I recently watched a documentary about the fall of Jerusalem in May 1948. Those who were born and lived there before 1948 still call anything outside the walls "the new city". In 1948 about 120 Jewish soldiers defended the Jewish Quarter against the Jordanians. Despite plans to place Jerusalem under international control, the British abandoned their positions or simply relinquished them to Jordanian soldiers and armed Arabs civilians, while restricting Jewish soldiers and even civilians from entering the walled city. They also confiscated their arms and ammunition, and even shot and killed some of them. When the 20 or so remaining Jewish soldiers ran out of ammunition, and the Jewish civilians took refuge inside one of the syangogues to escape the ruthless Jordanian artillery fire into their houses, Moshe Rusnak, their commander of the Jewish defense unit, decided to surrender to the Jordanians. When the Jordanian commander realized that he had been held at bay by two dozen young Jews and Jewesses, he arrested a number of civilians, old men, including a 90-year-old one, and several children and took them to Jordanian prison camps. Just to save face. (photo: Moshe Rusnak signing the surrender agreement.)Colonel Abdullah el-Tal, one-time commandant of the Jordanian Arab Legion, in describing the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, wrote in the volume of his Memoirs (Cairo, 1959): "... The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion.... I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty.... I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction.... Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it...." "As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud - a cloud of death and agony."
Jonathan Sidon
Jerusalem weekend supplement,
June 8, 2007
Eli Kedar was born in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. He was taken prisoner by the Jordanian legion in 1948. After liberation, he returned to his home and became commander of the Jerusalem Division in the 1967 war. Shmuel Even-Or (Orenstein)'s father was the Western Wall rabbi until he was shot and killed during the War of Independence. Puah Steiner was expelled from the Jewish Quarter in 1948, and returned in 1967.
Dawn, June 7 1967. Eli Kedar, commander of the D company of the 163 regiment of the Jerusalem Brigade was standing outside the Dung Gate. Behind him an army of photographers and reporters were getting ready to immortalize the Israelis entering into the Old City. Eli, however, suspecting that the Jordanian Legion was lying in ambush, was in no hurry to lead his troops in. Having lost communication with his commanders, he had to make a strategic decision: push forward towards the Western Wall or turn South toward the Jewish Quarter, where he had been born, raised and expelled by the Jordanians. Eli chose his childhood home over the ultimate Jewish symbol (and over his own fair share of glory). "I walked down the same route the Jordanian legion had walked when they conquered the Jewish Quarter in 1948", he recalls. "But instead of finding the enemy, I found white rags and kaffiyas. Even when we reached the Rova there was no resistance, it was deserted. I know the area like the back of my hand, so I combed it quickly. Even though I had been away for 19 years, it looked almost the same. Then Eli and his soldiers turned to the Kishla building, but were met with gunfire. "Paratroopers emerged from David Street, all of a sudden, and I had no idea how they got there. There officer was equally surprised and asked me what we were doing there. I told him that I was going to the movies."
Later that day, when the Old City was about to be liberated, Eli was overcome by the desire to fulfill an old dream - after all he was so close to his childhood playground. It didn't take him long to jump into a Jordanian military vehicle parked near by and drive to his parents' house in the German Colony, a mere three minutes' drive. He gave his surprised father a khaki uniform and helmet and drove him back to the Rova: "My father's eyes filled with tears when we stood in front of the old house. He started running about and touching the stones, saying over and over again that this was the happiest day in his life."Eli Kedar (formerly Mizrachi) was born in the Jewish Quarter in 1932. The Orensteins had moved nextdoor in the early 1940's. Avigdor Yitzhak Orenstein was the Western Wall rabbi until 1948. "My father's task was to supervise the daily prayers and to send daily reports to the chief Rabbis and to the National Committee who had appointed him", recalls the rabbi's son, Shmuel Even-Or (b.1929). "In those days the Wall was very different from what it is today. The Arab residents of the Old City would pelt us with stones, or ride their donkeys close to the Wall with the sole purpose of soiling the ground with animal dung. There were many restrictions on the Jewish worshippers - blowing the shofar before Yom Kippur was forbidden. I have childhood memories of the British police chasing and beating those who breached this order."
