Thursday, August 8, 2013
On the Chaos of Mass Immigration Israel 1950 - Updated
During Israel's earliest years, the number of new immigrants, most of them nearly destitute refugees from Europe (Holocaust survivors) and Arab lands, was greater than the total number of Israelis - and many of the veteran Israelis hadn't been there more than a few years themselves. A few months ago, we even posted a statistical summary from 1952, and our "Immigration" label will show you other posts we've done on the topic.
Today we're presenting two reports from the end of October 1950. The first was submitted on October 29, 1950 by Captain Dr. H. Shkedi, Acting Medical Officer of the Southern Command, to the CO of Southern Command; it contained his description of a visit he and a number of his fellow physicians had just made to the ma'abara (immigrant camp) of Ajour:
Our first impression was bad. The camp is filthy, crowded, each tent is shared by two or three families, they do their cooking in the tents, there are no sidewalks, and skinny and undernourished children wander about.
The public toilets are a disaster. The showers seem alright, but there's no hot water. There are 250 families, about 900 people, but there's only one doctor. He himself is sickly, he lacks adequate medications, has no support staff, and is overwhelmed.
The camp is about four months old. There is known to be malaria in the area, but no one has done any disinfection.
We examined 100 people to gauge the frequency of sicknesses. All were unhealthy, many with symptoms of long-term malnourishment, along with skin and eye diseases.
We instructed the doctor how to treat the most common ailments we identified, but he doesn't have the medications anyway. We sprayed the entire camp, all its tents, and the people in it, with DDT. (This was standard in those days, before the dangers of DDT were understood).
Our recommendations: more medications, more medical staff, regular disinfections, hygiene instruction for the immigrants, construction of proper toilets and facilitating hot water, construction of a clinic for sick children, improvement of the tents.
The general apparently received the report in the morning, because the very same day he sent a team of logistics officers, this time headed by a colonel, to fix things. Colonel Israel Mintz submitted his report two days later:
1. Food:
1.1. There are sufficient basic, rationed, foodstuffs.
1.2. Unrationed foodstuffs: there aren't any. The owner of the store says he can't bring in additional supplies because the tires of his truck won't bear the unpaved road.
1.3 Clearly, no-one can survive on the basic, rationed foodstuffs alone; in Ajour the situation is even worse as the Yemenite immigrants are unfamiliar with some of the types of food and don't know what to make of them. The men are employed at hard physical labor. It's unacceptable that the Histadrut is paying so little for their labor; a Histadrut company needs to think about more than the bottom line.
2. Housing: The immigrants live in American military tents. They don't know how to maintain them, and with the arrival of the first winter storm the camp will be a disaster. Either better housing must be found, or at very least the men must be instructed on how to maintain the tents.
Someone needs to deal with the lack of hot water, the construction of public toilets, and the construction of separate shower stalls for men and women.
3. Clothing: the immigrants are clothed in rags. Margulin told me that he hopes they will soon be given ration cards for clothes, but I don't see where they're expected to buy the clothes.
Given an adequate budget, I don't see why the army shouldn't be able to resolve most of the issues.
On the margins of both reports, an unidentified Moshe scribbled that the local physician has been instructed, and we'll deal with the hot water and showers. We haven't yet solved the matter of the food. This was on October 31.
Is this a success story? A disaster? A tale of indifference, or of inadequate good intentions? Tellingly, no-one thinks the United Nations or any other external agent needs to be involved.
Update: A well-informed reader writes to tell us that since at the time the commanding general was none other than Moshe Dayan, he's probably the unidentified "Moshe" scribbling in the margins. After all, he would have been scribbling for some immediate purpose, not for posterity (that's us), and all the immediate actors would have been quite clear who the boss was.
