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Family affair By Avner Avrahami and Reli Avrahami The Frankels, Kibbutz Revadim The cast: Marda, 73, and Yehiel, 75. Advertisement The home: Shaded, green-lawned, between trees bearing pecans and pitangos. In the front is a long table with 20 chairs, near a bicycle with two baskets and Yehiel in a striped shirt. The entrance is from the porch, via a sliding door with shutters. We enter: To the left is the original section, from 30 years ago, to the right the addition from four years ago. The old part contains a living room, kitchen and guest room; the new part has a dining area, a computer desk, a bookcase and a bedroom. The total: 80 square meters. In the living room is a small table with a lace tablecloth, between two sofas (gray and blue). Nearby is a teak buffet ("We bought it 30 years ago in Petah Tikva") and on the wall are old posters of exhibitions by Yehezkel Streichman and Yosl Bergner. Marda offers us whole-wheat cookies with sesame seeds ("I baked"). We partake. Where is the rug? In the summer it is folded up behind the sofa, Marda says. We head for the bedroom. On her side is "Scarlett" (the sequel to "Gone with the Wind"), on his "Letters by Moonlight," a collection of letters written from Jordanian captivity by Yehuda Hitin, a member of the kibbutz. In the computer area is a bookcase containing the Bible (S.L. Gordon edition, with commentaries). We peek into the kitchen. On the range is a pressure cooker ("Ten minutes and it's cooked!"). We ask about the long table on the porch. The children and their families visit every Saturday evening. Children and grandchildren: Ami, 50, married plus three, agronomist; Galia (47), married plus four, art teacher, lives on the kibbutz; Lilach, 44, married plus five, works for Intel; Ella (35), married plus two, registered nurse, BA in philosophy, teaches guided imagery. Occupations (Yehiel): Responsible (for 12 years now) for handling the insurance policies of the kibbutz (vehicle, property and foreign travel). His former positions include orchards coordinator, kibbutz treasurer and secretary (general manager). He has a desk in the kibbutz accounting office. He works four hours a day, five days a week, traveling by bicycle, and retirement is not in his plans ("I feel fine"). He is also the deputy chairman of YESH - Children and Orphans Holocaust Survivors in Israel ("They got off cheap cheap"). Occupations (Marda): Three hours a day, five days a week, she works on the computer in the kibbutz clothing storeroom (Revadim, which is in the process of being privatized, has a pay laundry - NIS 3.70 per item). Twice a week she leads exercise classes ("for people my age"). Among the exercises: "raise your arm, lower your arm, march in place and stretch your foot out backwards and raise it toward your bottom." In the past, as a graduate of the Oranim teachers college, she taught literature, language and history. Retirement: "Are you kidding? I like to work." She gets a token salary from the clothes storeroom, but does not feel exploited. Yehiel's bio: Named Henryk when he was born, in Warsaw in 1932, the only child of an affluent, secular Jewish family. His father owned a brick factory in nearby Radzymin, his mother worked in her parents' clothing store ("exclusive") in Warsaw. When the war broke out, in September 1939, he had just completed first grade. Instead of starting second grade he found himself in the Radzymin ghetto with his parents, where he experienced his first crisis: "I was the only child who did not speak Yiddish." In October 1942, the Germans surrounded the ghetto and transported the inhabitants to Treblinka. His mother, a very resourceful woman who provided for the family by smuggling in food, organized a group to escape. His father chose to remain in the ghetto. "I would only get in the way," he said. "I look too much like a Jew." They never saw him again. After an arduous journey to the east (on the way to Bialystok), his mother found a Polish peasant who agreed to take in Henryk. She continued on her way. Henryk was alone. He was ten. Every morning he took the cows out to pasture, until one night the Germans shot his employer in the farmyard - they suspected him of hiding a few Russian women. The next morning, he relates, the cows bellowed above the pit into which the farmer's body had been thrown and refused to budge. Bio (cont.): An ethnic German who was a Polish citizen took over the farm. He suspected that Henryk was Jewish but was not motivated to investigate. Henryk's mother suddenly reappeared and the two made their way to Warsaw, where they fell into the hands of a szmalcownik, someone who made a living out of hunting down Jews and blackmailing them under threat to turn them in to the Nazis. Henryk's mother went out to raise money and he remained with the abductor until he managed to escape and meet his mother at a railway junction, by prearrangement. Winter 1944: Yehiel and his mother returned to Warsaw, where amid the ruins they encountered the children who sold cigarettes in Plac Trzech Krzyzy (Three Crosses Square). They eventually reached a different farm, run by an 18-year-old peasant with a younger sister and a grandmother to support. At this