Sarona (colony)

From the foundation to the end of the 19th century

Sarona was laid in 1871. Its foundation was part of the settlement activities of the Templars in Ottoman Palestine , which unfolded in the late 1860s. Before Sarona, communities were founded in Haifa and Jaffa (both in 1869), a little later - the Rephaim colony near Jerusalem (1873). Unlike other early Templar communities in Palestine, Sarona, located northeast of Jaffa, was designed as an agricultural settlement. Two more colonies separated from the old ones in the late 1880s and early 1890s (Neuhardthof from Haifa and Walhall from Jaffa), and at the beginning of the 20th century the settlements of Wilhelm, Bethlehem and Waldheim were created ^[1] .

Land for the future Sarona was acquired by Christoph Hoffmann in August 1871 from an Orthodox monastery. The acquired area was approximately 60 hectares , it was located on a low (about 20 meters) bare hill between the Nakhr al-Audzh and Wadi Musrara rivers, about an hour's walk from the Templar colony in Jaffa. The closest accommodation to the site of the future colony was the small Arab village of Sumail, half an hour's walk away. The land around the intersection of the two roads was divided into 22 sections, of which four central were allotted for communal buildings, and the rest, each with an area of ​​approximately ¼ hectare, were distributed by lot between the families of the settlers. In May 1872, additional land was purchased from Arab landowners ^[2] .

On October 18, 1871, the first two houses were laid in Saron, which received the name on the same day, the first seven houses were completed by June 1872, and by 1874 their number had reached 14. The construction of the school, which was carried out in a squad for the money of all residents The new colony was completed by February 1873. The first years in difficult conditions were marked by high mortality among the colonists - for example, in 1872 alone, out of 125 residents of Sarona, 28 died from malaria and dysentery , and a total of 57 people died in October from 1871 to the end of 1874 in Sarona and surrounding farms. In order to combat malaria, the drainage of marshy lands began, for which purpose eucalyptus trees were introduced and planted. By 1874, a grove of 1200 trees was planted in the center of the colony, in addition to eucalyptus trees including acacia and mulberry . For many years in a row in the spring, after the waters of Wadi Musrara fell, the remaining puddles were bombarded with earth by the forces of the colonists or filled with kerosene to prevent the propagation of malaria mosquitoes. Nevertheless, some of the settlers, tired of deprivation, left Sarona, returning to Germany or moving to the United States and Australia ^[2] .

The colony had a six-day working week with weekends on Sundays. According to the authors of a historical essay dedicated to Saron, this settlement was one of the first in Palestine where European methods of management were applied, including modern tools and fertilizers. Apricots, peaches, quinces, olives, figs, almonds and walnuts were planted in colony gardens; in the gardens, white cabbage and cauliflower, leaf lettuce, carrots, onions and melons were grown, to which were later added tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, celery, potatoes and legumes, as well as poppy seeds and table condiments. Since the colony’s economy, unlike the surrounding Arab villages, was focused not on providing for its own needs, but on the sale of agricultural products, the fields and plantations were primarily reserved for citrus crops and sugarcane, and later vineyards were laid out, at first European varieties, and after the epidemic phylloxera in the early 1880s - American. Fodder crops, including lupine and clover, were grown for livestock ^[2] .

Since 1879, Saron elected its own council, headed by the mayor. The colonists deducted 10% of the income to the treasury of the settlement. By 1883, the number of inhabitants of the colony reached 219 (including 43 children under the age of 6 years), and by 1889 their number reached 269. By the end of the century, 243 people from 54 families lived in the colony (the decrease in the number of inhabitants was associated with the 1896 by the emigration of part of the Templars to German East Africa ^[3] ). In the 1890s, Sarona, along with the rest of the Templar movement, experienced a split into two groups, but their relationship did not develop into open hostility, as in neighboring Jaffa ^[2] .

XX century

When the new Templar colony of Wilhelm was founded in 1902 (on the site of which the Bnei Atarot moshav is now located), 20 residents of Sarona moved to it. By this time, the fields of Sarona stretched to the outskirts of Jaffa in the south, coastal dunes in the west and the Nahr al-Audj river in the north, and since 1898 they used artificial irrigation, water for which was supplied by pumps. At the beginning of the century, production of olive and sesame oil was established, wine production was expanded, and oranges from Sarona, Wilhelm and Jaffa were exported to the UK and other countries ^[3] .