Today we're presenting two reports from the end of October 1950. The first was submitted on October 29, 1950 by Captain Dr. H. Shkedi, Acting Medical Officer of the Southern Command, to the CO of Southern Command; it contained his description of a visit he and a number of his fellow physicians had just made to the ma'abara (immigrant camp) of Ajour:
Our first impression was bad. The camp is filthy, crowded, each tent is shared by two or three families, they do their cooking in the tents, there are no sidewalks, and skinny and undernourished children wander about.
The public toilets are a disaster. The showers seem alright, but there's no hot water. There are 250 families, about 900 people, but there's only one doctor. He himself is sickly, he lacks adequate medications, has no support staff, and is overwhelmed.
The camp is about four months old. There is known to be malaria in the area, but no one has done any disinfection.
We examined 100 people to gauge the frequency of sicknesses. All were unhealthy, many with symptoms of long-term malnourishment, along with skin and eye diseases.
We instructed the doctor how to treat the most common ailments we identified, but he doesn't have the medications anyway. We sprayed the entire camp, all its tents, and the people in it, with DDT. (This was standard in those days, before the dangers of DDT were understood).
Our recommendations: more medications, more medical staff, regular disinfections, hygiene instruction for the immigrants, construction of proper toilets and facilitating hot water, construction of a clinic for sick children, improvement of the tents.
The general apparently received the report in the morning, because the very same day he sent a team of logistics officers, this time headed by a colonel, to fix things. Colonel Israel Mintz submitted his report two days later:
1. Food:
1.1. There are sufficient basic, rationed, foodstuffs.
1.2. Unrationed foodstuffs: there aren't any. The owner of the store says he can't bring in additional supplies because the tires of his truck won't bear the unpaved road.
1.3 Clearly, no-one can survive on the basic, rationed foodstuffs alone; in Ajour the situation is even worse as the Yemenite immigrants are unfamiliar with some of the types of food and don't know what to make of them. The men are employed at hard physical labor. It's unacceptable that the Histadrut is paying so little for their labor; a Histadrut company needs to think about more than the bottom line.
2. Housing: The immigrants live in American military tents. They don't know how to maintain them, and with the arrival of the first winter storm the camp will be a disaster. Either better housing must be found, or at very least the men must be instructed on how to maintain the tents.
Someone needs to deal with the lack of hot water, the construction of public toilets, and the construction of separate shower stalls for men and women.
3. Clothing: the immigrants are clothed in rags. Margulin told me that he hopes they will soon be given ration cards for clothes, but I don't see where they're expected to buy the clothes.
Given an adequate budget, I don't see why the army shouldn't be able to resolve most of the issues.
On the margins of both reports, an unidentified Moshe scribbled that the local physician has been instructed, and we'll deal with the hot water and showers. We haven't yet solved the matter of the food. This was on October 31.
Is this a success story? A disaster? A tale of indifference, or of inadequate good intentions? Tellingly, no-one thinks the United Nations or any other external agent needs to be involved.
Update: A well-informed reader writes to tell us that since at the time the commanding general was none other than Moshe Dayan, he's probably the unidentified "Moshe" scribbling in the margins. After all, he would have been scribbling for some immediate purpose, not for posterity (that's us), and all the immediate actors would have been quite clear who the boss was.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Immigrants Pouring In
Today's document gives a taste of the atmosphere Israeli immigration officials operated in during the summer of 1950, when mass immigration of almost penniless immigrants had simply become the natural way of the world. It was penned by one Itzhak Refael, who later went on to become one of the leaders of the National Religious Party; the three-page document gives the projections for immigration in the coming three months (after June 1950). The purpose is to control the pace of arrivals, although, as Refael notes, this is only partially possible. The immigration from Arab lands, he explains, is motivated by distress, and if conditions get worse we can't keep people out.
Which is an interesting point, since present-day polemicists love to argue about whether the Jews were being forced out of the Arab lands, and were thus refugees, or they were coming because of religious belief in the centrality of Israel and the sudden possibility to move to a Jewish state, so they were immigrants (or worse, colonialists). As if there's necessarily a contradiction between being pushed and pulled.
