Chulda (kibbutz)
| Chulda | |||
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| Basic data | |||
| hebrew : | חוּלְדָּה | ||
| State : |
 Israel
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| District : | Central | ||
| Founded : | 1930 | ||
| Coordinates : | 31 ° 50 ′ N , 34 ° 53 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 119 m | ||
| Residents : | 1096 (as of 2018) | ||
| Community code : | 0160 | ||
| Time zone : | UTC + 2 | ||
| Postal code : | 76842 | ||
| Community type: | Kibbutz | ||
| Website : | |||
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Chulda (חוּלְדָּה) is now also under the name Hulda known kibbutz about 40 kilometers southeast of Tel Aviv in the lowland at the starting point of the Burma Road , which the Regional Association Gezer in Central District of Israel belongs. It owes its fame not least to its most prominent resident, the writer Amos Oz . What is less well known is that Hulda existed for many years next to the Arab village of Khulda , which was only destroyed in the Palestine War , the Israeli War of Independence , in 1948 and had to give its land to the kibbutz.
history
The founding phase
Ari Shavit referred to Hulda as "the twin sister of Ben Shemen ":
“In the beginning it was an agricultural estate where Jewish immigrants were supposed to learn how to work the land in Palestine. Located in the middle of the country, it was founded in 1908 by the Zionist movement on land bought by Arabs near the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway line and not far from the Arab village of Chulda. An olive grove was laid there in memory of Theodor Herzl and a princely house was built, which was named after the founder of the Zionist movement. "
This is indeed very reminiscent of the creation of Ben Shemen, but according to other sources there is a different story from Ben Shemen for the period before 1908.
“The forest dates back to 1905 when a company called Geula or 'Redemption' bought 500 hectares of land from the Arabs in the village of Hulda. The company intended to divide the purchase into sections and sell it to Jewish newcomers. Unfortunately, Geula had robbed the earth of its minerals through massive grazing and the soil in Hulda was completely sterile - no tree, no bush or no flower interrupted the dreary landscape. And it took hours to get to the next town. Years passed and no one wanted the desolate parcels. Those in charge of Geula, who had borrowed from the bank to buy the land, began to wonder how they would recover their losses. "
The salvation came when the Jewish National Fund ( JNF or JNF-KKL ) decided in 1908 to set up an agricultural training company in Ben Shemen, which led to the opinion that the coexistence of agricultural schools and forest planting was disadvantageous. Therefore, the Herzl Forest, planned in honor of Theodor Herzl, was to be built on the Chulda site. According to the JNF , an olive farm was therefore founded in Hulda in 1909, to which the building later called the Herzl House belonged. The farm was managed by the German agronomist Louis Barish, who lived generously on the first floor of the house and left the poorly equipped basement to the workers. Louis Barish was overwhelmed by the task. He did not realize that the cultivation methods with which he was familiar from Europe were completely unsuitable in the Middle East and fell out with the Zionist workers, who mainly came from Eastern Europe. After just under a year, Barish was chased away and the vast majority of the olive trees planted in Hulda soon perished. In 1910, the head of Ben Shemen, Yitzhak Elazari Wilkansky, who later called himself Ithzak Elazari Volcani (he is the father of the microbiologist Benjamin Elazari Volcani , born in Ben Shemen in 1915 ), also took over the management of Hulda in 1910, succeeding Barish . “Hulda changed and became a training company. In addition to the olive trees, fruit trees, shrubs and forests were also planted, including almonds, pines, acacias, cypresses and carob, and there was a chicken coop, a cowshed, grain fields and farms that made the place a versatile business. "
The 1920s and 1930s
During the First World War, most of the workers left the farm or were evacuated. The few remaining farmers had to struggle with a lack of water and a plague of locusts. After the war, a group of pioneers settled in Hulda and revived the idea of reforesting the land. They mainly planted pines, and Hulda became a training company again.
In the summer of 1929 there were serious clashes between Jews and Arabs , which also hit Hulda. Arabs attacked the school and besieged the Herzl house. British soldiers arrived that night and ordered the defenders to leave the place. The farm and forest were destroyed and were abandoned for two years.
The new beginning for Hulda took place in 1931 through "the moderate, harmonious socialist commune Gordonia ", the youth movement of the Polish " Hitachdut " . It was founded in Prague in 1920 and had most of its support in eastern Galicia. Similar to the right-wing Poalei Zion, Hitachdut advocated a non-Marxist form of socialism and supported the use of the Hebrew language. With a membership of over 3,000 people in Poland, she ran a number of Hebrew day schools and cultural centers. Their youth organization was called Gordonia. ”These Gordonia members lived for many years in peaceful neighborhood with their Arab neighbors before they decided in 1937 to leave the farm they ran in the Herzlwald and to found Kibbutz Hulda on a nearby hill. The decisive factor here were the more favorable conditions for agriculture at the new location.
