My life in Barcelona and on a kibbutz

I was born in Barcelona, Spain on 5.7.1940. My parents came from Belgium but in 1935 settled in Barcelona. My father was a representative of a car company and sold different parts. He was dealing with USA and Spain. I have a sister called Nicole who is older than me by six years. We spoke French at home. By 1942 my father who was in the USA telegraphed to my mother to meet in Portugal with the two girls (my sister and me) and took the boat to Belgian Congo (what is Zaire nowadays). So we spent the whole war in Leopoldville (Kinshasa). My brother was born there. In 1946 we returned to Belgium. We stayed there a few months and then we went back to Barcelona where we had a flat. My father found a job in Paris where he stayed with an aunt of mine who was a war widow with four children. It was his younger sister. My father was a Personnel Director for L'Oreal and used to visit us twice a year.

We had a lovely time in Barcelona. We went to the Lycee Francais to get an education. In 1956 we went back to Belgium, because my father had been made redundant and lost his job. It was different from Barcelona, and I did not like it. My mother, who did not work for years, started to work. She was a nurse. I finished my A levels and did a secretarial course. I had a year and I went to London to improve my English. There, in London, I met my husband. We decided to leave England to go to Israel in 1961. We were very idealistic and we went to Kibbutz ‘Hanita’.

After two years in the kibbutz, we got married and a year after that my son Aviel was born in 1964. Fourteen months later I had a  second son called Erez. Life in a kibbutz is something unusual. You do not have liquid money. All the people live in a community. Everyone in a kibbutz is equal, a small collection of people all working together in order to provide for each other. A secretary is appointed every three years to act as a representative of the people from the kibbutz. He organises the kibbutz so that it functions properly. The secretary does more or less all of the paperwork of the kibbutz. The director of the kibbutz deals with all practical things. The manager is in charge. He deals with all the agricultural things. He is also chosen for three years. All the major decisions are made by the General Assembly which takes place every Sabbath. You become a member after a year of working in the kibbutz.

There are all sorts of committees: education, social committee, house committee, working committee, cultural committee, secretarial committee.

I was not happy with the children in the first kibbutz. When you have a child, you live with him six months, and after that you transfer him to a nurse house, and the child stop living with you. You can still see him from 4 o’clock to 7 o’clock and after that he goes to sleep with the others in the nurse house. There are 6 babies in the house.

I went to the education committee and I demanded that the children up to thirteen slept with their parents. The education committee brought the question to the Assembly. We held a very touchy general assembly and it went on until at least two in morning! We lost the appeal and we left the kibbutz Hanita because of that!

Our new kibbutz was English speaking and had the children at night together with their parents. My husband knew some of the members. It is called Beit Haemek, near the city in the north of Israel called Naharya.

By that time, I had two small children; I used to  bring them to the nursery at a quarter to sevenevery morning, and then at seven o’clock I went to the kitchen, where I worked, cooking every meal, till two o’clock. I went home; I had to tidy, have a shower and then go to my children at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. My husband worked from six o’clock in the morning to 3 o’clock. His work was the ‘bananas’. The kitchen and is considered a difficult and hard work, so then you work one hour less.

Usually, women work in 8 different places. The first is the education (teachers, nursery, schools) the ‘storage’ (ironing, cleaning, for children and adults, repairs of buttons, patching clothes), kitchen  - one for children, babies and toddlers, and another kitchen for adults. There is the kibbutz dining hall where the members enjoy just a place to eat (all the meals are done there) and here hours of intense informal discussions take place, during Sabbath, over breakfast, lunch and supper. Here members enjoy festive meals on Friday evenings and holidays. Some women worked in the cowshed and the milking parlour. Some worked with the calfs and they help the veterinarian in bringing calfs to this world.

There is a lot of gossiping in a kibbutz; even with men also and the women, especially in the storage, are gossiping.

One winter, we had to thin out the beetroots, and the whole kibbutz had to do it, for four hours. We left the children in the nursery house, and we went thinning out in the fields. Another day, we had to do citrus or oranges, because we had some orders from the cooperative that a ship ws going to Europe with oranges and mandarins.

We left the kibbutz in February 1968.

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