Refael also didn't know how to reckon the pace of immigration from Romania, where there was one ship plying back and forth but the pressure was on to add another. As for places such as Turkey, Bulgaria and Morocco, he was allocating them only a few hundred monthly immigrants each because while he didn't see how the absorption numbers could be any larger, he didn't want to halt the immigration process completely.
Here are some of the numbers:
Poland: 5,700. There's a proposal to add a ship on the Gdansk-Haifa line, but this hasn't been decided yet.
Romania: 10,800.
Hungary: We have an agreement with them for 3,000 immigrants, then there will have to be another round of negotiations.
Austria: 800. Mostly Hungarian Jews who are finding a way out.
North America: 600. (North American Jewry wasn't participating in the wave of immigration, nor would it in noticeable numbers for the next 20 years, nor in sizable numbers ever).
Libya: 1,500 immigrants. There are 3,000 people in a transit camp in Tripoli.
Tunisia: 900. We're hearing that the pressure on the Jews to leave is growing.
Afghanistan's: 500.
Iran: 1,500.
Iranian Kurdistan: 1,500.
Iraq: 12,000. We're hearing about growing persecution of the Jews in Iraq, especially in the north.
Egypt: 2,000.
Shanghai: 400. (These would have been European refugess from Nazism who washed up in Shanghai.)
Which is an interesting point, since present-day polemicists love to argue about whether the Jews were being forced out of the Arab lands, and were thus refugees, or they were coming because of religious belief in the centrality of Israel and the sudden possibility to move to a Jewish state, so they were immigrants (or worse, colonialists). As if there's necessarily a contradiction between being pushed and pulled.
Refael also didn't know how to reckon the pace of immigration from Romania, where there was one ship plying back and forth but the pressure was on to add another. As for places such as Turkey, Bulgaria and Morocco, he was allocating them only a few hundred monthly immigrants each because while he didn't see how the absorption numbers could be any larger, he didn't want to halt the immigration process completely.
Here are some of the numbers:
Poland: 5,700. There's a proposal to add a ship on the Gdansk-Haifa line, but this hasn't been decided yet.
Romania: 10,800.
Hungary: We have an agreement with them for 3,000 immigrants, then there will have to be another round of negotiations.
Austria: 800. Mostly Hungarian Jews who are finding a way out.
North America: 600. (North American Jewry wasn't participating in the wave of immigration, nor would it in noticeable numbers for the next 20 years, nor in sizable numbers ever).
Libya: 1,500 immigrants. There are 3,000 people in a transit camp in Tripoli.
Tunisia: 900. We're hearing that the pressure on the Jews to leave is growing.
Afghanistan's: 500.
Iran: 1,500.
Iranian Kurdistan: 1,500.
Iraq: 12,000. We're hearing about growing persecution of the Jews in Iraq, especially in the north.
Egypt: 2,000.
Shanghai: 400. (These would have been European refugess from Nazism who washed up in Shanghai.)
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Golda Needs to Change Her Name
The other day a reader asked if we could post any letters in which Ben Gurion admonished folks to Hebraisize their names. So we're looking into the matter and will come back with whatever interesting stuff we may find. In the meantime, however, one of our staff had a scanned example of a similar document right on his desktop.
It's a note signed by Golda Meirson, Minister of Labor and National Insurance, to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, from February 13th 1950: "I'm pleased to send to the cabinet members the report on national insurance which has been written by the inter-ministerial committee for social insurance" (which apparently was chaired by a fellow named Kanefsky).
Whether FM Sharett read the thick report or not, we can't say. He did however scribble a comment on the bottom of Golda's cover letter, the day after it was sent: "The minister and the chairman and the report itself all have non-Hebrew names. This must be fixed."
Whether FM Sharett read the thick report or not, we can't say. He did however scribble a comment on the bottom of Golda's cover letter, the day after it was sent: "The minister and the chairman and the report itself all have non-Hebrew names. This must be fixed."
