A FABRICA ILEGAL QUE SALVOU ISRAEL! Israel com Aline

Shalom and welcome back to ‘Israel with Aline!’ This week Israel celebrates 75 years of independence and for this very important date we came to tell you a secret story; the story of young people who risked their own lives to build this place, the “Makhon Ayalon” that was a secret and illegal munitions factory and which was instrumental in Israel’s victory in the War of Independence. So folks, today is really going to be a very exciting and tense day at this place. So, if you’re ready, let’s get started! Today Israel is a modern, vibrant, joyful, safe and strong country but it wasn’t always like this; for the last hundred years the people and the land of Israel have suffered much and had to fight hard to survive. And today’s story begins in the year 1917, when England invades and conquers the entire land of Israel and the region. By this time the Jews had already started to return to their land and began to build schools, hospitals, entire cities and even universities here all for the dream of in the near future declaring the Independence of the State of Israel. But the British do not like at all the idea of a Jewish Independence here and so already in 1922 they start to forbid the Jewish immigration, the building of new cities and all the preparations for the future State of Israel. And even during the H0locaust, when millions of Jews were being massacred in Europe, they kept prohibiting the immigration of Jews to Israel. But the Jews decide to ignore the British restrictions and prohibitions and continue immigrating to Israel, but this time illegally and continue building their future country and also preparing for war to come, because everyone knew that the day Israel declared its independence, all Arab countries in the region would declare war and all this had to be done in a clandestine and secret way, why? Because the British would arrest and condemn to death any Jew who participated in these activities, and unfortunately many people lost their lives this way. And precisely in this very secret and dangerous atmosphere and environment, the story of the Makhon Ayalon begins and that is why we have come here today, come with me to discover the secrets of this place. ♪ On a summer night in 1945 Yosef Avidar arrives, one of the commanders of the Haganah, a secret Jewish group and he comes to a group of young Jewish and he tells them that they have a secret mission that would be very dangerous, that they would be putting their lives at risk, but that the work they would do would be essential for the creation of the State of Israel but that he could not tell them what this mission was until they accepted it. And these young people will get together and take a vote and the vote will be unanimous; they will all accept this risk upon themselves because they knew they would be doing a greater good. And Yosef tells them that the preparations for war and for the future army had already started, they had already started to produce some weapons but they had no ammunition, they had no bullets to put inside the weapons they had. And so here, right here, in Makhon Ayalon would be the first and only ammunition factory in all of future Israel. And when they hear that it would be here this illegal ammunition factory, they get shocked and surprised why? Because right next to here is a town called Rehovot, which had a huge British headquarters, also right behind here pass British railroad tracks with hundreds of British soldiers. They look and say, “are we going to do this precisely in an area surrounded by the enemies?” And they say, “Yes, if we do it under the nose of the British, they won’t suspect, we’ll do it in the last place they think this factory would be.” And precisely in this location, surrounded by enemies, this Institute is going to be built, but it is divided in two parts; the underground part was the illegal and secret ammunition factory but here on the top floor was a small town, a kibbutz. And here for anyone passing by was normal life, even the people who lived up here didn’t know what was happening here in the underground. Now we are going to walk around and get to know a little bit of this city. And now we are going to enter together in the laundry room of this city, but there are many secrets inside, come with me! Why is this laundry room built? The first reason is because of the noise, if here underground there is an ammunition factory, the factory makes a lot of noise. So in order not to attract attention they will install an extremely noisy washing machine here, and this machine would disguise the real noise of the ammunition machines down here. There’s just one problem: the town is very small, there aren’t enough clothes to let this machine on for 10, 12 hours a day and the British would find it strange, the population would find it strange if it was on without clothes, and so they decide to open the laundry to also serve the nearby towns and the hospital in Rehovot, which is a hospital nearby, which is a hospital near here, send them to wash their coats and clothes here and so they had a lot of work and so the machine was on all the time. But those who worked here knew that everything had to be done perfectly; the clothes were well washed, well folded, well ironed, why? Because they didn’t want anyone to come here and complain since there was another secret here. So here you can see the shelves that they made the clothes with all the care in the world. And the work here was so perfect, that the British who were nearby heard that this was the best laundry in the whole region and they started washing British uniforms here, but what the British didn’t realize was that here there was a secret passage, through here they could enter the munitions factory; every day 45 people would come through here to go down to the factory, in three minutes 45 people would come down. The people from the Ayalon