By her brother Asher Cailingold
Esther Cailingold was born in London, England, the eldest child of deeply religious and Zionist parents. A brilliant student, she graduated from London University in 1945 at the age of 20 and immediately began working with young Holocaust survivors who had been brought to England for rehabilitation. In the summer of 1946, she was offered a position as an English and History teacher at the Evelina de Rothschild school in Jerusalem, enabling her to achieve her life-long ambition of joining in the effort to establish an independent State in the ancient Jewish homeland.
Soon after her arrival in Jerusalem, she was witness to the vicious campaign of harassment carried out by British troops against the Jewish population and, particularly, against the efforts of the Jews to organize a nascent defense force, the forerunner of the IDF. Haganah boys were arrested by the British, their arms confiscated and, on some occasions, they were released in Arab areas to be lynched by the mob. Esther very soon began to accompany the boys on their way to guard duty, hiding their weapons under her clothing. The behaviour of her former countrymen brought back memories of Oswald Mosley’s jack-booted Blackshirts marching in the Jewish areas of London both before and after the Second World War, with their horrendous anti-Semitic slogans and their Nazi-style banners.
Esther was determined to get to know the country and its people in depth. Within a few short weeks she had established contact with her family, living mostly in the Tel Aviv area, including her paternal grandfather, uncles, aunts and cousins, who had left Poland for Palestine in the 1920’s. She travelled to the kibbutzim in the North of the country, took part in the Daliah Dance Festival and joined trips led by the famous geographer and guide, Zev Vilnai, to the Dead Sea and the Judean Desert. She wrote wonderfully descriptive letters to her family in London, increasing their enthusiasm for their own Aliyah in the ensuing years.
The campaign to prevent Jewish immigration into Palestine, climaxing in the saga of the ‘Exodus’ in the summer of 1947, prompted Esther to take a more active role in the struggle for independence. She took up part-time voluntary duties as a continuity announcer in English at the secret Haganah radio station. Following the UN decision to partition Palestine and enable the establishment of a Jewish State, Esther heard from friends that a Haganah course was about to begin to train girls for combat duties. Aware of the desperate shortage of trained manpower, she decided to put her teaching career on hold and joined the underground Jewish military forces in their desperate struggle to defend the civilian population and ensure the viability of the borders of the future State.
Her preparation for battle can at best be described as in-service training. After completing a short period of weapons-training and field-lore, she was posted to various outposts in the Jerusalem area, including Tsova and Nevei Yaacov, then
an isolated settlement cut off from the main city. Her official role was to act as cook for the unit defending the area but she insisted on taking her turn at guard duty, wielding a heavy British Lee-Enfield rifle, her short, slight figure straining to keep the weapon on target. On several occasions, she rushed to the sandbagged ramparts when the unit was under attack and proved herself to be a skilled sniper and a very useful member of the defending garrison.
Then came the decision of the Haganah High Command to withdraw all women from front-line duties and to create a Women’s Corps, to be known as ‘Chen’. Esther reluctantly found herself reassigned to the HQ of the Sixth Brigade at the
Schneller Camp on HaNeviim Street in Jerusalem. Within days she had undertaken various duties, including her continued work at the Haganah Radio, welfare work with the families of those in uniform as well as Military Police duties in tracking down deserters and those who had avoided the call to service. Her evening hours were often spent eavesdropping on the conversations of British officers on behalf of Haganah Intelligence. Friends who met her at that time describe her as being: “A totally authentic person who wore no make-up and did not seem to need any. She had a roundish face and a pointed obstinate chin, brown eyes and thick brown hair.” Someone else recalls that: “She was the antithesis of the brash Palestinian Jew of those times. When I met her in the Haganah in her over-sized battledress, she looked a little absurd but yet very attractive.” Yet another recollection of those days described Esther as having: “A soft husky voice, very appealing and with an easy laugh, although she was really a very serious person with great spiritual depths.”
