: ~ S dir spon. WVILMay Visit too 7 ; Peo . Nobody geemed to lnow any thing‘about them then. Well; you just had the two chief rabbis and that was Mitat "| considered. tittwOs tho establishment. Somebody said the other day .. an article, I think it was the Jerusalem Post, -thet the gorgeous title)of His Eminence, but this was.... Archer Oust worked out a scale of titles ; the three... the High Commissioner Mes His ixcellency, the three Patriarchs were their es, and then you came down to Bminence The ” Mufti and the Eminence The Ciief Ratbis and then you “' would have the Right Reverend, the Anglican Bishop, you mow, it went all the way down and the Reverends and then you came down to the people at the bottom, the archimandrites and the déacors ét o6ti + Ee wag all- carefully worked out and: heaven help you if you got the mans title wrong. People’were very funny about title, I hed a letter today from the Russian Beclesiastidal amt + 6. to disabuse them = it's no good going info all of this. Mission addressed to His Lordship, to me. I don’ But - ‘this has nothing 40 do with this - but I must say | the other day my bank in America sent me in a $m et oe 2 somebody owed me 500-dollars and they corrected my dons e. Samuel. f+ 2 ee ” Date

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