“It was under the British rule. They did not want to admit too many Jews to the country so that they would not enrage the Arabs. They issued only a limited number of certificates each year. I received the certificate and thus I was able to arrive legally. We went by train from Prague to Trieste, and then we travelled by ship to Haifa for one week. (Which year was it?) It was in 1939. Then we were in a group... then we started establishing a small kibbutz.”
“In the afternoons they were giving us talks about Palestine, about what was here and how people lived here, and this was followed by missionaries – shlichim (emissaries from Palestine) – who came and talked to us about why to live here. We learnt about Jewish history, and every Sunday we went on a trip in the vicinity of Prague. During summer holiday we went on longer trips, and sometimes it was difficult, but we knew that a hard life in kibbutz lay ahead and that we therefore had to get used to harsh conditions.”
“We thought that it had to be like that. Aruchat boker (breakfast), each had half an egg for breakfast, for instance, and kids slept in the house. Then they told us - tomorrow you will work there, and the day after tomorrow there, and it had to work like this.”
Ellen Glasner, née Berger, was born March 8, 1920 in Berlin in a Jewish family. She was a member of the Zionist movement since she was twelve years old. Her mother originally came from Prague, and Ellen moved there with her parents in 1936. She joined the Zionist organization Maccabi Hatzair in Prague; she was participating in the movement’s camps and she led a group of younger children. In 1939 she went to Palestine together with other members of the group. She went through a one-year agricultural course in Afula and then she settled in kibbutz Kfar Ruppin. Her parents perished during the war. Ellen married and with her husband, who came from Třebíč, they raised two sons. She worked in the kibbutz Kfar Ruppin as an administrative worker. Ellen Glasner lives in Kfar Ruppin.