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Immigrants to Israel, 1948-1952
File ג-3101/12 contains hundreds of pages of letters, reports and statistics about immigration to Israel between May 15, 1948 and the end of December 1952, as filed by someone in David Ben Gurion's office. Our previous post, about the tragic chaos in the immigrant camps, comes from this file; since it has lots of interesting things in it, we'll return to it in a future post or three. Now, however, we'd like to present the last document in the file, a list which was apparently drawn up in July 1953, summing up the statistics of the immigration.
Bear in mind that in May 1948 when Israel became independent, there were some 600,000 Jews in the country. By the time the battles subsided, towards the end of that year, 110,000 immigrants had arrived, 6,000 Jews had been killed in the war, and the stabilizing borders contained 100,000 Arabs or perhaps a bit more. 800-850,000 people all in all.
By the end of 1952, 738,891 immigrants had arrived (this includes the 110,000 who arrived in the second half of 1948). Of course, the immigration didn't end in December 1952, but that's beyond the scope of our file.
Muslim countries:
Turkey 35,025
Syria and Lebanon 34,608
Iraq 124,226
Yemen and Aden 48,375
Other Asian countries 7,579
Tunesia, Marroco, Algeria 52,584
Lybia 32,129
Egypt 17,114
Total Muslim countries: 377,251 of 889,700
Communist satelite states:
Poland 106,751
Romania 121,537
Bulgaria 37,703
Czechoslovakia 18,815
Hungary 14,519
Yugoslavia 7,757
Total Comunist states: 307,082 of 729,000
Western states:
South Africa 538
Other Africa 576
Germany & Austria 11,013
Other Europe 19,605
Latin America 2,025
Total Western states: 33,706 of 1,746,230
USA & Canada 1,809 of 5,200,000
Unidentified 18,989
Grand total 738,891 of 8,564,930
The USSR is not on the list.
Bear in mind that in May 1948 when Israel became independent, there were some 600,000 Jews in the country. By the time the battles subsided, towards the end of that year, 110,000 immigrants had arrived, 6,000 Jews had been killed in the war, and the stabilizing borders contained 100,000 Arabs or perhaps a bit more. 800-850,000 people all in all.
By the end of 1952, 738,891 immigrants had arrived (this includes the 110,000 who arrived in the second half of 1948). Of course, the immigration didn't end in December 1952, but that's beyond the scope of our file.
Muslim countries:
Turkey 35,025
Syria and Lebanon 34,608
Iraq 124,226
Yemen and Aden 48,375
Other Asian countries 7,579
Tunesia, Marroco, Algeria 52,584
Lybia 32,129
Egypt 17,114
Total Muslim countries: 377,251 of 889,700
Communist satelite states:
Poland 106,751
Romania 121,537
Bulgaria 37,703
Czechoslovakia 18,815
Hungary 14,519
Yugoslavia 7,757
Total Comunist states: 307,082 of 729,000
Western states:
South Africa 538
Other Africa 576
Germany & Austria 11,013
Other Europe 19,605
Latin America 2,025
Total Western states: 33,706 of 1,746,230
USA & Canada 1,809 of 5,200,000
Unidentified 18,989
Grand total 738,891 of 8,564,930
The USSR is not on the list.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
The Lost Child of Beit Lid
In the chaotic first years of Israel's existence, many hundreds of children went missing -- at least 800, perhaps more than a thousand. These children were younger than three, and their families were new immigrants living in tent camps (ma'abarot) where they were temporarily parked upon arrival. The children were sent to hospitals and never came back. When their bewildered and frantic parents went looking for them, they were told their children had died and been buried. In some cases, letters from the military arrived in the late 1960s, requiring the teenagers be screened for service. By then the parents were no longer bewildered and disoriented refugees, and when they realized there were others like them, they demanded an investigation. Since then, there have been four separate public investigations. Since most (but by no means all) of the children were from Yemenite families, the issue is know in Israel as The Case of the Yemenite Children.