Institute asked me not to tell you this secret, where the secret passage is, so I’m going to show here the whole laundry room in 360 degrees and I want you to guess and leave here in the comments where in the end is this secret passage, let’s see if you can guess?! And through the secret passage that is here somewhere we are not going to go down today, we are now going to go out and get to know a little more of this place and then yes, we will go down together to the underground of this secret factory. And imagine that for most of the population of the city, this was simply a laundry! They would see the clothes laid out here and not suspect that nothing was going on here. The people who worked in the underground factory had to keep a total secret, even from their husbands, their wives, their children from everybody. Because if they were caught by the British they would all be killed by hanging and so they create a secret code; they call everybody who didn’t know about the factory a giraffe, why? The giraffe is a very tall animal that can see for miles and miles and it can see everything that is far away but it doesn’t usually look to see what is exactly under its feet. So here they were the giraffes, the population that didn’t know what was going on, and the people who kept this secret. And for the secret to be well preserved many things had to be done, we show here the laundry room with the secret passage but not only this, you can see that there is a chimney, why? Because an underground factory needs ventilation, so here this chimney was to take clean air into the factory, but it also needs a chimney to take out the dirty, smoky air, and the other chimney is right next door. Let’s meet the other building that holds the secret! ♪ The other building they built is this here, a bakery, why? The chimney in this place helped the ventilation system, but there is another reason why this place was built, precisely because of this gigantic ten-ton oven! It was built to hide a secret passage down here, the laundry’s secret passage was for the day to day, it was a small entrance that people could get in and out quickly, but the entrance here was huge and it was built to be able to lower the equipment, the huge machines that were used in the production of ammunition and this is where we are going to enter today, so come with me, we are going to go down to the underground of this secret factory! ♪ Are you as excited as I am? Come on, let’s go down and discover this secret! ♪ It’s eight meters underground and here we have reached the factory, look how amazing this place is! But the first question that arises is: where did all this equipment come from? Because the British prohibited any Jewish activity related to the army, the production of ammunition and weapons, so where did they get twelve machines to produce bullets? This happened thanks to Yehuda Arazi, who in 1938, years and years before the beginning of this factory, went to Poland, to the city of Warsaw and there he managed to secretly buy twelve machines. It would take him four years to smuggle these machines to Israel, but thanks to his efforts, these machines arrive and then the construction of this secret factory will begin, and now we will understand how these machines worked. The first step in manufacturing is to take these brass plates and cut disks, producing the bullets which is exactly what this machine does. So they had thousands and then millions of these little discs and this machine transforms the discs into little capsules. And these machines here, what they do is to take the small capsule and go on enlarging it until it gets this size. And when they bought the machines from Poland they thought they had bought the right machines, but they come and see that this here is too big for the Israeli guns and so they have to add one more step; they take this part here, put it in this machine and so they can cut it exactly to the size they need. But what I want to show you is the reality of this place, how the people felt. Come with me and we will start the machines! I want you to feel a little bit of what it was like to work in here, just a second guys, now there were two full machines running, back then there were twelve! And you could already hear the noise that was going on in here. So imagine what it was like to work in here, people were not only putting their lives at risk but also the lives of their families they worked here in a noise that was literally infernal and to try to cheer up the mood a little bit and disguise the noise, they spent the day singing here. But it wasn’t only the noise that got in the way, the place wasn’t that well lit and had no air conditioning, it had a small ventilation system but the place was hot, suffocating and noisy. I mean, being here even made people physically ill. But they did all this, they put their health and their lives at risk because they knew that they were fighting for a just cause. Just to give you an idea when they are called to work here, the H0locaust was still going on, the factory will work in the years following the H0locaust, when the people of Israel had been decimated, instead of them going into despair sitting and crying, they stand up to fight; to seek even stronger the Independence of the State of Israel and that’s why I find this place so impressive, but there are more secrets in here, so let’s go inside the factory! [machines at work] And in the horrible working conditions that they had here, most of these people didn’t get any sunlight and they started to get sick and white and that would be extremely suspicious because these people said that they worked in the fields and in agriculture and coming home white everyday people would start to get suspicious. And so this special room was created here, let’s go into it. People would sit here in the light booth and take this light to be able to tan, also for health but also to hide that they spent the whole day underground. ♪ And one of the crazy things about this place is that not only ammunition was produced here underground, but it was also tested here, look here at a shooting stand because they needed to test the ammunition to see that it would be effective when in the future it would be used for war. So guys they would test the bullets here at a distance of a few meters from where the gunpowder and all the flammable material was, but again, they had no option. But now the laundry room that’s right above us can’t disguise gunfire noise and so they knew exactly when the British trains were passing and the train was loud, it made the whole earth shake. And when the train went by, exactly that minute they would test the bullets here. And after an extremely tiring, exhausting day here inside this factory, they had to go back to their families
