דף לכבוד / לזכר

Here is a short story of my parent's arrival to Bari:

• My parents (Abraham/Ernest and Ester/Edit Mermelstein - my mother's maiden name was Berger) – both were born and raised in a city in today Russian Carpathian Mountain that then was part of Slovakia - the city of Berehove/Beregsas. They were both part of the liberal Zionist movement of Hanoar Hatziyoni. 

• After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the separation of Slovakia, my father was in a Slovakian Work Camp for Jews since 1941 and used to come home for vacations.

• On March 1944 my parents were engaged in one of my father's vacations.

• My parents did not see each other after the engagement, until the War was over. The Slovakian Jews were deported to concentration camps on May 1944. They both had suffer a great deal and lost all their families.

• When the war was over, some time on the third quarter of 1945, my parents met accidently in the street of Bratislava.

• They got married on the 29 of July 1945 in Budapest. This was the place where they got organized with other some 20 young people – most of them from Beregsas - at Arena Street as a Zionist group of Hanoar Hatziyoni, to cross the borders to Italy and then to Israel. My father was the leaders of this group.

• They left Budapest on September by train to the Austrian border.  All was organized ahead of time. People were waiting for them to cross the snowy Alp Mountains at night and at 6 o'clock in the morning they were in Austria and walked to their first stop – Graz. From there they moved to Linz that was under the occupied territories of England. At Linz they started to organize as a Hachsahra for future Zionist Kibbutz settling. In Austria they had few other stops – Judenburg, Murau,  Intbrouk and from there in a cattle train to the Brenner Alp border pass to Italy. After two days, on January 1946 they arrived to Santa Maria di Leuca where they stayed 3 months as a well-organized group. New members joined the group, committees were chosen by votes, and they conducted cultural life, studies Hebrew, studied Jewish history and more.

• The group was moved to Bari on March and was settled in a Palace - the largest villa in Bari, on Via Salerno 207. The group members were getting ready for their sail to Israel with more than 60 men and women.  All their supplies were taken care for by the JOINT and UNRA. The Hachshara group had lively, organized and wonderful social life: a lot of sport activities, Hebrew language studies with two Hebrew speaking members – Otti that studies at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Munkach and Flor from Rumania. The talented Miki Markovitch played the piano and organized Friday-night theater shows; others started a sewing workshop and had all the men dressed in suites. Shlichim(organizers) from Israel arranged and earlier sailing for Israel for the young and eager group members. Most of the group was moved to Bacoli near Naples not before they united with another Hanoar Hatziyoni group from Brivio in the north of Italy and form together the Aba Bedicheve Group to solidify a future settling in Israeli Kibbutz.   

• Now there were 72 people in Bari Aba Bedicheve Group (see list attached including my name) – 21 young women, 2 families (5) and 46 young men, all part of a training group[i]. 

• I was born in Bari on the 20^th of June 1946.

• Most of the group that was mover to Bacoli was settled on July 1946 in a beautiful castle on the beach, with steps all the way to the water. They mounted an Italian small old boat call Alberto at one o'clock at night on the 13 of October 1946 to try to get to Israel as illegal immigrant. 

• My parents stayed in Bari with me because it was too dangerous to travel with a baby on that boat. On April 1947 they joined another Aba Berdicheve Training Group in Brivio, near Lago de Como, that had many young families with babies (see in the photo album photos of me that were taken at the end of our stay in Bari and the beginning of our stay in Brivio).

• On the 5^th of November 1947, the merged group got on a boat named Kadima that sailed from an island near Venice that tried to get all the families as illegal immigrants to Israel. They were caught by the British Navy on the 15^th of November and brought to Haifa Port in Israel without any resistance because of the many children on board. Out of 794 people on board– more than 100 were babies and children under the age of 3. The people were sent to Cyprus and arrived to Israel only after the declaration of Israel in May 1948.

• Aba Berdichev group united in Israel and did create a new Kibbutz in the south of the see-shore – Kibbutz Mavkiim. I remember it. The happiest days of my childhood.