The various investigations have shown that indeed, most of the missing children really did die at the time - but not all of them have ever been accounted for. Some people continue to believe that there was a conspiracy to remove children from large immigrant families and to hand them over to wealthy childless Ashkenazi families. Also, keep in mind this earlier post, which told how many Yemenite Jews had never encountered a physician, which partially explains some of the context.
One of the documents we published as part of our Declaration of Independence collection deals with one of these cases. (ג-3013/12)
On November 3, 1950, Yehezkel Sahar, the Chief of Police, wrote to Minister of Health Moshe Shapira. A few months earlier, there had been a report in the media about an infant who had gone missing in one of the camps. Sahar assured Shapira that he put his best investigator on the case, and here's the result: a three-page detailed report written by S. Sofer.
We think the report undermines the conspiracy theory, but it does demonstrate a frightening degree of callousness in the chaos:
The various investigations have shown that indeed, most of the missing children really did die at the time - but not all of them have ever been accounted for. Some people continue to believe that there was a conspiracy to remove children from large immigrant families and to hand them over to wealthy childless Ashkenazi families. Also, keep in mind this earlier post, which told how many Yemenite Jews had never encountered a physician, which partially explains some of the context.
One of the documents we published as part of our Declaration of Independence collection deals with one of these cases. (ג-3013/12)
On November 3, 1950, Yehezkel Sahar, the Chief of Police, wrote to Minister of Health Moshe Shapira. A few months earlier, there had been a report in the media about an infant who had gone missing in one of the camps. Sahar assured Shapira that he put his best investigator on the case, and here's the result: a three-page detailed report written by S. Sofer.
We think the report undermines the conspiracy theory, but it does demonstrate a frightening degree of callousness in the chaos:
February 29, 1950: The story appeared in Davar.At the ISA, we asked ourselves if we have any documentation about the child at a later stage of life. Since his name was common, however (we've withheld it in the publication), that wasn't possible -- and anyway, if we assume that he didn't starve in the Ein Shemer camp but was probably picked up by some other family, there's no way to know what his name was. If he's still alive he must be 64 years old. If.
March 17, 1950: A social worker from the Beit Lid camp confirmed that the 7-month-old child was transferred from there to the hospital on Dec 21, 1949. Having been cured, he was sent mistakenly to a different camp, Ein Shemer. At Ein Shemer they have his discharge paper from January 8, 1950 -- but they don't have him. Nor can they explain how they have his discharge form.
A doctor at the hospital confirms that the child was brought from Beit Lid on December 21. He was sent back on January 8 -- to Ein Shemer. She doesn't know who the ambulance driver was.
The parents reported that their baby son was sent to the hospital but not returned, and when they asked they were told he was sent to Ein Shemer. (Oddly, the dates in their recounting are a bit later, in February.)
A doctor at Ein Shemer fond no record of a child by this name, but confirmed that on January 8, an unnamed child was brought from the hospital.
A registrar at the hospital recorded all patients. But when they're sent back, it's with an ambulance service from Ramat Gan.
A doctor at the hospital remembers discharging the child and sending him to Ein Shemer.
The ambulance driver has a record for children transferred to Ein Shemer on January 8, one with this name. There is a procedure for handing over children, and he acted accordingly.
A doctor at Ein Shemer said that they refuse to accept children whom they didn't send. Sometimes, he says, drivers leave children and quickly depart so as not to be stuck with them.
A police sergeant found no records at Ein Shemer. He brought the mother to the children's home but she didn't identify her son. On April 7, he returned to Ein Shemer and heard from an administrator that there's lots of confusion in their records.
