"We all have our eyes on Eretz Israel, our homeland..." - Blume Rotelman's diary entries from the first pioneers ...

"We all have our eyes on Eretz Israel, our homeland..." - Blume Rotelman's diary entries from the first pioneers who immigrated to Eretz Israel from the town of Mezritsh

Diary excerpts written by Bluma Rottelman - a guide in the Hashomer Hatzair movement, Daughter of a Hasidic family, and one of the first pioneers to immigrate to Eretz Israel from the town of Mezritsch as part of the "Hachshara program" - in these moving pages Rottelman expresses her reflections and longings for the life of the town in Mezritsch, tells instructive stories about her father Chaim Rottelman who helped all the townspeople and perished in the Holocaust, describes the Zionist spirit that brought life into the hearts of the town's youth, She laments her entire family who perished in the Holocaust, and writes instructive things about settling of Eretz Israel and the future of the Jewish people. The lists appear on separate pages written on different dates, without Specify dates, and in order of things they were written after she immigrated to Eretz Israel.

In her diary, Bluma talks about her family in Mezritsch - about her father Chaim Rottelman, nicknamed "Haim Mezritzur" who worked as a merchant and had a part in a leather factory, how the Poles would come again and again to collect taxes from him, and in difficult times when he could not pay they would confiscate his goods. She writes that her father employed many Jews in his factory and took care of their livelihood. During World War I, her father hid goods with non-Jews, and at the end of the war they stole his goods, the little that remained was robbed one night, and so the family soon found itself without anything. Despite all this, his spirit was not discouraged due to his belief that everything is from heaven and everything is for the best, and within a while he was able to rehabilitate himself financially, and was still able to lend money to the town's needy for Passover. Many refugees visited their homes during and after World War I: "People fled from one city to another, from Zitomir to Novograd Volinsk, and from Volinsk to Koritsk, and from Koritz to Mezritsch, in every city in Israel there were refugees - people who have nowhere to lay their heads... As a result of the difficult situation, the whole family realized that it was impossible to continue in the diaspora like this. She writes: "All of us, from father, mother to youngest grandson, knew that we would not continue like this, that there was no basis for our national existence, and therefore also for the existence of our family on foreign soil... We are all of us, from the eldest son Itzik to the grandson, who was then the youngest of the grandchildren, Yitzhak-L, the son of Lealeh, had our eyes to the Land of Israel, the land of our homeland...". After immigrating to Eretz Israel, she met a woman she did not know in Mezritsch, who told her, "Thanks to your father, I was able to raise my orphans".

In several passages she describes life in the town of Mezritsch before the war – the Kabbalat Shabbat and prayers in the synagogue, the organization of groups of youth in joint meetings for training for aliyah: "I see the fiery faces of the boys and girls, the enthusiasm, the belief in our ways that it is right, the same willingness to follow it and fulfill our faith, so our city was a nationalistic Mezritsch, Zionism took deep roots in it...". Bluma writes about how deeply rooted Zionist education was in Mezritsch, that whenever an emissary from Eretz Israel came to the town collect for the Zionist foundations, he found a faithful hostel in the kindergarten and school "We surrounded him and listened  to every one of his words big or small...".

Finally, the tragedy of her family who perished in the Holocaust is described: "The great disaster that befell our family among all the families of Israel - my father died in the ghetto, my mother, who reached old age, went with 4 sons and 2 daughters, 12 grandchildren with thousands of people from Mezritsch to the fields of Nevriko to find death there, and my brother Yaakov-L and I, misery and strength in our hearts by bearing the boundless sorrow, the pain that cannot be carried, The longing for all the good and precious that we had and that are no more, and we will not be able to bring back what happened.", and she also laments that almost all of her trainees stood ready to immigrate to Eretz Israel, but only a small number of them managed to immigrate: "Many fell into the murderous hands of Hitler and the Ukrainians, and while their hopes in their hearts and eyes see the desired border, they were tortured and killed...".

Among other things, there are letters she wrote in Eretz Israel after her Aliyah about strengthening education for pioneering fulfillment, among them a letter to "Eliezer" about strengthening education for Zionism and fulfillment in Eretz Israel: "I see the state as an asset left to us by our families, and we must preserve this asset...".

Photographs of Bluma herself, as well as of her friends with dedications written to her for making Aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1927, see previous item.

[17] Written pages. Good Condition.