Selected text
As soon as the Jewish state was voted the fights started in Israel. [see 1948 War of Independence in Israel][13]. And then boys and girls of my age volunteered immediately, we wanted to go to fight, and in that fall, at the beginning of the fall 1947 we enlisted to the Haganah and waited to leave. But they didn’t set us off, because the English were still there. But it was to be expected here in Hungary that after March 1948 the events would ‘swing to the left’, and there would be no possibility to leave, so sometime in the winter, at the end of January or beginning of February, we went to Austria. The entire company, about the 40 of us. We got a so called collective passport, in which it was written X.Y. and 38 people. So practically we crossed the border legally, with collective passport.
They took us to Vienna where a vacated school was the refugee camp. We were there for 6 weeks, partly because they didn’t know what to do with us, there was too many of us, and partly to rest, and so that they would clothe us. We left with the clothes we had on us, we couldn’t bring anything with us. Then the drillmasters of the Israeli elite army arrived, and they started to train us for armless, as they say man against man fight. There was a small young girl there who trained us, she was as small as a sitting dog. Then she showed a grip, which she should have warded off by grabbing me, but she couldn’t hold me, and I fell on her knees with my back, fortunately not too fast. I didn’t get very hurt, but for a while I was invalid. After 6 weeks they took the entire company to a place, where a former Lager was already full with volunteer Jewish young people, who had been gathered to one place from all kinds of movements from all Europe. And there they continued the drilling, but in bigger formation.
I had a great time there. That was the happiness of my adolescence. I also have to mention that the fact that there were girls there, too, didn’t mean anything special to me. When I should have learned how to handle women I was in the Lager. Simply I didn’t care about this, because I mourned for my childhood love Irenke for years. So I didn’t care even about the most beautiful girl, I didn’t care about girls at all. And everyone was astonished that I was so withdrawn. They thought that I liked boys or I don’t know what. In this regard I became mature at around the age of 20. Though girls fell for me.
We had retraining there for 2 or 3 months, then we went from there to Italy on foot through the Brenner Pass, in big snow, with smuggler leaders. They took us to Meran, the Italians call it Merano. They accommodated us into an empty sanatorium. They started feeding us, and so to speak nursing us, and we were there for about 2 weeks. Then they took us to an Italian refugee camp called Chiari. We were in Chiari on the 15th May when they proclaimed the State of Israel. Then we held a big celebration. We put up the white-blue flag, and did other things. Let’s go, off we go! But this wasn’t that simple, because the entire Italy was full with such camps where there were young Jews, volunteers. There was 5000 of us only from Hungary. And before we had left Austria we went to I don’t know how many refugee camps with the blue and white flag and recruited the young Jewish kids to come and defend the country. There were some who came, and some who didn’t, but we did grow in number in the meantime.
They took the entire company from Chiari to a port called Fano, which is between Rimini and Ancona in Italy. Fano was an ordinary small fishermen’s village at that time, today it is a tourist paradise. They told us that the Israeli army needed sailors, too, and we should get used to the sea, and go to sea with the fishermen. And that’s what we did. We got uniforms, it was written on them Scuola Marittima Ebraica [Italian: Jewish Sailor School]. But of course it was far from it, we only went on cogs. In a proper sense they got us used to the sea. I was unlucky with this again, because I had an accident and my leg got injured again. They excluded me from the training, the drilling. Also because I was seasick many times. The cogs rocked like a nutshell, I helped how I could, but most of the time I couldn’t, because I was sick.