Officer Sofer completed his report with the comment that it might be possible to investigate further but he didn't see how this would help find the child. He recommended that someone look into the matter and determine who is responsible for the lax procedures. He complimented the original social worker who had invested time and her own money in traveling back and forth in her efforts to investigate.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Counting Calories, Importing Experts
I'm not going to stay on the topic of the austerity and rationing polices of 1949-50 much longer--too depressing. Still, here are two interesting snippets. The first (p.2) is a standard form which was sent each month to Dov Joseph, Minister of Supplies and Rationing. It sets out the average calorie intake of the populace in various categories and compares recent months, breaking down: calories, carbohydrates, protein, animal protein, fat, calcium, iron, vitamin A (3 lines), three items I don't recognize, and finally vitamin C. So there's a bureaucracy counting calories of the populace and filling charts with data. Talk about the government interfering with peoples' lives.
Then there are two letters written in English by one Ben-Ami Ben Dor, an official of the rationing ministry. He was in New York, where he apparently didn't have access to a Hebrew typewriter and the battery of his laptop was broken, hence his use of English. (He may also have had in mind the future readers of an English-language blog of the State Archives, who knows.) Anyway, he's trying to figure out if it's a good thing for Israel to lean on official American government experts who know about nutrition. Remember, in 1950 the relationship between the US and Israel was not obvious in the way it later became, and he seems to have expected a bit of prickliness on either side.
On the final page, he also makes an odd comment about the need to import American experts, perhaps on a 103-year contract. I admit that one stumped me; if any reader can offer an explanation I'd appreciate it.
By about this time - late 1950 - it had dawned on Israel's government that the entire policy was perhaps unproductive, and they soon began to dismantle it.
Then there are two letters written in English by one Ben-Ami Ben Dor, an official of the rationing ministry. He was in New York, where he apparently didn't have access to a Hebrew typewriter and the battery of his laptop was broken, hence his use of English. (He may also have had in mind the future readers of an English-language blog of the State Archives, who knows.) Anyway, he's trying to figure out if it's a good thing for Israel to lean on official American government experts who know about nutrition. Remember, in 1950 the relationship between the US and Israel was not obvious in the way it later became, and he seems to have expected a bit of prickliness on either side.
On the final page, he also makes an odd comment about the need to import American experts, perhaps on a 103-year contract. I admit that one stumped me; if any reader can offer an explanation I'd appreciate it.
By about this time - late 1950 - it had dawned on Israel's government that the entire policy was perhaps unproductive, and they soon began to dismantle it.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Israelis Eat Well
Yesterday there was an item in Haaretz about the papers of Dov Joseph, one of Israel's early leaders, which are currently on sale on eBay. The story, sadly, is true, and it would be better if Israeli politicians and high civil servants wouldn't take official papers home when they retire.
The lost papers may not necessarly be lost. For all we know, what Dov Joseph took home may (or may not) have been copies of documents he also left on file. We'd need to have them to compare with what the archives have. What we can say with certainty is that there's quite a bit of documentation from Joseph's various offices, still in the archives.
Here's one such document, in English this time. It's a letter from a certain Lord Boyd Orr, from Scotland, on July 10, 1950. Joseph was at the time the minister in charge of rationing, and he'd asked Lord Boyd Orr, apparently of the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Nutrition, Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, to figure out if Israelis were eating well enough.
Boyd Orr's answer: Yes. About as well as in Americans, actually, which, just between you and me, I find faintly surprising, given that the Israelis were living under rationing and the Americans - not. Moreover, using the parameter of infant mortality as a way of measuring nutrition of young mothers, Orr thought Israeli nutrition could be even better than in the UK.
The Right Honorable Lord then signed off by sending regards to Ben Gurion and Weizman. Either he was well-connected, or they were.
The lost papers may not necessarly be lost. For all we know, what Dov Joseph took home may (or may not) have been copies of documents he also left on file. We'd need to have them to compare with what the archives have. What we can say with certainty is that there's quite a bit of documentation from Joseph's various offices, still in the archives.
Here's one such document, in English this time. It's a letter from a certain Lord Boyd Orr, from Scotland, on July 10, 1950. Joseph was at the time the minister in charge of rationing, and he'd asked Lord Boyd Orr, apparently of the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Nutrition, Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, to figure out if Israelis were eating well enough.
