ISRAEL AT 5 5
HARD TO FORGET
Local Zionists recall jubilation at statehood.
Tova and Sy Salinger
or Tova and Sy Salinger of
Southfield, questions about the
first Yom HaAtzmaut bring stories
of family, friends and love.
Students at the University of
Michigan, they were on their first date
the night the United Nations voted for
partition. They were going on a
hayride sponsored by the
Intercollegiate Zionist Federation of
America, a group they both belonged
to at U-M in Ann Arbor.
"We stood and listened to the vote
on the radio and then went on the
hayride," remembers Tova, adding that
two other couples on that hayride, all
on their first dates, later were married.
Active with Habonim, the youth
movement of Israel's Labor Party, they
heard a lot of talk about going to help.
Sy's older brother, Herschel, had left
the United States for Palestine in 1934
and, as a factory manager, was
involved in the-shipment of arms to
the Haganah, the precursor to the
Israeli Defense Forces.
Sy also remembers Aharon Remez,
an emissary from pre-state Israel to
Detroit-area Habonim in 1941. "He
went to Canada to join the air force
and turned up as head of the Israeli
Air Force in 1948," Sy recalls.
He also mentioned a counselor at
Habonim's Camp Kinneret, located
near Chelsea, who also went to
Canada before he began ferrying air-
planes and supplies from
Czechoslovakia to the Jewish forces in
Palestine. In addition, Detroiters
Bernie Schiff and Abbie and Herb
Hordes went to help the Jewish state.
"Once the matter of partition had
been decided, it was more a question
of when Israel would declare inde-
pendence," Sy recalls. When Israel
declared itself a state, "there was no
celebration because the war broke out
so soon. That really dampened the cel-
ebration for quite a while."
— Don Cohen, special writer
58
Sy and Tova Salinger hold a picture from
a Zionist gathering at the University of
Michigan in early 1948 that calledfor
the United Nations and the British to
allow Jewish refugees to enter Palestine.
Betty Provizer
Starkman
f it is possible to be born a Zionist,
Betty Provizer Starkman of
Bloomfield Hills thinks it's likely it
happened to her.
"You can call me a generational
Zionist," she says.
She recalls walking through her pre-
dominantly Jewish neighborhood in
Detroit, "a little girl with blonde hair
and a pushke, collecting money for the
Jews of Palestine."
"My parents always said that our
family was in Israel," Starkman says.
Yigal Allon, one of Israel's founding
fathers, was her father's cousin. A sec-
ond cousin of hers was killed on May
14, 1948, the first day of the War of
Independence.
Starkman almost left school to help
the Jewish state, but Allon told her to
stay put. "[He] told me that Israel didn't
need me there, they needed educated
American Jews to help from America. I
was very angry at him," she recalls.
She continued her studies at Wayne
University, where she was active with
the Intercollegiate Zionist Federation
of America and the Zionist youth
movement Hashomer Hatzair. Two of
her classmates, Rudy Phillips and
Eugene Plaus, didn't show up for
school and "their parents said they
didn't know where they were. We later
found out they had gone to
Czechoslovakia to smuggle themselves
Dena Greenberg
T
Dena Greenberg in
her apartment holding
a copy of Builders and
Dreamers, Habonim
Labor Zionist Youth in
America,' co-edited by
her, .fi-iend J.J.
Goldberg, the current
editor of the English-
language Forward.
""he Labor Zionist movement is
my family," says Dena
Greenberg of Southfield, recall-
ing the tremendous influence Israel
and Zionism has had on her life.
"I remember when we established
Poalei Zion [the socialist Zionist youth
organization that became Habonim]
in Detroit," she says.
•
She also has vivid memories of the
day Israel was established. The evening
was marked by a rare phone call from
family in Israel. "I remember I was at
home that evening when my uncle
called my father. They had both been
in Poalei Zion since 1909. My uncle
told us, 'Mazel toy.' I don't remember
if my father cried but I know I did."
Greenberg left Detroit _that- weekend
for New York to attend a major rally
and celebration. "I worked for the
Jewish. News and though I wasn't a