Puah Steiner, a sixth generation Jerusalemite, was born in the Jewish Quarter in 1941. "Even as a little girl I understood that the Rova had been conquered", she recounts the events of that fateful day in May 1948. "Everybody was broken hearted. The Jordanian legionnaires were looting and stealing everything they could lay their hands on. My sister and I had to walk among tongues of fire until we were outside the walls. When we heard that our father had been taken prisoner by the Jordanians we were devastated."
The Siege and the Detention
On November 29, 1947 the United Nations voted to terminate the British Mandate in Palestine and to allow its partition into two states. The next morning, residents of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem found themselves under siege, in appalling conditions. The British policemen displayed mostly passivity. At the end of January 1948, 19-year-old Shmuel Even-Or was serving with the Palmach in the Negev. He was notified that the Arabs had blown up his parents' house in the Rova: "Our house was known as the Orenstein outpost, under the command of my brother Avraham. When the house was blown up he was home with my mother, and they were both wounded. The following day the British blew up what was left of the house, so I had to find lodgings elsewhere in the Rova." Eli was 16 years old when the War of Independence broke out: "I was working in a carpenter's shop outside the city. One day after work they simply wouldn't let me go home, so I went to my relatives' house. I managed to return to my parents' house during Passover (3-4 months later), when I was allowed back into the City to deliver matzoth."
The situation in the Rova deteriorated further in mid-May, when the British left. "I had terrible nightmares every night", says Puah. "One evening we heard horrible screams: 'Arabs with knives', and everybody scrambled towards the inner houses for cover. We thought the Arabs were coming to slaughter us, and we had had nothing to defend ourselves with. I grabbed my mother's skirt and we started to run with the others. Everybody was certain that this was our last day. Everybody was crying and saying the prayers for the dead. My father said something that I cannot forget to this day: 'I pray they take pity on women and children, and if heavens decide that we part, remember that the Torah is the only important thing the world. When you grow up, marry Torah students.' Then we heard that the Arabs had gone elsewhere, and we were able to return home. For us it was a miracle."Eli was posted on Karaim Street, in an abandoned British post, where he was manning a Tommy gun. "For days I was stranded there without a chance to see my family. I was even shot in the arm when the Arabs stormed us. When I got back to my post, we were practically out of ammo. So we threw potted plants at the enemy." The news of rabbi Orenstein and his wife's death during a Jordanian shelling was a very severe blow for the Rova residents.
"Naturally, I wasn't there,", recalls Shmuel. "When I reached the new city nobody wanted to give me the bad news. It was terrible losing both my parents like that."
By the end of May, 1948, the Rova fell and most of its residents were taken prisoners, some willingly. Eli: "I was too young to become a POW, but my mother said we had better split the family. So I joined my father, who had been taken prisoner along with other men. She stayed behind with the other children. Strange as it may sound, when I tried to surrender, the convoy of prisoners had already left, so I had to run after them." Eli spent nine months in Jordan as a POW, in Umm-el-Jamal, close to a military airport by the Iraqi border. "What I remember mostly from that time was forever standing to attention in the blistering sun for the roll call. The Jordanian soldiers always had the count wrong, and each time they came up with a different number. One day, after Hanukkah, I tried to escape disguised as a Bedouin. I had worked out the times the Jordanians went on patrol, but on that very day they changed the routine, so I got caught. A few months later, we were liberated. Groups of prisoners were returned to Israel. My father was among the first while I was freed with the last groups. When they told me I was going home, I decided I wanted a souvenir, so I stole the lock and keys to the camp. When the Jordanians discovered the loss they went crazy. They kept us there for several more hours, but in the end they let us go.