Boyd Orr's answer: Yes. About as well as in Americans, actually, which, just between you and me, I find faintly surprising, given that the Israelis were living under rationing and the Americans - not. Moreover, using the parameter of infant mortality as a way of measuring nutrition of young mothers, Orr thought Israeli nutrition could be even better than in the UK.
The Right Honorable Lord then signed off by sending regards to Ben Gurion and Weizman. Either he was well-connected, or they were.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Dear Minister, Garbage Can Save the Country
I'm on an austerity roll this week. Yesterday we looked at how the country tried - with partial success - to create housing for hundreds of thousands of penniless immigrants who were pouring into Israel in its earliest years. Since this is a mere blog, not serious research, we don't have to present any story in its entirety. Rather, I shoot an arrow into the stacks, and whatever file the arrow hits, I open and talk about it a bit, before flitting on to the next box. It's all very post-modern, you see. Recently, I seem to have shot a whole quiver of arrows into the files of the Ministry for Supply and Rationing.
Today's file is ג-206/31, and it's titled "proposals for using garbage." Like most archival documentation, it tells more than one story. In this case, one of the interesting stories it tells - quite inadvertantly - is about how the relationship between innovation and entrepreneuers on the one hand and the state on the other has changed over time. Nowadays, there are parts of Israel - in Herzliya, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, among others - where you can't rush down a sidewalk without bowling over seven or twelve wannabe entrepreneuers busy hatching ways to upend the world and get hyper-rich along the way. (There's even a fine book about this,Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle
.)
Back in 1950, there were also wannabe entrepreneuers, but they didn't seek angels to invest in their crackpot ideas. No: they wrote letters to government ministers explaining why the government needed to adopt their ideas and run with them. Since in those days, the Ministry for Supply and Rationing was a very important agency, some of them wrote their letters to its minister, Dov Joseph.
Engineer Azriel Ozdor (previously Housdorf) from Tel Aviv wrote repeatedly. He was so persistent that eventually the offiials began chiding him: We're dealing with you, why do you keep on writing letters to other ministries? To which Ozdor responded by adding, in his next letter to a minister, that yes, he's persistent but this is only beause he really cares. And what did he really care about? Recycling garbage. He prepared and sent a closely-typed 5-page memorandum about potential uses of garbage and the pros and cons of each alternative. His starting point was that 70% of Israeli garbage is what we'd call today vegetable mass, and if treated properly it can be used to feed livestock. True, the best livestock for eating garbage are pigs, and there aren't any of those in Israel; and true, farmers don't like to deal with the processing of the garbage, but here's all the reasons why they're wrong, and if the government makes them do it...
Israel Czernotski from Kfar Azar had a scheme to recycle bread. Kfar Azar is a small village, but Mr. Czernotski often had occasion to be in the big city where he saw tons of bread in the garbage dumps. Unlike Engineer Ozdor, he didn't have a 5-page memorandum, but he was convinced that the bread could be fed to livestock (different livestock than the garbage-eating kind, I assume) and this would serve many goals. First, it would save foreign currency "which is such a serious problem in our country. Such an endeavor would have a tremendous educational value for our country's children." The way to do it would be to dedicate areas in each town where the school-children would bring their leftovers, and from there it would be sold to the farmers; the proceeds would cover the operation and the balance would go to the Jewish Agency. His proposal, lest you be skeptical, was forwarded to Mr. Bach of the Agriculture Department in the Food Division, and also to Mr. Gan in the Prices Department, and also to the Deputy-General-Manager.
Sigfried Feigelstock sent his letter to the Minister with an apology for not knowing which department it should actually be forwarded to. He wasn't representing himself, but rather two brothers, immigrants from Austria; and he hadn't yet asked them if they wanted to be doing this at all; first he needed to know if the government was interested - as it ought to be. Anyway, his proposal was to use the feathers of poultry which had been slaughtered, because as it is they just get thrown out. Which was too bad, because those two brothers he knew had been trained, back in Austria, to make feather blankets. Moreover, he knew (or perhaps he had heard from them?) about a disused feather-factory in the Soviet-controlled section of Austria; someone should import its machinery. But if for some reaon that particular machinery couldn't be imported, new machines could be purchased in Luxemburg.
