Monday, Feb. 07, 1949

Journey Home

A late afternoon rain was falling when the announcement came over the detention camp radio at Xylotombou, Cyprus. A young Jew scurried along the camp's muddy paths, blowing a trumpet as he ran. To Abraham Greenberg, the sound was like that of the trumpets that brought down the walls of Jericho long ago. Abraham ran to tell his wife Zahava. Their firstborn, Arie, was cutting his first teeth; he would be a Jew of Israel, the first of Abraham's family in centuries not to have another nationality. Abraham and Zahava and others in the camp built a bonfire; around it they danced the Hora to celebrate the end of their bitter, lifelong journey.

Bodies in a Ditch. For Abraham Greenberg, a wiry, 24-year-old Polish Jew with prominent cheek bones, it had begun when he was 15 and lived in Warsaw with his mother, two sisters, a brother, his cobbler father. When the Germans came, Abraham fled to Russia. The Germans caught up with him again at Stalino, where he had found a job pushing coal cars in the mines. With 500 others, Abraham was marched away to a field outside town, ordered to stand in front of an anti-tank ditch and stripped of his clothes. He fainted, and fell too soon to hear the staccato of the German machine guns. When he awoke it was dark and rainy, the ditch was filled with bodies. Abraham lay still. Later he crawled on hands and knees and found four other men who had survived. The men hid in a haystack and, in the morning, cautiously made their way to the nearest village.

Abraham slipped through the front lines and joined the Russian army. "I want to fight Germans," he said. After training only twelve days, Abraham was up in the front line for the first Russian big push toward Kharkov. In the Russian retreat to Stalingrad, he was wounded by an exploding land mine. When he rejoined his unit, it was for Zhukov's march to Berlin. The Russians sent him to the Potsdam officers' school.

Path Blocked. He met other Jews who told him of Palestine, and explained to him that he could reach it from UNRRA camps in the U.S. zone. An American Jew, an official of UNRRA, smuggled him through to the Bergen-Belsen D.P. camp as an attendant on a trainload of pregnant women. He then found his way to Italy where, with 1,500 other Jews, he boarded the illegal immigrant ship Haim Arlosoroff.

Six British ships blocked the path of the Haim Arlosoroff as it came into sight of the Promised Land. When British troops came on board, Abraham split off a three-foot length of lifeboat oar and fought back with the others. The British subdued the immigrants with tear gas and water from firehoses, deported them to Cyprus.

Two months later, in Xylotombou camp, at a Sabbath-Eve meeting of the youth training group, Abraham met Zahava. She, too, had been captured by the British in Haifa Bay, almost within touch of the Promised Land. She had been in charge of a group of Zionist children on the ship Theodore Herzl and had traveled to the coast with her Belgian parents' blessings.

Abraham courted Zahava for three months over a ten-foot fence of barbed wire. In August 1947, the camp rabbi performed the marriage ceremony according to the Jewish ritual. The American Joint Distribution Committee provided a metal ring for the bride.

When they entered the rusty Quonset hut which they shared with five other families as their temporary home, Abraham told Zahava: "Soon we can make a home in Palestine."

At that time, the British allowed 750 detainees monthly into Palestine; Abraham calculated that they had eight more months to wait. When their turn to leave for Palestine came last April, Zahava was pregnant so Abraham traded places with a friend farther down the list.

A Jew of Israel. Last week British lorries carried Abraham, Zahava and Arie to the docks of Famagusta harbor. The 3,800-ton Galilah, formerly the Governor De Witt Clinton of the Hudson River Dayline, was tied to the quay. An Israeli nurse helped lift Arie down from the truck. British soldiers checked the 1,500 departure permits.

TIME Correspondent John Luter walked on the deck with Abraham. The young Jews' faces around wore enigmatic expressions--old cares crossed with new hope. Abraham's face was drawn. He had not slept since the trumpet blew in Xylotombou, three days before. Many were too excited to sleep and stayed on deck all night singing to the accompaniment of an accordion.

At dawn, three miles off the coast of Haifa, an Israeli corvette fired a four-gun salute. Gaily bedecked escort vessels approached. The sirens of ships in the bay screamed their salute.

"I am not a kid," Abraham said, "but for me this is bigger than the death of Hitler." After they had come down the gangplank Abraham said: "Now I am at home; nobody can send me anywhere."

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