With the outbreak of World War II, young men of military age from Sarona left for the front in the location of the German army. The remaining colonists of Sarona and other Templar colonies played an important role in supplying German troops in the Middle East, supplying food, transportation, and artisan services. In 1915, the fields of the colony were devastated by the locust ^[4] . After the occupation of Palestine by British troops, the Templars were interned in Egypt in late 1917 and early 1918, along with other German nationals. About 300 of them were repatriated to Germany the following year, and about 400 remaining in 1920 received permission to return to Palestine. The British mandatory authorities compensated returnees about 50% of the cost of livestock and other property lost as a result of the war ^[5] .

By 1925, the area of ​​Sarona reached 492 hectares ^[6] . In 1929, the union of Sarona with the previously united Templar communities of Valhalla and Jaffa took place; the population of the united colony reached almost 500 people ^[7] . The goods of the Templar colonies during these years easily found buyers in connection with the constantly growing population of Tel Aviv due to Jewish immigration, which almost surrounded Sarona and the surrounding area by the 1930s. In Saron itself, rental houses were being built, and the main tenants were Jewish immigrants. In the Arab-Jewish conflict of the 1930s, the Templars maintained strict neutrality, but with the Nazi party coming to power in Germany , its ideology began to find its followers among Palestinian Germans; by 1938, the number of members of the NSDAP in the united community of Sarona, Wilhelm and Jaffa reached 113 people, there were also cells of the Union of German Girls and Hitler Youth ^[6] .

With the outbreak of World War II, part of the German youth from Palestine was mobilized into the ranks of the German armed forces ^[6] . The German subjects in Palestine again faced the threat of deportation. The president of the Temple Society, Philip Wurst, at first succeeded in convincing the credentials to abandon this step. As a result, the agricultural templar colonies in Palestine (in addition to Sarona and Wilhelm, also included Betlehem and Waldheim) were turned into closed and protected settlements, in which about 2,000 people lived (including those brought from other settlements ^[6] ), and adult men were sent to camps in Acre . In 1941, 665 of these men along with their families (including almost 200 people from Sarona ^[6] ) were sent to a displaced persons camp near Tatura ( Australia ), and the following year more than three hundred templars were repatriated to Germany as part of an exchange deal captured ^[5] .

In 1943, the Palestinian credentials authorities expropriated part of the land of Sarona (by this time covering an area of 650 hectares - about the same as the then Tel Aviv with its 170 thousandth population) for public needs ^[8] . Part of this territory was transferred to Tel Aviv. In 1944 and 1945, the inhabitants of Sarona were transferred to Wilhelm in several stages. The base of British troops and police was located in Saron itself ^[6] . On March 22, 1946, two militants from the Jewish organization Hagan shot and killed the last mayor of Sarona Gottlif Wagner on Lewinsky Street in Tel Aviv ^[8] .

In December 1947, the British base in Saron was captured by the Hagana, which was the first case of an open attack by the Hagan against a British military facility in Palestine ^[6] . In 1948, before the end of the mandate, the British authorities evacuated the last templar from Palestine to a camp in Cyprus ^[5] .

After the independence of Israel, the Hagan, and then the Israel Defense Forces deployed their general headquarters in the temples of Sarona. Over time, due to the high cost of land in the center of Tel Aviv, part of the territory of the base of the General Staff, known as Kirya ("Gorodok"), was sold in private hands. In the southern part of Kirya, a shopping and entertainment district was formed, separated from the military base by Kaplan Street and called Ganei-Sarona ("Gardens of Sarona") ^[6] . A total of 33 buildings were restored, five of which were moved; they mainly housed shops, restaurants and cafes, as well as two museums and classrooms ^[9] . Israel reimbursed the former residents of Sarona and their heirs for the value of the lost property, using for this part of the funds received from Germany as compensation for the victims of the Nazi regime ^[6] .

•  

  Sarona Street after restoration

•  

  Tourist Information Center

•  

  Winery

•  

  Wind pump

• Helmut Glenk, Horst Blaich and Manfred Haering. From Desert Sands to Golden Oranges: The History of the German Templer Settlement of Sarona in Palestine 1871-1947 . - Trafford, 2005. - ISBN 1-4120-3506-6 .

• Sarona (Hebrew)
• Sarona Market