Hulda before and during the War of Independence
In early October 1943, the day after Rosh Hashanah , Hulda was surrounded by hundreds of British soldiers and police who were looking for hidden weapons. They found ammunition and as a result seven members of the kibbutz were arrested and tried in Jerusalem. The kibbutz members were sentenced to between two and six years in prison and some remained imprisoned until the end of the Second World War.
After the announcement of the UN partition plan for Palestine , Hulda quickly got into the center of the armed conflict in 1948, especially since it was the starting point for supply trips to besieged Jerusalem on the so-called Burma Road . Hulda became the starting point and organizational point for people who wanted to break through the blockade.
On March 11, 1948, Arabs ambushed a convoy that had set out from Hulda and killed 22 inmates. For David Ben-Gurion this was the reason to strive for Jewish control over the villages in the Jerusalem corridor .
“On April 6, 1948, shortly after two o'clock in the night, the soldiers of the first Zionist battalion ever formed left Kibbutz Hulda, crossed the Herzl Forest and attacked the Arab village of Chulda. By four o'clock they had captured it. The residents fled, their houses were destroyed and the fields looted. Much of the land that belonged to the Palestinian village was added to the kibbutz. "
In 2013, only the “ madaffa , the charming little inn” remained of the Arab Chulda , which served as a workshop for a sculptor and was surrounded by a sculpture garden. The Israeli settlement Mishmar David ( Lage ) was built on the remainder of the village . In May 1948, Hulda was bombed by the Egyptian air force, two kibbutz members were killed, the children's home was completely destroyed and all the children and women went to Tel Aviv for four months until the houses were rebuilt.
Amos Oz and Hulda
Amos Klausner, born on May 4, 1939 in Jerusalem, joined the Kibbutz Chulda in 1954 and took the name Oz (Hebrew for "strength").
“At the end of that summer I changed my name and moved with my duffel bag from Sde Nechemja to Hulda, initially as a boarding school student at the local high school (which, out of sheer modesty, was called the 'advanced level'). After finishing school, before starting my military service, I became a member of the kibbutz. Hulda was my home from 1954 to 1985. "
After finishing his army service, Oz returned to the kibbutz in 1961 and worked in the cotton fields. His first short stories were published in his early twenties, and the kibbutz congregation sent him to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study philosophy and literature from 1960 to 1963 . With the BA degree he returned to Hulda, where he divided his time between writing, agriculture and teaching at the kibbutz high school for twenty-five years. In Hulda, Oz also met his wife, Nily Zuckerman; the two married in 1960.
“In Kibbutz Hulda, where he lived for more than 30 years, he acquired his socialist outlook. His kibbutzniks inspired many of the characters in his writing, and in return, his royalties went into the common household. "
When asked how real the literary characters in his book Among Friends were, Oz responded in 2013:
“When it appeared in Israel, everyone in my old kibbutz Hulda quickly looked to see whether they recognized themselves or other residents in it. You didn't see anyone. A kibbutz neighbor once told me that he always combs his hair before walking past my study so that it doesn't appear in a story without being combed. The characters in the book are made up, but based on my experiences. For me the kibbutz was the best possible university. I learned more about human nature there than if I had traveled the world ten times. It was a small world of 500 people, men, women, children, old people. I knew them all. I knew who was doing what behind whose back. They also knew everything about me. That would be impossible in Tel Aviv, Berlin or Cologne. "
Amos Oz died in 2018 and, as he wished, was buried in Kibbutz Hulda, where he had lived for 35 years.
Hulda today
After the end of the War of Independence, Hulda experienced a social and economic boom, which made it possible to intensify agriculture, build a swimming pool and build apartments for veterans of the kibbutz. In 1975 the kibbutz built its own factory, the Hulda Transformers . In addition to transformers, power supply systems and complete kits for civil, military and medical equipment are also produced there.
In the mid-eighties, Israel's economic situation worsened and led to radical changes in Hulda as well. The completion of a precast concrete plant turned out to be difficult, and many members left the kibbutz. In the nineties there was another economic and social depression, as a result of which several business activities of the kibbutz had to be given up. In October 2000 a radical turning point followed: the kibbutz's operations were privatized.
In Hulda, from then on, the focus was on fruit growing, and in 2000 a winery was set up, the Barkan Winery , one of the largest wineries in Israel. In 2009 an expansion of the kibbutz was tackled and the construction of 138 residential units began.
A major attraction of Hulda is still the Hulda Forest National Park , which today extends over an area of more than 200 dunams . Its center is the Herzl-Haus, but there are also other memorial points:
- The Pool: Located on the edge of the olive grove, it was originally fed with water from the pipeline that was installed along the Burma Road during the War of Independence to supply Jerusalem with water after the main water supply was cut. There are remains of the original pipeline near the basin.
