AP « el? THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY JEWRY ORAL HISTORY DIVISION INTERVIEW WITH ANNA GRACE LIND SUBJECT: THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN JERUSALEM Interviewer: Michael Klein yg 5 November 1975 Tape No: C/1131 Q The first question is one of biography. A Iwas born in Jerusalem. Actually, i was born in this house which is now the Spafford Children's Center. My mother and father, when they got married, came back to live here in this house, although my grandparents had moved to where the American Colony is now, some years before this. When I was six months old, they = moved out of the city because it was too difficult to carry me up and down the hill, We then lived outside the City walls. All my childhood memories are of the house which is now called Jerusalem House, on the Nablus Road. Q What are your earliest memories of the Anerican Colony? A Hy childhood memories of the Anerican Colony were, I think, mostly of Sunday afternoons. My grandmother always used to have a tea party in the big sitting Foon at the American Colony. The young men in the colony used to play a brass ‘band and we children used to march around in circles, singing a hymn or other songs,2 and people used to come for tea or coffee every Sunday. They came from all walks of life in Jerusalem; Jews, Moslems and Christians. It used to be a very happy event with the band playing and children singing, and tea and coffee served, and everybody havirig a good time. I think that's the most vivid memory I have of my early childhood. Are all the memories good? A Yes, I have no bad memories. We had school in the American Colony when I was little. Q Who were the members of that colony, and what did they do? A It was a community composed of Americans, Swedes and others. Q Now I'm talking about the American Colonysand after that the Anglican comunity? A First of all, there were the menbers of my family - my grandmother, mother, father, sisters and brothers, my aunt and uncle and their children, plus the other members of the community. Their names? A Anna Spafford was my grandmother, and then my mother and father, Bertha and Frederick Vester, and my aunt, Grace Whiting, and hér husband John Whiting and their child- ren, then all the Swedish people that joined the American Colony, plus their children. The Anglican Community? I really don't remember anything about then very much in my early years. They were missionaries, and they looked down upon3 | the American Colony because the American Colony did not preach or try to convert anybody, so we were considered outcasts rather; so we didn't have much in common. We didn't really meet them very mich. I suppose my mother’ and father did, but as a child, they never came into my consciousness - until I was grown up. Q hat is your first memory of the Close of St George's? A Well, the first menory of St George's Close I think was during the 1974 War when Iwas a very little girl, and all the English people had gone away and the Turks were there. They had taken/tver. One day they dug up the floor in the Cathedral to look for the cannons that somebody had told them were there. Of course, they got mixed up between canon and cannon: Which Turks? Do you remember? A Jamal. Pasha, Not the big Jamal Pasha, the small Jamal Pasha, as he was called. He lived there in the Bishop's House. I never met him, but I remember that they were there, St George's School was full of Turkish soldiers, something like a barracks. We lived next door and we could hear them beating the soldiers or prisoners at night. It used to make us feel very upset. q What were the relations of your family and its cohabitants with those around them? A We tried to live in harmony with everyone. We had friends amongst the Jews and the Moslems and the Christians. MWe had friends amongst everybody. q Do you remember anything specific about your relationship, about your family's relationship, with the American Consulate General?4 A When I was grown up, there was never any trouble at all. They were all very friendly. However, there had been a time when this was not so. Q What had you heard about it? A I heard from my mother, But that is all in Mother's book "Our Jerusalem", so I need not repeat it here. Q Nothing moze than that? A No. : Q Which prominent people passed through your lives during those early years, and what do you remenber? A Hell, I renéber Jamal Pasha very clearly when he came to Jerusalem. We used to always rush to the garden wall to see him pass our house. Then there was Nimette Jamil, a young Turkish girl who came to live with us for a few years. Her mother was a Turkish princess who died and left Nimette alone with her father. He was a very important and busy man, and he begged Mother to allow Nimette to live with us. She was just my age and we became good friends. Her father took her back to Istanbul before the British came in 1917. Then General Allenby, of course, and Sir Ronald Storrs. Those two were great friends of my parents. They often came to our house, so I saw them. Q what did you hear about General Allenby? What did you reneber about him? a5 A Well, he was a very distinguished man, very nice. Q Mhat about Storrs? A Sir Ronald? Well, he was here much longer and