point his mother disappeared. He heard that she had been caught and shot, and Henryk found that quite natural. At the end of the war, Henryk found himself alone on the farm. After the war: One day, while he was in the fields, he saw someone approaching. The person seemed to be emerging from the furrows. It was his mother, dressed in city finery. "I thought I was dreaming," Yehiel recalls. She took him, placed him in an orphanage near Falenica and went about her business. He never saw her again. She was murdered by Poles in an anti-Semitic incident in Ciechanowice in August 1946 ("This was in the period of the Kielce pogrom"). To Israel: He remained in Warsaw until 1950, attending an agricultural training farm of the left-wing Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, for prospective immigrants to Israel. Before leaving for Israel himself he shut down the movement's Warsaw branch for good. He never thought of going anywhere but Israel. He went by train to Venice and by ship to Haifa, then to Kibbutz Amir where he linked up with his group from Warsaw. He stayed one year (and changed his name to Yehiel). In 1951 he was sent to help Kibbutz Revadim ("We accepted the decision of the movement"), where he has been ever since. Marda's bio: Born in Montevideo in 1934, to a Polish-born Jewish Communist who had moved to Argentina in 1927, then to Uruguay, then back to Argentina (Cordova), then became a Zionist in 1948 and immigrated to Israel, where he edited a Yiddish paper. Marda, who was born Ernestina Jerusalinsky, says she chose her Hebrew name ("Marda from the root mered," meaning rebellion) after a Jewish Agency official told her about a radio operator by that name in the Palmach, the pre-state commando force. As a teenager she was less interested in schoolwork than in Hashomer Hatzair, and in 1955 she also immigrated to Israel, came to Revadim and met Yehiel. The meeting: June 1955. She worked in the fields and in the kitchen ("I was strong: I moved irrigation pipes"), he managed the vineyard. One day "the lady arrives with a book," Yehiel recalls. "Many people came to catch some shade among the vines." He caught some shade with her there, they also used to go to the granary, before they married. The wedding: With multiple brides and grooms (seven couples in all). Since no rabbi ever set foot in their very secular, Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz, they went to the nearby town of Gedera ("by wagon, because the GMC truck was already in use"). She wore a black hoop skirt and a light-blue blouse ("of nice material"), he wore khakis and a white shirt. There was only one ring, which the grooms passed behind their backs. Yehiel: "The rabbi asked: 'Did you buy it yourself?' And everyone answered, 'Of course.'" Daily routine: They rise at 6:30, wash and go to work without eating or drinking anything. Each drinks the first coffee of the day (black) at work. Lunch is from 11:30 to 12, at home rather than in the (privatized) dining hall ("Suddenly I feel like cooking" - Marda). They then nap a little, watch the 5 P.M. current events program "A New Evening," eat supper at 7:30 ("vegetables, cheese, Ahla brand hummus") and watch the Channel 2 news at 8 ("We never watched [the Israeli version of] 'Survivor'). Bedtime is around 11:30. Yehiel sleeps well, Marda "so-so." Romance: "I don't know if this still counts," Yehiel says, "but a hug and a kiss." Marda: "Sitting next to him and stroking his arm, and that happens all the time." Nostalgia: "For nothing," Yehiel says. "I had a good life on the kibbutz, I raised wonderful children and found a woman I have loved for 52 years." Children's house: Yehiel: "I have no pangs of conscience. There was no lack of food." Marda: "I should have visited more at night," Marda reflects, "but our children have no complaints." Retrospective: "I have no regrets over anything," she says. "The kibbutz movement was necessary. Israel would not have come into being without the kibbutzim. That period is over and I am glad I was part of it." God: "I don't believe," Yehiel says, "and if I did believe it would be that he is contemptible." Death: "I would like to die instantaneously," he says. "We all want that," she says. Israel: "I'm optimistic, I can't help it" (Marda); "The 'magnificent' Six-Day War robbed us of our sanity" (Yehiel). Thrill: "When I see 'Hatikva' being played at the Olympics I start to cry," Marda says. "I don't tear up," Yehiel says, "but 'Hatikva' is thrilling." Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Yehiel - 9; Marda - "I'm with him." Revadim: Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz south of Gedera. Founded in 1948 by members of the original kibbutz of that name, in the Etzion Bloc, south of Bethlehem, which fell to Arab forces on May 14, 1948. Many of the members were taken prisoner and held in a Jordanian prisoner camp. The ruins of the Philistine city of Ekron are on the grounds of the kibbutz. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Bridging the gap A flashy addition to Jerusalem's entrance merges the old and the new. Two years later Captive soldiers' families lash out during ceremony marking Shalit's kidnapping.

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