- The Hulda Memorial: It is a stone sculpture by the sculptor Batya Lishansky from 1937, which commemorates Efraim Chisik, his sister Sara and others who were killed in the armed conflicts that accompanied Israel's establishment. Efraim Chisik was killed in the fighting for Hulda in 1929 (see above), his sister nine years earlier in the fighting for Tel Chai .
- Rachel's Grove: The grove was planted in 1931 to commemorate the poet Rachel , who passed away that year.
- The quarry: The quarry used to extract building blocks from 1936–1939 was later used by the Haganah as a shooting range.
Population development
There were residents in Hulda in 2018.
| year | 1948 | 1961 | 1972 | 1983 | 1995 | 2001 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2016 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residents | 330 | 317 | 307 | 378 | 328 | 305 | 321 | 313 | 306 | 332 | 345 | 347 | 386 | 395 | 404 | 502 | 776 | 859 | 962 | 1,067 |
Born in Hulda
- Ron Huldai (* 1944), Israeli politician of the social democratic Avoda, former fighter pilot and school director, mayor of Tel Aviv since 1998
literature
- Ari Shavit: My promised land. Triumph and Tragedy of Israel , Bertelsmann, Munich, 2015; ISBN 978-3-570-10226-8 .
- Alex Bein: The Return to the Soil , The Youth and Hechalutz Department of the Zionist Organization, Jerusalem, 1952.
- Amos Oz: A story of love and darkness , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, ISBN 3-518-45788-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ אוכלוסייה ביישובים 2018 (population of the settlements 2018). (XLSX; 0.13 MB) Israel Central Bureau of Statistics , August 25, 2019, accessed May 11, 2020 .
- ↑ Ari Shavit: My Promised Land , p. 365
- ↑ a b Hulda Forest and Herzl House , The Jerusalem Post, May 17, 2007. "The forest dates back to 1905, when a company called Geula, or" Redemption, "purchased 500 acres of land from the Arabs of Hulda village. The company intended to divide its purchase into sections and sell them to Jewish newcomers. Unfortunately for Geula, massive grazing had depleted the earth of its minerals and the soil at Hulda was completely barren - not a tree, bush or flower broke the dreary landscape. And it took hours to get to the nearest town. Years went by, and no one wanted the desolate plots. Geula officials, who had borrowed from the bank to acquire the land, began to seriously wonder how they would recover their losses. "
- ↑ The Hebrew name of the JNF is Keren Kayemeth Le'Israel , from which the abbreviation KKL or JNF-KKL is derived.
- ↑ KKL-JNF: Hulda Forest - Herzl House: the Beginings of Israel . The strange thing is that the JNF tells the story of the Hulda Forest on this page in almost exactly the same way as Alex Bein and Ari Shavit tell for Ben Shemen. The JNF tells a story closer to Bein and Sharit on its page about the KKL-JNF: Ben Shemen Forest
- ^ Hulda Forest - Herzl House: the Beginings of Israel
- ↑ a b c d e KKL-JNF: Hulda Forest - Herzl House: the Beginings of Israel . "Hulda changed and became an educational farm. In addition to the olive trees, fruit trees, shrubs and forests were planted, including almond, pine, acacia, cypress and carob, and there was a chicken coop, a cowshed, grain fields and agricultural industries that turned the place into a diversified farm . "
- ↑ Ari Shavit: My Promised Land , p. 365
- ^ Alfred Katz: Poland's Ghettos at War , Twayne Publishers, New York, 1970, p. 18 (quoted from Google Books)
- ↑ a b c d e The story of Hulda (official website), translation from Hebrew with the help of the Google translator.
- ^ Jerusalem Attractions: The Jerusalem Corridor
- ↑ Ari Shavit: My Promised Land , p. 366
- ↑ Ari Shavit: My Promised Land , pp. 369-370
- ↑ Amos Oz: A Story of Love and Darkness , p. 732
- ↑ Biography Amos Oz
- ↑ Julia Pascal: Amos Oz obituary , The Guardian, Friday, December 28, 2018. See also: Catarina von Wedemeyer: The mother of all sins. A fictional kibbutz and a real writer: a visit to Amos Oz in Tel Aviv and a conversation about the 'boldest revolution of the 20th century' , taz die tageszeitung, April 21, 2013
- ^ Lit.Cologne: “I learned everything in the kibbutz” , interview with Inge Günther on March 14, 2013
- ^ Hulda Transformers was established in 1975 and is owned by Kibbutz Hulda
- ↑ About Barkan Winery
- ↑ Encyclopaedia Judaica: Batya Lishansky
- ↑ אוכלוסייה ביישובים 2018 (population of the settlements 2018). (XLSX; 0.13 MB) Israel Central Bureau of Statistics , August 25, 2019, accessed May 11, 2020 .
- ↑ אוכלוסייה ביישובים 2018 (population of the settlements 2018). (XLSX; 0.13 MB) Israel Central Bureau of Statistics , August 25, 2019, accessed May 11, 2020 .