Tag #157026 - Interview #79438 (Hillel Kempler)

We stood there in Tel Aviv and knew no one. You must know that at that time Tel Aviv was a small city. There was a lot of sand, but on the other hand it was also European. The houses were small and had red roofs. There were already two-story houses here and there, but they were few. And there were very few paved roads, two, three main streets, otherwise there was sand everywhere. For example Ben Yehuda Street was only about one hundred meters long, maybe even less. The train station was on Allenby Street, and there were sidewalks to the left and right made of wooden planks so that the people didn’t get stuck in the sand. That was Tel Aviv in 1933, you got stuck in sand.

There were few cars on the road, there were camels and horse-drawn droshkies. The horse-drawn droshkies had two large and two small wheels. The Arabs mainly drove the horse- and camel-drawn wagons.