At the same time, Puah's father, Shlomo, was also in a prison camp in Jordan. His family was evacuated to the Katamon neighborhood in Jerusalem, including Puah: "My mother was a very strong woman and she managed to keep the family together and alive. I remember mostly how badly I missed my father. He sent us letters via the Red Cross, but he was forced to write them in English. He was urging mother to take care of our education. One night, in February 1949, a military vehicle stopped in front of our house, and father stepped out of it. Even though he was a liberated prisoner of war, he felt compelled to bring us presents: very good quality blankets. One of them was made into a winter coat for me. My two-year-old sister didn't remember father at all, and had a hard time getting used to him. She kept asking my mother when this man was going to leave."
By the end of May, 1948, the Rova fell and most of its residents were taken prisoners, some willingly. Eli: "I was too young to become a POW, but my mother said we had better split the family. So I joined my father, who had been taken prisoner along with other men. She stayed behind with the other children. Strange as it may sound, when I tried to surrender, the convoy of prisoners had already left, so I had to run after them." Eli spent nine months in Jordan as a POW, in Umm-el-Jamal, close to a military airport by the Iraqi border. "What I remember mostly from that time was forever standing to attention in the blistering sun for the roll call. The Jordanian soldiers always had the count wrong, and each time they came up with a different number. One day, after Hanukkah, I tried to escape disguised as a Bedouin. I had worked out the times the Jordanians went on patrol, but on that very day they changed the routine, so I got caught. A few months later, we were liberated. Groups of prisoners were returned to Israel. My father was among the first while I was freed with the last groups. When they told me I was going home, I decided I wanted a souvenir, so I stole the lock and keys to the camp. When the Jordanians discovered the loss they went crazy. They kept us there for several more hours, but in the end they let us go.
At the same time, Puah's father, Shlomo, was also in a prison camp in Jordan. His family was evacuated to the Katamon neighborhood in Jerusalem, including Puah: "My mother was a very strong woman and she managed to keep the family together and alive. I remember mostly how badly I missed my father. He sent us letters via the Red Cross, but he was forced to write them in English. He was urging mother to take care of our education. One night, in February 1949, a military vehicle stopped in front of our house, and father stepped out of it. Even though he was a liberated prisoner of war, he felt compelled to bring us presents: very good quality blankets. One of them was made into a winter coat for me. My two-year-old sister didn't remember father at all, and had a hard time getting used to him. She kept asking my mother when this man was going to leave."
Back to the Rova
"...a shocking picture was unfolded of the results of this policy of wanton vandalism, desecration and violation perpetrated during the period of Jordan occupation from 1948 onwards. In the Jewish Quarter all but one of the thirty-five Jewish houses of worship that graced the Old City of Jerusalem were found to have been wantonly destroyed. The synagogues had been razed or pillaged and stripped and their interiors used as hen-houses and stables. In the ancient historic Jewish graveyard on the Mount of Olives, tens of thousands of tombstones had been torn up, broken into pieces or used as flagstones, steps and building materials in Jordanian military installations and civilian constructions. Large areas of the cemetery had been levelled and converted into parking places and petrol-filling stations. ... The Western Wall holds a unique place in the history and faith of the Jewish people. For nineteen centuries Jews flocked to the Western Wall from all parts of the world to pray and worship before it. It would not cross the mind of Jews to impair in any way the sanctity of the Western Wall.The interest now evinced by the Jordanian Government in the Wall is surprising against the background of the vandalism perpetrated there by that Government when it was in occupation of the area. The Jordanian Government deliberately profaned the sacred character of the Wall by erecting adjacent to it structures of secular services, warehouses and toilets, and converting its immediate precincts into a slum."
Eli did not move back to the Rova after the Six Day War: "I could have moved back if I wanted to. But all through the years I asked myself what I was going to do there and I found no solid reason to buy a house. Perhaps I was wrong, but I am happy where I live now."