In the middle of September they took us to a camp, near the harbor called Ostia. 700 of us joined a small cargo-boat, which was about the size of a barge on the Danube. After 4 days we arrived to Haifa, exactly on the 17th September, when Bernadotte, the UNO mediatory was shot by the Jewish extremists in Jerusalem. [Editor’s note: Count Folke Bernadotte (1895–1948) Swedish diplomat commissioned by the UNO to mediate in the armed conflict between the Arabs and the Jews after the proclamation of the State of Israel. None of the parties accepted his plan according to which Israel would get the northern and western part of Palestine and the Arabs the eastern and southern parts, and both parties would acknowledge each other. The Jewish extremists considered him a threat to the existence of the country and they killed him.] They immediately gave the volunteers on the ship army ID cards, and we signed it on the ship that we had joined the Palmach [Editor’s note: These were the shock-troops of the Haganah during the British mandate, then during the war of independence.] These weren’t only trained for defense but also for the break-through at all costs. But at that time we hadn’t been trained at all, not with guns, but only for hand to hand fight. And they took us to a camp called Tel-Mond, and the combats were about 8 kilometers from these. They drilled us there in 12 days. This means that we did no formal training at all, like attention, hold on, right turn, give a salute, there wasn’t anything like these. But everyone got a rifle, I got a German Mauser made in 1942, on which there was a swastika. And they showed us where the sight and the butt was, where to load the 5 cartridges, where to cock it, and how to fire it. But they didn’t give us any cartridges, because there weren’t any cartridges, they were happy if there were enough for the front. And we learned to use the gun in theory, we learned how to cover ourselves, and they made us exercise a lot. At that time I was still in a good condition, but it was a custom that we ran almost until the front line and we shouted three times in Hebrew, that we were there and they should shiver, ‘we are the Palmach!’, ‘hinenu haPalmach!’, because the Palmach was famous and the enemy was afraid of it, and then we ran back. This meant 14 kilometers of running every morning.
This lasted for 12 days exactly. You can imagine that in 12 days we couldn’t really become experts without any cartridges. And besides there was another problem that in our platoon of 40 nobody spoke Hebrew. And I was the only one who spoke Yiddish. The other ones were from Pest, so how would they had known? I had only learnt it in the Lager, it wasn’t my mother tongue either. So it functioned so that the drillmaster said in Hebrew that ‘this is a gun’. Then someone, a man with a loud voice shouted in Yiddish ‘this is a gun’. Then I told my own company ‘boys, he is saying that this is a gun’. Then they explained all the parts of the gun in Hebrew, then in Yiddish, then I explained them in Hungarian. So all orders or commands had to be interpreted twice so that our ordinary citizens would understand them. I knew Yiddish ‘thanks to’ my connections in the Lager, my life.
They took us to Vienna where a vacated school was the refugee camp. We were there for 6 weeks, partly because they didn’t know what to do with us, there was too many of us, and partly to rest, and so that they would clothe us. We left with the clothes we had on us, we couldn’t bring anything with us. Then the drillmasters of the Israeli elite army arrived, and they started to train us for armless, as they say man against man fight. There was a small young girl there who trained us, she was as small as a sitting dog. Then she showed a grip, which she should have warded off by grabbing me, but she couldn’t hold me, and I fell on her knees with my back, fortunately not too fast. I didn’t get very hurt, but for a while I was invalid. After 6 weeks they took the entire company to a place, where a former Lager was already full with volunteer Jewish young people, who had been gathered to one place from all kinds of movements from all Europe. And there they continued the drilling, but in bigger formation.
I had a great time there. That was the happiness of my adolescence. I also have to mention that the fact that there were girls there, too, didn’t mean anything special to me. When I should have learned how to handle women I was in the Lager. Simply I didn’t care about this, because I mourned for my childhood love Irenke for years. So I didn’t care even about the most beautiful girl, I didn’t care about girls at all. And everyone was astonished that I was so withdrawn. They thought that I liked boys or I don’t know what. In this regard I became mature at around the age of 20. Though girls fell for me.
