Tag #157047 - Interview #79438 (Hillel Kempler)

After the Suez War with Egypt, my work as a teacher became somewhat boring. I wanted new task, a bit of variety. There was the possibility to go to Eliat for a large construction company. Back then Eliat was a rock desert on the Red Sea, and they wanted to build a city there. They therefore needed to establish an electricity department for the construction company. They came to me and said I was the right man for the job. I don’t know who from the construction company went to the director of my school and convinced him to let me go. In any case, I was released, since the work in Eliat was important for the whole country, more important than my work as a teacher in a school. I was very pleased. They said: leave your family here in Tel Aviv and work there. But I said: We’re going together. I packed our furniture onto a truck and we drove down. That was 1957. In Eliat there was only desert and a few houses. We lived in one of these little houses. We were on the sea in the middle of the desert. We had a wonderful life there, like a return to the spirit of beginnings.