Sunday, 14 march 1948 The small blue Ford pickup turned pulled up with its engine running across the ticket line of a movie house in Tel-Aviv. Two men wearing khaki sweaters and wool caps with a barely discernible embroidered Star of David and Sten guns slung over their shoulders pulled Michael out of the line and rushed him onto the back of the pickup. It took off as soon as he was hoisted aboard and the two men jumped in after them. From beginning to end, the incident took less than a minute. This abduction brought Michael into the Israeli Defense Forces and an isolated village of religious...

This memoir is a personal history of landing on the shore of British mandate Palestine in 1936 after escaping Nazi Germany, witnessing the development of Tel-Aviv as a child and a young adult during a period of dramatic events: Arab riots; the Second World War; the rise of Jewish terrorist groups and resistance to the mandate; existential struggle of the fledgling Yishuv for survival during the waning years of the British mandate, and the birth of the State of Israel. This was also a period of breathtaking cultural, civic, and industrial development brought about by the influx of refugees...

The middle storefront of the last building on the South handled the banana trade. Six nights after seven o'clock during the week, and all day Sunday, the communist-sympathizer owner of the business leased the store to the local communist party for use as its meeting place. Un exchange for the pittance that he charged, the members would mop the floor, and haul to the back the accumulated refuse of the day. A tattered sign in the access passageway to the side of the building said BANANA CLUB ENTER SECOND DOOR FROM BEHIND. It was a widely known secret that this was a pseudonym for Communist...