Wednesday, July 4 Atlit

Due to unstable internet access at the hotel on the Kibbutz we’re staying at, I was unable to post on Wednesday.  I’m trying desperately to post daily so I don’t miss out on the feelings these wonderful tours and bits of information I get don’t escape me!  Although, on this wonderful trip, I can’t see that happening!

Wednesday morning, July 4th….what an interesting morning!  I wanted to go online and say Happy 4th of July/Independence Day to everyone in the US but realized they were all still in bed!!!  We got up early in our new hotel rooms at the Kibbutz Nof Ginosar on the Sea of Galilee!  What an incredible thing to say, let alone experience!  The lovely warm Sea of Galilee is just below our rooms and the dining room where we are served the most amazing breakfasts!  It’s buffet style, but NOTHING like I’ve ever seen in the USA!  Fresh salads and vegetables and yogurts and sauces along with freshly squeezed juices…so fresh that my glass of orange juice even had a seed in it!  🙂

We got on the bus for Atlit.  Atlit was a Detention Camp for Jewish refugees coming to live freely in “British Palestine” {Israel before it became Indpendent}.  I did not even know that this happened.  These people survived various torturous conditions and situations of the Holocaust, managing to come out of it alive, traveling in grueling conditions, up to 7,700 people all in one boat headed here.  The British only allowed 1600 immigrants a month and once that number was met, the rest were detained in this and similar detention camps in Cypress until they could and did eventually get released.  While conditions were markedly better than the concentration camps, and they were not treated harshly, they did not have their freedom either; and they were “disinfected” with a shower of DDT….and their clothes STEAMED and usually shrunk or ruined in the process due to the condition of them when they went in; most had no other belongings, or very few if they had any.  For me, someone who is insanely close to her family…my sons, my in-laws, my sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews, what hit me the most was that most of them were sole survivors or did not even know if their family members were alive.  There were original boards from the detention buildings showing the carvings people made inscribing their names in hopes that if other family members came through those camp buildings, they would see that they had survived.  I am traveling on this journey “by myself” in the most fantastic group of people…I may have mentioned that before!  But just this trip alone, made me realize how difficult their lives were.  As we stood in the hot Israeli sunshine, or the even warmer buildings, waiting for the respite of the air conditioned building they would take us to to view a movie about this time in history, I felt such pangs of guilt and also sympathy for their plight and even a bit of “how dare I” feel even the slightest bit “uncomfortable”!