he lived in Jerusalem; Lord Allenby was here for only a short time. Sir Ronald Storrs was different. Me did get to know him very well. We used to play football at his house every week. He lived on Prophets’ Street. There was a field behind his house where we used to play football and then we'd have tea around his dining room table, and afterwards he used to read us Sherlock Holmes, or something Tike that. Q Who played football with you? A Sir Ronald Storrs invited all the celebrities who cane to Jerusalem to join our football games. I wish I could remember who some of them were. Q You don't remember any one of then? A Tt's so long ago, but Norman Bentwich and the Magneses were often there; I believe Lawrence of Arabia came once, and menbers of thd British Cabinet etc. Q Do you-remember any other famous people besides Allenby and Storrs? A Oh, I remember Ben Gurion, Sharett and others. But I never really got to know then personally. Eshkol?6 A No. Eshkol came along much later. I left Jerusalem in '37, and then it was not until '52 when I came back and we were a divided city until ‘67. Well, Eshkol died shortly afterwards, so there wasn't really any time, Q Magnes’ children? A Yes, David and Jonathan. They always played football with us as Sir Ronald Storrs’ house. We knew the Magneses very well. Q And doeyou remember any Arab personalities? I guess now we're back to 'S2 perhaps, instead of '37. Fen a ag a ee Well of course, the Husseini family lived next door to us. (Houssa Kassim Pasha Housseini and others.) The Husseinis? A Yes. And Musa Alami we used to know quite well. Q Ben Yehuda? A Ben Yehuda of course; I knew them from way back. ‘His daughters.were a bit older than I was, but nevertheless I've known them for years. And the Yellins. Judith Ginat (she was a Yellin before her marriage), she's still a good friend of mine. I went to the Jerusalem School of Music. My first music teacher was a Miss Zeitlin who died unfortunately just before the Six Day War, so that I didn't get.to see her again, And then later at the Jerusalem Schbol of Music I was taught by Mr Séal.7 Q Which incidents made the most impression upon you during the years immediately before the Independence struggle? That would include the period of the riots. A IT wasn't here very much during those years because I went away in the late twenties and I came back in '34; and I was here only till '37, so I was here very little during the thirties, practically not at all except for those few years. How about the heavy riots in ‘29? A Oh no. I wasn't here then. And I wasn't here for most of the riots. But in '34, "36, there were riots, and it was difficult to get anywhere except in convoy. I mean, if you wanted to go to Haifa, for instance, you had to go in a convoy. And there was shooting every night on the hills round about. It wasn't nice. It wasn't pleasant. Q Do you remember any specific incident? A Ro. I had no experience, any unpleasant experience. Q How did your-parents relate to the riots? A T really don't know. I reatly couldn't tell you. I know my mother often said that she was not anti-Jewish, but she felt that the Zionists were in too great a hurry. I often heard Mother say, “If only they could have come in quietly without waving the flag so much, they could have settled and bought the land and the Arabs would have welcomed them". If only it could have been done a littleweg 8 bit slower, it could have been accomplished without hurting the Arabs. And this is why she felt so sympathetic to the Arabs, because they were hurt and pushed out. Q Can you tell a little bit about the Spafford Children's Center? Can you just tell us a little bit about the progress of the Hospital? The earlier things you remenber. Some of the incidents. ‘ 3 It's going to be 50 years since the Hospital was started by my mothenthis Christmas. It was Christmas Eve that was the beginning, the starting of the Hospital. Mother had a school of handicrafts to try to teach the young girls to earn their living and so prevent child marrfages, which were very prevalent at that time. She gave them a Christmas party and after the party she was going to go and sing Christ- mas carols on the Shepherds’ Fields. On the way down the hill to the Damascus Gate, she met a man and woman with a tiny baby, and the woman was very i11. Mother asked them, "Where are you going?" She knew there was nothing else up here, and she saw they were peasants, The man answered, “My wife is very 111, She just . had a baby yesterday, and as she was so ill, I brought her in to put her in the v hospital, but the hospital is closed." Well, Mother thought, here I am going to commemorate the birth of Jesus, for whom there was no room in the inn, and here ‘is a modern madonna right in front of me. As she was on the hospital board of ‘the Government Hospital. she got the woman admitted, and the next day was Christmas. She forgot about them until the man came with his baby and said, "Please complete your kindness." He said, "My wife died in the night, but if I take the baby home it will die because I live in a cave and there's no one to look after it." So Mother took the baby and installed it with a nurse.in this house. In less than two weeks, she had so many applications for motherless