David Sprecher

The New Ararat David Sprecher

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 from Central Europe. As a soldier during the 1948 War of Independence I participated in the change from a defensive force to a fighting force and an army. Viewed through the prism of time, my life refracts into episodes like a beam of light refracts into a spectrum of colors. Also as in a spectrum, each episode has its own dark lines. My life wasn't the only thing that I saw through this prism. As I was growing up, Tel-Aviv was growing up with me; as I evolved, so did its pluralistic society. It encompassed a wide spectrum of the Diaspora; its descendants, I among them, were already part of a new society in the making. The cultural dominance of the fifth Aliyah, of which I was part, was being diluted in the 1940s and 1950s by refugees from Asian and African countries arriving in growing numbers. I have therefore written this narrative in a broader historical, political and social setting, capturing events through the eyes of the child and adolescent, and looking back at them with the eyes of the man.