Puah's felt the exact opposite when Jerusalem was liberated in 1967. Even though she didn't liberate the city with her own hands, and due to pregnacy complications, she managed to visit the city several months after the war, but when she saw her old home she became very emotional and wanted to move back in for good: "When I first set foot in the Rova after so many years, I nearly fainted. Every alley and every house took me back in time to my childhood. When I stood in front of our old house, I saw yeshiva students studying the Gemara. I thought to myself that my father would have been pleased: he used to sit in the same room and study the same thing. Puah was willing to move back into her house right there and then, but when the euphoria dissipated, bureaucracy took over: "A lot of people wanted to move into the Rova, so we had to draw lots. We were not lucky enough. Others drew the lucky numbers." Ten years later, Puah and her husband managed to buy an apartment in the Rova and they have been living there since: "I admit that we are living in crowded quarters, and it is sometimes very noisy, but I feel that heavens guided me to the Old City. We considered moving out several times, but my son said that nobody leaves the Rova. I agreed with him. One cannot be a resident of the Rova and ignore its rich history and heritage. This is why I put my childhood memories in a book, 'Out of the Overthrow' where I describe the fall of the Rova.
Shmuel still feels closely connected to the Rova and its heritage, although he now lives outside Jerusalem. He is the director of the Association of the 1948 Defenders of the Rova and is an authority on the history of the place: "I feel it is my duty to tell the story of what happened there, how the residents fought for their home and ideology with all they had. It is very important to teach the young generations about what happened in the Old City before 1967."Divided for 19 long years
*The Jewish Quarter is situated in the South-Eastern part of the Old city of Jerusalem.
*Archeological digs found evidence that the Rova was inhabited in the First Temple period.
* In 1267, rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the Ramban (Nachmanides, not to be confused with the Rambam, Maimonides, rabbi Moshe ben Maimon) arrived in the Old City.
* On the eve of the War of Independence there were 1,700 Jewish residents in the Rova.
* There are now 3,500 Jewish residents in the Rova.
* The Jewish Quarter is the third largest among the four quarters of the Old City.
* It is smaller that the Muslim and the Christian Quarters, and larger than the Armenian Quarter.
* The Rova attracts around 7 million visitors each year, among them 1.5 million tourists.
* The youngest fighter who gave his life in the War of Independence was Nissim Guinny. He was ten years old.
*There has been an almost uninterrupted Jewish presence in the Rova since the days of the Crusaders.
*The only 19 years WITHOUT a Jewish presence in the Rova was between 1948 (when the Jordanians seized the Old City) and 1967 (when it was liberated by Israel).
*Archeological digs of the Rova have been conducted since 1969, when the Society for the Restoration and the Development of the Jewish Quarter was founded.
*The digs unearthed important finds dating back to 1948 in a water hole.
*It came as a complete surprise, because Moshe Rusnak, commander of the Rova defense unit, ordered the destruction of all weapons and ammunition before the Jewish defenders surrendered.
* Nobody knows who hid the arms in total violastion of that specific order.
* The only mosque in the Rova was erected in the 15th century by a Jew who converted to Islam following an argument with his neighbors.
*The mosque is not open for religious services.
*There is a special Arab-owned bakery in the Rova: it has all the required kosher certificates.
*Its specialite de la maison is a pastry is called "hamama" - bird, because it is shaped like the beak of a bird.
*Bread is baked according to an old secret French recipe, a sort of local baguette.
*According to legend, the Messiah will come when the Hurva (ruined) synagogue has been rebuilt for the third time.* The Society for the Restoration and the Development of the Jewish Quarter is rebuilding the Hurva synagogue.
*This would be the third time, as the synagogue was destroyed in 1720 and 1948. (Two days before the fall of the Jewish Quarter in 1948, the Jordanians blew up the synagogue and the Jordanian commander in charge reported to his superiors: "For the first time in a 1,000 years, not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. No building there stands undamaged. This makes the Jews' return here impossible." However, in 1967 the Jews returned. The Jewish Quarter was rebuilt, but the Hurva remained in its desolation and a long-running architectural disagreement began.)
*The synagogue will probably be ready in a year and a half. Prepare thyselves!
Excerpts from LETTER dated 5 March 1968 from the permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary General