babies, that it seemed the thing to do. So she started a baby home and the school of handicrafts moved else- where. It was a baby home for quite a.nunber of years.9 And then she started a clinic with Dr Kagan - also an Infan# Welfare Center - where they tried to improve the health of the babies. Helena Kagan helped Mother to start this work here and continued as doctor in charge until 1948. Very soon the sick babies replaced the well babies and it became a: hsopital, which lasted$til] 1971. After the 1967 War, we decided that a change was necessary. We were now in Israel, and the medical standard was much higher than it had been ‘in Jordan, We had either to raise the satandard of our Hospital or we had to do something else, And as we were having financial difficulties, we thought ittwould’ be much better to change from curative to preventive medicine - so reluctantly we closed the Hospital and started the preventive work, which we called the Spafford Children's Center. So now we have a sick baby clinic which operates six days a week. Then we have five Israeli specialists who hold weekly clinics in endo- crinology and gastrEnterology, défratology, neurology and an asthma clinic - plus an ante-natal clinic. Q How did you get on with the Jordanian authorities at the time? A We got along well. It was the only children's hospital, so it was terribly needed. Q Anything else you remember about the hospital,or any anecdotes or stories? A It was a very good little hospital. The Ford Foundation gave us the money to build a surgical wing, and the clinic underneath, so it was a very well-rounded: hospital. We used to do orthopaedics as well as surgery. And Dr Maken came to help us right after the Six-Day War. He was head of the Orthopaedics Department at Hadassah. He continued to help us as long as we were a hospital, with our orthopaedic work. 310 Q You weren't here around the time of the 1947 conflicts? A No. No, fF wasn't here. Q When did you come back? A In *82. H Q Can you tell us anything about the aftermath of the ‘47... A When I came in ‘52, it was a most horrible shock to me. The worst was the feeling of claustrophobia in not being able to go across to the rest of the city, It was terrible! I can't express to you what a shock it was to see the z city divided, And I didn't like it at all. It was horrible. 1 finally got permission through the American Consulate to cross ovér for three days into Israel. You know, three days went too quickly, I had to come back on a certain hour and time, so I didn't get to see any people. We motored up to Galilee and we motored down to Béershéba and then the time was up. That was all 1 was able to do. And I sperk the night at the Consulate on Agron Street. After I returned, I was followed by the Jordanian Secret Police fora long time. I suppose they ‘thought I was a spy. Q How did you react to that? A I just laughed. Q And how did it stop,finally?VW A Oh, I suppose it just petered out. Q What do you remember about the Six-Day War and its aftermath? A Oh, that was terrific. I could tell you a lot about that. I was here in this house. My sister and I were here, And I came in that morning just after she had arrived from the American Colony Hotel. I told her I heard on the way that the ar had started’ By this time it was quite obvious as there was a lot of shooting. So we quickly made plans. As my brother Horatio was away and Mother was at the ‘American Colony alone, it was important for one of us to go to the Hotel and the other to remain here at the Hospital. So Frieda decided to go because she lived at the Anerican Colony Hotel anyway, and so I stayed here. We moved all the sick children downstairs, and sent as many home as possiblé. Only those that were very; very Sick @x2¥sKor lived too far away to leave, remained. We had fifteen babies left. The doctor had operated on a small boy for tdSilitis that morning, so we had to put him in the hall near the telephone. That was the safest place, we felt. There was shooting all around, but not as bad as it was near the American Colony Hotel. We had a much easiet time, They had-much more shooting and many more hits. We had really very little damage. He had an electric generator here, so we had electric lights, and we had water from our cistern which we were able to pump up to the tank on the roof. So we had water the whole time and we had plenty of food, so we really managed very well for those four days. But we had no doctor for the remaining sick children. The nurses managed wonder- fully, and only one baby died. It was terribly unpleasant because there was shooting all around. The Arab Legion had gun emplacements in the playground next door and they were shooting over us from the east. The Israelis fortunately didn't answer, because if they had, we'd have been shot to pieces. We had only one hit,12 and that happened on the very last day, in the morning. There were loudspeakers on the road outside the city walls saying, "Put down your arms, and everything will be alright. Put up a white flag and don't fight, and everything will be fine," Q In what language? A In Arabic. Anyway, I am afraid no one put down their arms., because the day SS before, when tlie Arab Legion evacuated the Old City, they announced on