This is a photograph from the kibbutz nursery school. It was taken in Bet Alfa in the 1920s. My brother Ruben Auerbach (he later changed his name to Pavel Potocky) is standing to the right of the teacher.
Everyone in the kibbutz had to work, our parents too. We children were in this children's home all day. Every day towards the evening, or in the evening, I don't know any more how long we were there, the parents would pick up their children. They simply came from work, had supper, then went for the children, so that they could play a bit with them and so that the children would know that they've got parents at all, and when it was bedtime they would take them back to the children's home again.
Children were in that home right from birth. While mothers were nursing, they didn't go out to the fields, but got some work to do in the compound and once in a while took a nursing break. My parents didn't have a house, only one little room somewhere that they lived in. That was their privacy. Everyone ate together in one hall, their laundry was all washed together, that's how it was.
Pavel Potocky among children from the kibbutz
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