*
For others, the suffering of survival was simply too unbearable. Chajka Klinger made it to Palestine, arriving on the same train as Renia, but with growing depression. She and Benito moved to The Young Guard’s Kibbutz Gal On, where they attempted to integrate into the communal life. Chajka spoke at numerous assemblies and conferences. But conflict with the movement erupted. Excerpts from her diaries were published by The Young Guard—but they were heavily edited, omitting and even reversing her criticism of the Yishuv （which she accused of not doing enough） and deleting her doubts that the resistance would ever really work. Chajka hadn’t been silenced, but censored. Her words and thoughts—for an intellectual like her, her identity—had been tampered with by the very movement for which she had given her life.
The morbid thoughts that had begun when she was in hiding would ebb and flow, but they never left her permanently. She and Benito moved to a new kibbutz, Ha’Ogen, with fewer friends from the past. They lived in a room made of orange crates, but Chajka focused on enjoying family life. She began editing her diaries into a book, and finally felt happy, even though she felt guilty about her happiness. It was hard for her to get a permanent job on the kibbutz—especially her preferred work in the children’s home—since she had no seniority. After all she’d been through, she had to start from scratch. “She who led a movement during the war, who stood up to the Gestapo,” her son Avihu wrote, “was now just Chajka R.” （Benito’s surname, which she had taken, was Ronen, formerly Rosenberg.） Then Chajka became pregnant. During this pregnancy, she woke up during the nights with delusions, and Benito began to understand that these episodes were “mental illness,” the all-encompassing term that was then used. Neither PTSD nor collective trauma was yet understood. At Ha’Ogen, survivors were not treated any differently and did not discuss their pasts. The kibbutz rules, the member’s role in the labor force, the present, were all that counted.
She named her son Zvi, after Zvi Brandes.
Chajka did not have a survivor community who understood her, with whom she could reminisce or even fantasize about revenge. She did not make many friends. （Most of her fellow kibbutzniks spoke Hungarian.） Plus, Benito’s ex-girlfriend also lived there. Chajka was sent for training to work in the chicken coop, not to study for an advanced degree, as she’d wanted. The important jobs went to men. Her career goals—the goals of an unabashed intellect—became dashed dreams.
Chajka found out that one of her sisters was alive, which gave her some hope and stability. But then the head of The Young Guard decided that Benito, who still worked in refugee aid, would return to Europe. Chajka was asked to give up all the comforts she’d made for herself and go back to the blood-soaked continent from which she narrowly escaped.
She did not stay long and returned to Israel to give birth to her second son, Avihu, the scholar. She suffered from severe postpartum depression, unable to get out of bed for weeks, afraid of taking medicine for fear she was being poisoned. She was hospitalized against her will. Afterward, no one discussed her illness—it was taboo.
Back on the kibbutz, Chajka grew distant from B?dzin friends, and found no outlet for her talents. Then, during her third pregnancy, her diaries were used without her permission in an article that critiqued The Young Guard’s leadership, placing her at the center of a heated controversy that again forced her to grapple with the conflict between her own truth and her loyalty to the movement. Again she suffered from postpartum depression and was hospitalized. As part of Chajka’s treatment she was made to talk about the Gestapo torture. Traumatized by this intervention, she refused further medical help.
Avihu recalled happy memories of his mother but also remembered episodes where she sat in silence with a towel wrapped over her head. She had survived and wanted to fulfill The Young Guard’s role for her: to tell the people what she’d witnessed. But ultimately she felt she was “condemned to live.” At last, after deeper depressive episodes, Chajka, aged forty-two, agreed to return to the hospital. One evening she arrived at the children’s home wearing a long coat; she’d come to say good-bye.