ISRAEL AT 40 Remembering _1948 Four Detroiters recall Israel's fight for independence For Henry Remington, life in Austria had become exceedingly Staff Writer dangerous. He remembers a pleasant day when he was drinking coffee at a he Vienna cafes were smoky, sidewalk cafe. He looked around, "and the men were elegant and the I saw red flags with swastikas and pic- women were flashy. It was a tures of Hitler's face everywhere," he life of rich romanticism, ciga- says. "They were on every house and rette holders studded with every roof — billions of flags. The whole rhinestones and sparkling chandeliers. country was red." But in the late 1930s, the decadence Remington began his flight. He that characterized Vienna began to traveled from country to country, settl- sputter and crackle, like a movie that ing temporarily in Italy. But as Italy melts under the intense heat of the film became more and more tangled if the projector. In its place came the sound of facist web, the Jewish Remington realiz- pounding boots of the Nazi army and ed he had to find haven outside the signs that read: "Juden Und Hundt ver- country. boten" (Jews and dogs forbidden). By Looking for a visa to anywhere, 1938, Austria belonged to Adolf Hitler. Remington roamed the streets with Greta Grossman, an 18-year-old rows of embassies. Austrian Jew, knew it was time to get "I went from one consulate to out. So she and her brother and sister another looking for a visa," he says. "I dressed like farmers and boarded a thought I could go to England or France train for Czechoslovakia. or some other country — only not back Greta's ultimate destination was to to Austria." be the Jewish homeland. But her Remington even ventured into the journey there would be fraught with Albanian Embassy, where he managed danger. to convince authorities that he wanted Greta, her brother and sister were to vacation in Albania. "But at the last riding along the bumpy tracks when minute they asked 'Sind Sie Jude?' (Are Czech authorities paused before them. you Jewish?)," Remington recalls. "And With no passports, and knowing not a I couldn't say I'm not?' single word of Czech, Greta and her Finally, Remington was able to family were easy targets. They were ar- secure a six-week visa to rested and taken to jail. Czechoslovakia. When his visa — and Relegated to a tiny cell with no his money — ran out, he appealed to the toilet or bed, young Greta asked the Jewish council of Czechoslovakia. He jailkeeper if she might leave the cell to was given two dollars, "which was a help with chores. The matron agreed. very skinny living to make. It was Greta escaped when her captor enough to eat a piece of bread; maybe wasn't looking. She ran wild into drink a cup of coffee." freedom, hiding wherever she could. Greta Grossman and Remington Finally, she found a position caring for the child of a well-established Jewish met at the Jewish council of Czechoslovakia. The two learned of an family. As Greta was wandering through illegal journey that would be made to Czechoslovakia, the man. she would one Palestine, and planned their departure. On March 12, 1938, Henry and day marry was preparing to leave his Vienna home. His ultimate destination, Greta stepped onto a small boat. They sailed throughout Europe, eventually too, would be the Jewish homeland. ELIZABETH KAPLAN I joining a large cargo ship of 713 refugees headed for Palestine. It was an agonizing journey. The rat-infested boat was overcrowded and disease was rampant. Men and women spent their days picking lice out of their hair; the only way they could kill the vermin was by dousing their heads with kerosene, which burned horribly. On board there was no food or drinking water — just moldy crackers. The trip lasted 119 days. Mrs. Remington remembers that several people died along the way. "We cried so much, it was horrible:' Nor did the trouble cease when the boat approached the shores of Palestine. It was late at night. Everyone was silent. Suddenly, a shot blasted through the air. The British called out. The passengers would not be allowed to come ashore. The captain didn't argue. He turn- ed the ship around and headed for the port of his home, Greece. A very unusual thing happened in Athens. The Jewish community there, hearing of the refugees' situation, secured another boat. And so Greta Grossman and Henry Remington, along with several hundred other European Jews, were sent off again, back to Palestine. This time they made it. Mrs. Remington recalls that the travelers transferred to a small, rotting boat as they approached the shore. The vessel was so leaky that the men had to use their dinner bowls to scoop sea water out from the bottom. Even the British could see that the boat could not make another journey, she says. She also remembers the Jews in Haifa pleading with the British authorities to let the refugees ashore. "It was the happiest day of our lives," Mrs. Remington says. "When we came to Israel — that was happiness." It was a happy, but not an easy, life. Not long after their arrival, Remington and Greta Grossman began searching for work. They went to Beit Galim, a small town near Haifa, and were married in 1939. After settling with his new wife in a shack that had no bathroom and no running water, Remington went door to door, volunteering to do virtually any kind of job. "I do everything what you can imagine to make a living," he says. He found work building air-raid shelters. Each day, he carried 200-pound bags of construction materials on his shoulders. He earned 80 cents a day, "and I was very lucky and happy to get 80 cents a day," Rem- ington says. By chance, Remington managed to get a small camera. Although not train- ed as a photographer, he set up a studio with a man from Germany who lived nearby. With that camera, Remington says, "from a poor man became a rich man." He took pictures of everything and everyone — many of which he still has today. Pulling stacks of pictures from an old box, Mrs. Remington points to one of a smiling baby, another of a wedding and a third of an Arab youth, the bulg- ing muscles in his arms held high. Israel became a state 10 years after the Remingtons' arrival. The couple remembers well the day of in- dependence — and how the occupying British army behaved. Piece by piece, the English dumped their property into the ocean. Mrs. Rem- ington remembers that even such items as pianos, tables and chairs were dragg- ed to the shore and thrown in the water, lest they be of some use to the Jewish residents of the new state. British food, too, was tossed haphazardly into the water. Less than two years after Israel became a state, the Remingtons came to the United States and settled in Detroit, where they still reside. THE FIRST DECADE OUT OF THE ASHES: Buchenwald survivors arrive in Palestine, 1945. AT LAST, A HOMELAND: During Israel's first three years, 750,000 immigrants arrived, doubling its population. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1988 FROM THE OUTSET, AT WAR: David Ben-Gurion surveys the troops during War of Independence, 1948.