loudspeakers, "Now's your chance. Get out and run! Because we're leaving you, and you'd better runi" And of course a lot of people did run away. However, those that remained took up arms left by the Jordan Army and started shooting. They shot their way in here. At least they tried to as they wanted to shoot from the city walls, and they thought the Hospital was a good way through. I went to the door to stop then, but they threatened to shoot me. The Matron pulled me avay to protect me, so they came in and attempted to get on the wall, but the shooting was too fierce. Fortunately they left very soon, and then I locked the door after |) them quickly, as fast as I could. They were irregulars? A They were our neighbours! Just ordinary people. So the local people took up the Jordanian arms which had been left and did their best to defend themselves. The Israelis opened fire and then all hell was let loose. Mortar shells and everything possible. Planes came down low, shooting with machine guns; shells falling all around us. This lasted about twenty minutes. It was terrible. And then after that, quiet. Then the nurses shouted at me, "Come, come, come, Mrs Lind; come, the Israelis are coming." Of course, they wanted me to protect them. Al] the [eee EEE13, four days they had been saying, "Oh, you Anericans. You are fighting with the Israelis." So now they wanted me to come and protect them. So I went out the kitchen door, The Israelis were coming along the city walls from Herod's Gate, and I went out and said, “Welcome:" ally felt it. I never was so happy to see anybody. Q What happened before the Jordanian Legion left? The Arab Legion left? What was going on in the immediate vicinity? A Well, they were shooting from the wall, from the ¢ity wall, and they jumped down into our garden from time to time. i" Q Did they give special instructions? Did they... A No, they paid no attention to us. Q Anything else about the Six-Day War period? A Well, yes. Let me finish about my Israeli soldiers. They came in and we greeted them warmly. They asked us if we had any soldiers or armed men in the house, and I said, “No, just the sick children and nurses." And they said, “We want to go ‘on the roof," so we took them out on the roof and I begged them to stay there with us to protedt us. I said, "Look, you have the whole top floor here, please stay. You can do what you want, because we've moved all the sick babies downstairs, beds and everything. You just sleep here. Stay here." So they stayed 24 hours. Then they had to move on. But that night they bbought presents for all the children and they brought sweets and all kinds of things. They bought a bottle of wine for me. They couldn't have been nicer. Really, they were just absolutely marvellous.And what about in the American Colony? a A Well, that I only know second-hand from my sister. They had much more shooting there. Frieda and my mother were over in Mother's flat, which is where Horatio and Val live now. A1l the guests had been evacuated; only the servants were there, and they were all hiding in the basement. Apparently the Jordantan soldiers who Were stationed in a house across thé street from the Anerican Cotony next to 3 the Nusseibi house retreated through the American Colony, and when the Israelis came, they must have had a battle in the,.countyardisbut because nobody was there to witness it, we don't know what happened. But the glass and the debris in the courtyard was almost knee-deep. I saw that myself the next day. It was terrible. Q What was your first contact with Jews, with the Israeli population after the Six-Day War? Aside from the soldiers. Péople you knew.. A I told one of the officers who came to the Hospital, he was a doctor and came from the Health: Department to see if we needed anything, I told him, "You know 9 Dr Kagan was the one who started this hospital with Mother. I wish you could bring her to see us"...So he brought her! And Or Helena Kagan was the first to come. It was lovely. What a reunion it was! - Q How was the reopening? A Oh, it was wonderful. Q Now, just going back to the Anerican Colony people, what were their attitudes or the attitudes of the colonists towards Jews?eee Fee en 15 a A Oh, they loved them! My grandfather taught in the Alliance Israelite. My grandparents believed that this was the time for the "Return" of the Jews to the Holy -Land; they believed this firmly (and this, of course, was back in 1881 that I am referring to.)- What did he teach? A He taught English I think. I don't know what else They had a great many friends amongst the Jews, as well as almongst the Arabs. Q So the next question is, what was their attitude towards the Arabs? A Well they liked everybody. I mean, they tried to live with everybody. During those days when my grandparents weee here, there was no problem of Jews and Arabs. Everybody lived happily together. The common enemy was the Turk. Q What was their attitude towards the international ization of Jerusalem? ; A Internationalization of Jerusalem? Q Something that has been talked about for a number of years, even before.... ri A T really don't know. I have no idea. Q Do you think they would have favored it, or do you remember them ever having said anything about favoring it? Ss16 A No. I