and to their town that didn’t know what happened and so they needed to clean themselves since they had a lot of metal remains on their clothes, they stopped here and there was a person whose job was to inspect, to remove from their hair, from their clothes and especially from the shoes all the metal remains and then they could go up the ladder. Everything that you see here, people, except the dolls obviously, is original. This is the ladder they went up and if you go up this ladder you come out at the secret entrance of the laundry room. And now I have a question for you: how long do you think it took to build all this? The walls, the concrete ceiling, this floor, I want you to put it in the comments guys all this here, bringing the machinery, building the bakery, building the laundry, how long do you think it took to build all this? The answer will surprise you because it was all done in 21 days! They had really great determination, they dug and did it all in 21 days and that’s why they managed to do it in such a short period of time without any British inspections coming here, after the place was ready they had several. How did they manage to hide all this from the British? One day a British inspection comes and they come and say, “come with us, we want to welcome you” they take them to the town’s dining hall and give them beers they say “look, it’s our gift, take the beers!” Wanting to please the British so they wouldn’t look too much and not look for something strange. And in the end the British look at the people here and say, “we are feeling badly treated, we think you don’t really want us here. And they say, “But how come, we gave you beer, we welcomed you so well?” And they said, “you gave us warm beer, I mean, you took it straight from the warehouse to give us warm beer, what kind of treatment is that?” And the people here in the community said: “no problem, do you want cold beer? Next time you come, let us know an hour before and we’ll put the beer in the fridge.” And actually the British started to do that, every time before they came to visit the city, before they did inspections, they would call ahead and say “Hey, we’re coming, put the beer in the fridge”, and it was a good way for them to be prepared every time an inspection came. [door opening] And now we have arrived at the most dangerous place in the whole factory! Yes, more than the shooting booth, more than the machines, this here was the most dangerous place. This was the ammunition assembly line; they would take everything that had been produced from the other side and here they filled it with gunpowder and closed it. They sealed each bullet by hand, now if you seal the bullet and don’t squeeze it tight enough the bullet afterwards won’t fire and won’t be effective for war, but if you squeeze too hard you run the risk of it exploding and since there were boxes of gunpowder around here, this whole area and the whole factory could explode killing everybody that was here and not only down here, but probably up there as well. Remember that up here there was a town beyond the bakery, beyond the laundry, 20 feet away from here was the kindergarten. And so the people who were allowed to work here were women, and preferably mothers, because it was known that a mother would never put her child at risk and so they were chosen for this very delicate work. And then finally after all these steps, the bullets and the ammunition were ready. They were hidden inside gallons of milk with false bottoms and taken away to be stored, to be used in the future, in the War of Independence. In my opinion this is one of the most amazing stories of Israel and its Independence, but unfortunately this place is unknown to the world and also still unknown to most Israelis. But this site was crucial, this was Israel’s only munitions factory until its independence! All experts agree that if this place did not exist, Israel would not have won the war, a war that was still very difficult and in which one percent of all Jews in Israel died, not one percent of the army, one percent of all Israel! It is really impossible to tell how important these people were and how hard their work was here, but thanks to them, here was produced between 1945 and 1948, 5 million bullets, you heard right! 5 million bullets were made here by hand by these 45 young people and not once was there an accident here and not once were they discovered by the British. And that is why I can consider it almost a miracle, thanks to these young people we have the State of Israel today, because without them maybe Israel would not exist and certainly there wouldn’t be ‘Israel with Aline’ either. So in this week that Israel celebrates 75 years of Independence I want to give them all the credit they deserve, because many of them are still alive to tell their story, but probably not for much longer. I hope you enjoyed knowing a little bit of the secrets of the Makhon Ayalon, if you liked it, don’t forget to share this video with your friends and to like it, thank you all for watching and see you here next time!