9/12/99
Dateline
Eilat, 1949
"The place lends itself to chizbats,
or tall stories, and a modest Eilati has yet to be
found," wrote our man in Eilat in those heady
first days. Asher Braunfeld's reports in the Post
and elsewhere were breathtaking descriptives of the
remote outpost in its honky-tonk beginning.
Braunfeld was there 50 years ago, just after
Umm Rashrash was liberated and renamed Eilat. Braunfeld
subsequently renamed himself Shadmon, and the Amsterdam
native who moved to Israel via England left Eilat
for Jerusalem ... via Haiti. Well, it's a long story.
Days after he arrived on aliya, the young geologist
was sent by Moshe Sharrett to drill for water in Eilat,
and unearth copper at Timna.
One imagines the pioneers of Eilat suffered
from heat, hunger and culture deprivation, but at
least there were women galore to keep a guy going.
Au contraire.
"It was cold." Cold?! "We used
to work from two or three in the morning, and finish
before noon." Then it got hot -- up to
49 -- with no respite in their tents and huts.
It was during the days of Austerity, but they
ate better than anyone else in the country. "The
food was excellent! We got all kinds of goodies you
couldn't get up north, like jam and cheese from South
Africa. We paid $1.50 for a bottle of whisky, and
cigarettes were practically free."
They had giant talents flying in: Jascha Heifetz,
Leonard Bernstein, Yaffa Yarkoni. There wasn't even
a post box, but an amphitheater they had. Habima Theater
came to play ג€Of Mice and Men.ג€
Women? Just two, among the hundreds of men.
"But there was lots of hanky-panky going on with
tourists."
EVEN
IN those days, Eilat was a popular destination for
Israelis, who needed a military permit to go. The
25,000 yearly visitors could spend most of a day traveling
the washboard "road" -- which sometimes
fell into the hands of the enemy -- or fly in with
Arkia, which ran Dakotas once a week at first, then
every day. "I remember one time I was on the
plane, and a technician climbed onto the wing in the
middle of the flight to make an adjustment."
Tourists stayed in the nearby camp at Ein Husub
(now Hatzeva), hung out at the Red Sea Saloon, and
shopped at the two kiosks.
It was a colorful mix of people. "Soldiers
were all over the place, but there was no police.
There were Public Works people, army engineers, a
few civilians and the Navy, which we used to call
Heyl Ambatia (the Bathtub Force)." The workforce
consisted largely of Israeli criminals who had been
banished to Eilat, which caused considerable social
problems. And as he wrote in one of his reports, "The
newly-born profession of 'demobbed soldier' is more
noticeable here than anywhere else."
Shadmon recalls "a motley crowd":
a Bulgarian dentist, Iraqi doctor, Egyptian engineer.
Concentration camp survivors, miners, criminals. The
Potato Man from Persia, a South African geologist,
a Siberian, a Canadian, and Abrasha, "who once
saw a plane return from Eilat and said, 'ah, a plane
going in reverse!' "
Life was centered around the army camp and
the Shekem: chewing the fat, hanging out with the
hevre, and partying every night. "We had
joint binges with the army people. We'd get some brandy,
and as soon as we finished the bottle, there was a
collection for the next bottle."
Wages were much higher, but there was nothing
to buy. There were no taxes, no customs. The telephone
was an experience, he wrote: "Privacy is impossible
since one has to shout in to the microphone and sound
knows no barriers here. The operator has to regulate
the set all the time."
By 1952, with the rest of the country fed up
-- if you can use that term -- by the widespread food
shortages, Eilatis were gorging. "We were getting
Dolphin fish from Cape Town (don't get excited: Dolphin
was the brand name), corned beef loaf from Canada,
heimishe Mother's Own fish, Danish Danola cheese,
McGrath's Irish Potatoes from Baltimore, and most
popular, Byczki sardines."
It wasn't all idyllic, as there were great
risks. "The big danger was Beduin smugglers.
We were right on the hashish route. The Jordanians
used to close the road, such as the famous Kilometer
17 Affair. And the big incident was of course Ma'ale
Akravim," when Arab infiltrators murdered 11
bus passengers near Eilat in 1954.
"One time I got lost in Egypt. The UN
sent a plane to find me, but I managed to walk back.
It was an adventure I'll never forget; there was even
something in Ma'ariv about it."
"BEN-GURION
was very happy I was in Eilat, but Dov Yosef [the
minister of development] said I was need more in Jerusalem.
Though I wasn't interested in an administrative job."
Before settling in Jerusalem permanently, Shadmon
took up a position in Haiti, where he stayed for three
years as a project manager.
He wanted to stay in Eilat, but his wife-to-be
was not interested. He always thought the town would
develop into something big, but "we were thinking
even bigger then. We believed it would become a major
port.
"I'm very disappointed, of course. Eilat
has become just a tourist center, a service center,
which is against my Zionist idealism. We expected
it would become the center of a mining industry, a
fishing industry -- but then it turned out there were
no fish there -- and we hoped it would be an oil terminal.
We had much bigger hopes. We wanted it to be another
Haifa."
Not much remains of the old days. "I think
there's the Umm Rashrash monument, there's still a
hut, or a heap of stones." But there is something
else: Shadmon's evocative memoirs, diaries, photos
and newspaper reports of Eilat's exciting pioneer
era.
He wrote this picturesque account of Day One:
"The patrol in the first jeep convoy that
made their famous dash along dusty desert tracks,
marked impassable, will never forget the journey.
It took 16 hours to cover the 147 miles from Beersheba
... to descend the mile long Scorpions Pass they had
to drive 12 miles of narrow track zig-zagging a precipitous
mountain pass. A quarter mile of the pass has not
less than 35 turnings, many of them hairpin bends
of the real McCoy.
"By the time the patrol approached Eilat
their hearts beat fast with expectation. They held
their breath at the sharp turns of the track, seemingly
climbing to the horizon. And then with dramatic suddenness
they came into the full view of the sunsoaked gulf
of Eilat. Sharply jagged hills on either side reflected
violet, red and green light. Under the overhanging
mountains nestled Eilat. Driving down the last reaches
was like gliding down along a sunbeam into fairyland.
All they found were a few mudbrick huts on the shore
and slag heaps originating from King Solomon's coppermines."
Eilat could not have become what it is now
-- love it or hate it -- if potable water had not
been found. Shadmon laughs. "You know, whenever
we came up north, we couldn't drink the unsalted water.
We used to put salt in our coffee or tea."
