South African volunteers remember the Six Day War

NICOLA MILTZ

As Yom Yerushalayim 2017 (May 24) approaches, volunteers recall the heady days of their youth and their early Israeli experiences with a combination of mixed emotions and euphoric nostalgia.

It was the bitter winter of 1967, slap bang in the middle of apartheid South Africa, when disturbing news from the Middle East began filtering through to Jews all over the country. War was imminent. The State of Israel was under immediate threat on all fronts. Just 20 years after the Holocaust, Jewish people dreaded another devastating catastrophe. There was a genuine fear that Israel was in danger of being eliminated.

Jews around the world were gathering in groups and mobilising. It was no different in South Africa. Several hundred young Jewish volunteers, literally from Brakpan, Springs and Benoni on the East Rand, to dusty farms in the Free State and trading stores in the Cape, came forward and offered to stop whatever they were doing, to help.  

“I would have done anything,” said Meyrick Levitas who was 23 and living in Springs at the time. “I felt it was my duty to do whatever I could to help. That’s how we all felt.”

One volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous, said the volunteers were largely young men and women in their prime, fit and healthy. The majority were students or recent graduates.

“We were ripe for adventure. It was a different time altogether, Israel was perceived very differently than it is today. It was seen as a sexy thing to do, to go to the homeland of the Jewish people. We were prepared to do almost anything.”

But the war was over before many of them were even issued with their first passport. The war lasted a mere six days; historians agree it was one of the most spectacular military victories in modern history.

This, however, did not stop the adrenalin-pumped-up youths from clambering on board the dozens of scheduled SAA flights out of Jan Smuts bound for the Holy Land.

As one of them put it: “We wanted to be part of a shared experience and for many it moulded a Jewish identity, the idea of being connected as a group of people with a common identity.”

As Sir Jonathan Sacks reflected, it had nothing to do with politics or war or even prayer. “It had to do with Jewish identity. Collectively the Jewish people had looked in the mirror and said: ‘We are still Jews’. And by that they meant more than a private declaration of faith, ‘religion’ in the conventional sense of the word.

“It meant that they felt part of a people, involved in its fate, implicated in its destiny, caught up in its tragedy, exhilarated by its survival. I had felt it. So had every other Jew I knew.”

The majority of South African volunteers found themselves on kibbutzim scattered throughout the country.

“It was one of the best periods of my life,” recalls Joan Kalk of Johannesburg who was 21 when she found herself on Kibbutz Newe Yam which was 27 km on the Tel Aviv side of Haifa.

“My first job was on the cottonfields. I remember drinking Turkish coffee at 04:00 before my shift. We were done by 10:00 and went to the beach.”

There was a canning factory, chicken coup and a guest house and her group of volunteers were required to work the entire kibbutz.

“We even cleaned toilets, quite something for spoilt Jewish girls from South Africa! We were young, we had fun, we felt needed and appreciated.”

One of the first groups of South African volunteers was approached by the Jewish Agency upon arrival in Israel and asked to serve as civilian aides with the army.

“We thought we were going to pick peaches on some kibbutz,” recalls Levitas,” little did we know we were required to carry out civilian duties with various army units in their job of rehabilitating equipment and stores.”

He and several young men from South Africa in his group, were stationed at the Beit Sefer Ha Shotrim and their job was to do recovery work in the Galilee and Sinai.

“The days were long and hot; we lived in tents and there was no running water,” says Levitas.

Photographs and a small article of his group appeared in the periodical Volunteer, in the August 1967 edition. In it the conditions under which the men worked and lived were shown.

“During their rest days the boys talked of their work and daily routine. They wake at 06:00… their food is accepted as being adequate… much as it is in the South African army.

“Their early morning breakfast is a hasty affair with a wild grab for the small quantity of hot tea and a snatched slab of bread and jam. Out in the field the boys have the same army field rations which in themselves are tasty, but become a monotonous menu of a tin of beans or peas, one of goulash and another of bully beef. A tin of olives rounds off the savouries and great chunks of bread are eaten with everything.

“My group felt a real sense of involvement in Israel’s struggle,’ said Levitas.

In the first printed edition of Volunteer, writers urge kibbutzim not to “lose heart” in their arduous work in the fields and encourages them to be proud of their post-war work efforts.

“Perhaps at this moment you are doing laborious, tedious work in an agricultural settlement and feeling fed up about it, but do not forget that this is still vital work.

“In our eyes, you are very much the individual Jew who, spontaneously and gallantly, rose to the occasion when his people’s existence was threatened. You wished to demonstrate your identity with us by joining in the combat on our behalf… but the battles were so swift and decisive that they were over before you could arrive. Do not be disappointed or discouraged. You are still needed here.”

According to the periodical, as of July 5 1967, there were over 5 000 volunteers from over 38 countries in Israel, helping to pick up the pieces.

“I was a 19-year-old teenager,” says one Johannesburg-based volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous. “I had never been out of the country and all of a sudden I was on a plane going to a country with a foreign language and culture, into a political zone that I knew nothing about.”

It could so easily have turned out differently he reflects, “Although we won the war, we did not win the peace. Today Israel remains as divisive as ever. Many of us look back with some sadness because although Israel won outright, she remains to this day a very divided country.

“She is no longer the little David against the powerful Goliath. Israel is one of the strongest countries in the world despite her size – and still there is no peace.”

But as Sir Jonathan Sacks says of the time: “…by being born into the Jewish people I was enmeshed in a network of relationships that connected me to other people, other places, other times. I belonged to a people. And being part of a people, I belonged.”