can't remember. My mother may have thought it was a good idea, but I don't really know for sure. Q What was theiroattitude toward mission? ipratiateet You mean Christian missions? From the history of the American Colony, they did not preach, nor dfd they proselytize, and so they were very much maligned by the missionaries. That was long before my day. When I came along, there was no animosity between us and the missions. Q What was their attitude towards the Commissions of 1937 and 1946? A Please don't ask me that, because I really don't know. Q No memory at 211? A I wasn't here in the first place, and I really don't know. Q What was their attitude towards the Mandatory Government? = A Oh, I think they were very happy with the Mandatory Government. Q Do you renenber specific relationships witipfficials, high officials, in the — ~ Mandatory Government? A We used to know them all! Everybody! There wasn't anybody we didn't know. The whole lot. From the High Commissioner down. Nancy, the daughter of Sir Herbert Ss7 Samuel, was a great friend of mine. And we still are friends. Also her brother, Nebi Samuel, Lord Samuel, and Hadassah. But Nancy was the youngest of the childvenaf she was approximately my age. I spent a whole summer with them, the Samuels, up in Safed, when they had a summer Holiday. They rented the English mission school th Safed and-made it into a temporary Government House. One day, Nancy and I decided we would chanige clothes; she would wear my dress and I would wear her dress, and we'd go out and meet Sir Herbert and his entourage as they re- turned from .d: visit to the villages. They were riding horses as there were no S roads in those days. We thought we would try and fool Sir Herbert that I was Nancy and she me. We must have been quite young to have thought that we could fool him this way, So I went up to greet ‘him as my father. Q What was his reaction? AF eg Oh, he played the game. q Were there any unpleasant incidents with the Mandatory Government ever? A ie) I can't remember any, Q Because of al] the things that were going on at the time, one side or the other side. = ; A i I can't remember any unpleasant things. = Q They never came searching or bothering or... A No. In Turkish times they were always frightenend of, that sort of thing.i 2 Really? > A 7 I mean from what I heard during the First World War. I was very, very young, but I know that the Anerican Colony burnt all the records and everything for fear of being searched. I don't know if they were ever searched, but I know that they birt everything, because people used to be sent to concentration camps for nothing: sa Q What kind of concentration camps? A They used to just send them out like that, into exile, “= a: Q To where? : A To work: Sent away! Exiled. Lots of people here in those days were just exiled and they just had to walk until they got somewhere. It was horrible. BQ Fortunately I was too young.» I gon't really renenber anything about it. + Q What about the Jordanian Adninistration? The Colony and the Colonists? A 2 Well, there weren't many colonists by that time. 7 tet Q Right. ; A When I came back in 'S2, there was my mother and my aunt and about twenty old people, and they gradually died off - from '52 to '68. The last one didd just before ny mother died in June 1968,19 Q What was the relationship then with those few and the Jordanian Administration? A Oh, it was quite pleasant. There wa s nothing very special. Jerusalem was a very backwater place. There was never anything very much here. Jerusalem was never the capital or anything like that. It was always just the backwater, and the Governor and the people were just Moslems and people from the city here. Q What about the relationship with the Israeli Administration? a A ever Oh, it's been very, very happy. 1 haven't gotten/to know any of the top people very mich. Horatio hag, mote than I have. But I've met more ffiends from a friendly point of view, friends of friends and that sort of thing. I was invited to Bet HaNasi to meet President and Mrs Shazar. piso know Teddy Kollek and! his wife, and many others. And then a reception was held at Bet HaNasi - it was a very pleasant evening. Q Thinking back over your whole life in Jerusalem, that part of your life which was in Jerusalem, do you remenber any outstanding incidents, outstanding people, something that really sticks in your mind but hasn't been talked about or written about? A No, I don't think so. My grandmother, 1 think, influenced my life more than anybody else. She was a very remarkable woman. q Would you like to say one or two things about that relationship? A Well, I just was very fond of her, and I think she was a very remarkable woman,20 and I just felt she was very spiritual and saintly., I always felt Wery privileged to be her granddaughter. I don't know what else to say. Q Do you remember any of her attitudes towards the people around her? A I was quite young when she died. It's difficult. I wish I had been older. I always felt that she was an example to live up to. She was always so gentle and kind and she loved people, and she loved God, and everyone was a child of God. To put it all in a ngtshell, she tried to follow Jesus and obey His conmandment "to love one™another". ¢