We had retraining there for 2 or 3 months, then we went from there to Italy on foot through the Brenner Pass, in big snow, with smuggler leaders. They took us to Meran, the Italians call it Merano. They accommodated us into an empty sanatorium. They started feeding us, and so to speak nursing us, and we were there for about 2 weeks. Then they took us to an Italian refugee camp called Chiari. We were in Chiari on the 15th May when they proclaimed the State of Israel. Then we held a big celebration. We put up the white-blue flag, and did other things. Let’s go, off we go! But this wasn’t that simple, because the entire Italy was full with such camps where there were young Jews, volunteers. There was 5000 of us only from Hungary. And before we had left Austria we went to I don’t know how many refugee camps with the blue and white flag and recruited the young Jewish kids to come and defend the country. There were some who came, and some who didn’t, but we did grow in number in the meantime.
They took the entire company from Chiari to a port called Fano, which is between Rimini and Ancona in Italy. Fano was an ordinary small fishermen’s village at that time, today it is a tourist paradise. They told us that the Israeli army needed sailors, too, and we should get used to the sea, and go to sea with the fishermen. And that’s what we did. We got uniforms, it was written on them Scuola Marittima Ebraica [Italian: Jewish Sailor School]. But of course it was far from it, we only went on cogs. In a proper sense they got us used to the sea. I was unlucky with this again, because I had an accident and my leg got injured again. They excluded me from the training, the drilling. Also because I was seasick many times. The cogs rocked like a nutshell, I helped how I could, but most of the time I couldn’t, because I was sick.
In the middle of September they took us to a camp, near the harbor called Ostia. 700 of us joined a small cargo-boat, which was about the size of a barge on the Danube. After 4 days we arrived to Haifa, exactly on the 17th September, when Bernadotte, the UNO mediatory was shot by the Jewish extremists in Jerusalem. [Editor’s note: Count Folke Bernadotte (1895–1948) Swedish diplomat commissioned by the UNO to mediate in the armed conflict between the Arabs and the Jews after the proclamation of the State of Israel. None of the parties accepted his plan according to which Israel would get the northern and western part of Palestine and the Arabs the eastern and southern parts, and both parties would acknowledge each other. The Jewish extremists considered him a threat to the existence of the country and they killed him.] They immediately gave the volunteers on the ship army ID cards, and we signed it on the ship that we had joined the Palmach [Editor’s note: These were the shock-troops of the Haganah during the British mandate, then during the war of independence.] These weren’t only trained for defense but also for the break-through at all costs. But at that time we hadn’t been trained at all, not with guns, but only for hand to hand fight. And they took us to a camp called Tel-Mond, and the combats were about 8 kilometers from these. They drilled us there in 12 days. This means that we did no formal training at all, like attention, hold on, right turn, give a salute, there wasn’t anything like these. But everyone got a rifle, I got a German Mauser made in 1942, on which there was a swastika. And they showed us where the sight and the butt was, where to load the 5 cartridges, where to cock it, and how to fire it. But they didn’t give us any cartridges, because there weren’t any cartridges, they were happy if there were enough for the front. And we learned to use the gun in theory, we learned how to cover ourselves, and they made us exercise a lot. At that time I was still in a good condition, but it was a custom that we ran almost until the front line and we shouted three times in Hebrew, that we were there and they should shiver, ‘we are the Palmach!’, ‘hinenu haPalmach!’, because the Palmach was famous and the enemy was afraid of it, and then we ran back. This meant 14 kilometers of running every morning.
This lasted for 12 days exactly. You can imagine that in 12 days we couldn’t really become experts without any cartridges. And besides there was another problem that in our platoon of 40 nobody spoke Hebrew. And I was the only one who spoke Yiddish. The other ones were from Pest, so how would they had known? I had only learnt it in the Lager, it wasn’t my mother tongue either. So it functioned so that the drillmaster said in Hebrew that ‘this is a gun’. Then someone, a man with a loud voice shouted in Yiddish ‘this is a gun’. Then I told my own company ‘boys, he is saying that this is a gun’. Then they explained all the parts of the gun in Hebrew, then in Yiddish, then I explained them in Hungarian. So all orders or commands had to be interpreted twice so that our ordinary citizens would understand them. I knew Yiddish ‘thanks to’ my connections in the Lager, my life.
Period
Interview
Ferenc Leicht