Magdalena Seborova at a kibbutz

This photograph was taken during the years 1988 - 1989 in a kibbutz in Israel. In the photo you can see me petting a cow. After World War II I didn't think I'd ever move abroad. Those that applied for emigration were well equipped. I didn't have a reason to go. They were mainly people that had some sort of employment, or skills, and though they'd be successful abroad. After my second marriage fell apart, I immigrated to Israel in September of 1988. In April 1990 I returned. In Israel everything was nice, but I didn't have prospects of surviving it. I lived on the fourth floor, without an elevator. There were only a few buildings there, and nearby the town of Nahariyya. Every little while some car would come by and kick out some dog. Later someone came and poisoned the dogs. In the meantime one Ukrainian woman and I tried to feed them. We didn't have much food ourselves, but we tried. So that's Asia. If you're not there from childhood, it's hard to get used to it. A person can't start living there at the age of 48. In the beginning I got along in Hungarian and Russian, and Hebrew courses were mandatory at the time. There were many empty apartments in Israel. But truly empty, you could see it by the blinds. When I lived in the housing development, the blinds didn't move all year. I didn't expect that the situation in Israel would be such that I wouldn't last there. My aunt wrote me to come, but never wrote me what it was like there. I worked 16 hours a day as a janitor at construction sites. Those that had been living there a long time didn't even get apartments, while we as repatriates got them right away. There was a great deal of tension between the various groups of the population. They didn't like it, of course. I wouldn't have liked it either. I was terribly tired, terribly. I decided to return home. They helped me with it, I wouldn't have managed it alone. Someone said they were going to Tel Aviv, so I went with him, to get a passport. I played dumb, that the border police had taken my passport when I was leaving for Israel. The way they did it in Russia. Finally they issued me a passport good for one year. I told them that I was going to Budapest to get my teeth fixed. All Israelis who could did it, because even a plane trip, hotel and a Hungarian dentist all together were cheaper than a dentist in Israel. I knew this and made use of it. And so I came back.