Today's file is ג-206/31, and it's titled "proposals for using garbage." Like most archival documentation, it tells more than one story. In this case, one of the interesting stories it tells - quite inadvertantly - is about how the relationship between innovation and entrepreneuers on the one hand and the state on the other has changed over time. Nowadays, there are parts of Israel - in Herzliya, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, among others - where you can't rush down a sidewalk without bowling over seven or twelve wannabe entrepreneuers busy hatching ways to upend the world and get hyper-rich along the way. (There's even a fine book about this,Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle
.)Back in 1950, there were also wannabe entrepreneuers, but they didn't seek angels to invest in their crackpot ideas. No: they wrote letters to government ministers explaining why the government needed to adopt their ideas and run with them. Since in those days, the Ministry for Supply and Rationing was a very important agency, some of them wrote their letters to its minister, Dov Joseph.
Engineer Azriel Ozdor (previously Housdorf) from Tel Aviv wrote repeatedly. He was so persistent that eventually the offiials began chiding him: We're dealing with you, why do you keep on writing letters to other ministries? To which Ozdor responded by adding, in his next letter to a minister, that yes, he's persistent but this is only beause he really cares. And what did he really care about? Recycling garbage. He prepared and sent a closely-typed 5-page memorandum about potential uses of garbage and the pros and cons of each alternative. His starting point was that 70% of Israeli garbage is what we'd call today vegetable mass, and if treated properly it can be used to feed livestock. True, the best livestock for eating garbage are pigs, and there aren't any of those in Israel; and true, farmers don't like to deal with the processing of the garbage, but here's all the reasons why they're wrong, and if the government makes them do it...
Israel Czernotski from Kfar Azar had a scheme to recycle bread. Kfar Azar is a small village, but Mr. Czernotski often had occasion to be in the big city where he saw tons of bread in the garbage dumps. Unlike Engineer Ozdor, he didn't have a 5-page memorandum, but he was convinced that the bread could be fed to livestock (different livestock than the garbage-eating kind, I assume) and this would serve many goals. First, it would save foreign currency "which is such a serious problem in our country. Such an endeavor would have a tremendous educational value for our country's children." The way to do it would be to dedicate areas in each town where the school-children would bring their leftovers, and from there it would be sold to the farmers; the proceeds would cover the operation and the balance would go to the Jewish Agency. His proposal, lest you be skeptical, was forwarded to Mr. Bach of the Agriculture Department in the Food Division, and also to Mr. Gan in the Prices Department, and also to the Deputy-General-Manager.
Sigfried Feigelstock sent his letter to the Minister with an apology for not knowing which department it should actually be forwarded to. He wasn't representing himself, but rather two brothers, immigrants from Austria; and he hadn't yet asked them if they wanted to be doing this at all; first he needed to know if the government was interested - as it ought to be. Anyway, his proposal was to use the feathers of poultry which had been slaughtered, because as it is they just get thrown out. Which was too bad, because those two brothers he knew had been trained, back in Austria, to make feather blankets. Moreover, he knew (or perhaps he had heard from them?) about a disused feather-factory in the Soviet-controlled section of Austria; someone should import its machinery. But if for some reaon that particular machinery couldn't be imported, new machines could be purchased in Luxemburg.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Identifiying UFOs - 4th Round
As regular readers know, we've been asking the public for assistance in identifying UFOs (Unidentified Folks from Old times). So far we've put up three installments,here here and here, and one announcement about people we identified with your help.
Today we're putting up the fourth installment. Like its predecessors, the photos all come from the Benno Rothenburg collection, and they were probably taken around 1950.
Today we're putting up the fourth installment. Like its predecessors, the photos all come from the Benno Rothenburg collection, and they were probably taken around 1950.
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