Throughout the early weeks of 1948, the situation of the Jewish population of the country became ever more desperate, particularly in Jerusalem which was suffering real hunger due to the prolonged siege, with Arab gangs blocking the main road into the city from the coastal area. During that period, convoys were attacked on all the main highways and efforts were made to bring in supplies by alternative routes. One such incident was the ambush of 35 Palmach fighters on their way to bring supplies to the besieged Etzion bloc. They were all killed by marauding Arabs, including several who were Esther’s close friends, among them Danny Mass, the commander of the unit.
Within the besieged city of Jerusalem, there existed an inner siege, with the severance of contact with the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. A small group of defenders, consisting of Haganah, Etzel and Lehi fighters, some of them young teenagers, were desperately trying to defend the 1,700 Jewish residents, many of them old and sick people. Their only source of supplies was the weekly British convoy, bringing replacements for their garrison stationed there and essential food and fuel items for the civilians. Some of the youngsters acted as runners between the outposts of the Jewish defenders, to the annoyance of the British who decided to allow a delegation of teachers to enter the Jewish Quarter in order to take charge of the unruly youngsters. On hearing of this plan, Esther jumped at the chance of returning to the front-lines and, after many delays and much bureaucracy, she joined the Old City garrison at the beginning of May 1948.
Rather than “taking charge of the youngsters”, the teachers were quickly assigned as reinforcements to the defending garrison by the young commander of the Old City, Moshe Rousnak. Esther had come with some combat experience and was appointed as liaison to the chain of outposts defending one half of the Jewish enclave. She soon discovered that the youngsters she met there were not in any sense “unruly’ but were rather acting as brave runners, bringing supplies and ammunition to the fighters in their bunkered positions. As the situation became more desperate with several failed attempts to reinforce the garrison and bring in more arms and ammunition, Esther became increasingly involved in forays to the front-line positions to reinforce units that came under concentrated attack by the Arab forces. She was wounded in the side but after receiving first-aid she insisted on returning to her duties without resting and was seen limping from one post to the other in obvious pain.
With the departure of the British on the eve of the Declaration of Independence, the Jewish Quarter was attacked by a battalion of Jordan’s Arab Legion, their troops moving forward under cover of a heavy Artillery barrage. One of the girls stationed in the Old City describes how Esther “…moved around from one post to another as if she was taking a stroll, but there was a gleam in her eyes, fire and brimstone… I shouted to her to be careful, not to move about on the rooftops as there was constant shooting. But Esther was as if possessed and didn’t listen to anyone.”
On Wednesday May 26th, a final attempt was made to parachute ammunition to the defenders of the Jewish Quarter, but the wind was in the wrong direction that day, and the supplies fell into the hands of the Arabs. Later that day, an Arab Legion armoured vehicle began pumping deadly fire into the Israeli positions. With no anti-tank weapons, the only alternative was to try to reinforce each building that came under attack, using small-arms fire to repel the attackers. Esther ran forward ahead of the other fighters to assist the last main outpost, which was blown up as she reached her destination. Buried under the ruins, she was removed by her colleagues who brought her to the first-aid post where she lay mortally wounded.
The Jewish Quarter surrendered on Friday, May 28th and on that day, the wounded were evacuated to the Armenian School under the supervision of the Arab Legion officers. Esther died that Friday night after having prayed the Sabbath eve prayers, surrounded by her wounded colleagues who were later taken prisoner and spent the next 18 months in a Jordan prison camp.
Esther’s body was brought out of the Old City with the civilian evacuees and she found her last resting-place at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. She left the last letter she wrote to her family in London with a colleague, who made sure that it reached its destination. That letter has been quoted by many people who have recorded the events in Jerusalem in 1948, including Sir Martin Gilbert, the eminent British historian. The letter ends with the words: “I am thinking of you all, every single one of you in the family, and am full of pleasure at the thought that you will one day, very soon I hope, come and enjoy the fruits of that for which we are fighting.” May her memory be a blessing to us all.
Author: Asher Cailingold (Esther’s brother), who is also the author of a book about his sister, “An Unlikely Heroine.”