An artist in the new nation of Israel

The recent conflicts involving Israel have brought to light reflections on the development of the state of Israel in the late forties and early fifties. At this time many Jews in Europe and the USA were drawn to the new country, not only as a possible home, but also as a place to visit. One of these was the artist Maurice Sochachewsky, whose drawings of Israel in 1949 were published in the December 1950 issue of Photo World.

Maurice Sochachewsky had been born in London in 1918 of Jewish stock, his father having emigrated to England from Poland in 1910. He had demonstrated talent as a draughtsman from the age of six.  At just fourteen he entered St Martin’s School of Art and after four years there learned of the economic plight of miners in and around Pontypool. He ended up working alongside miners at Tal-y-wain, with his board pressed against the coal face, frantically sketching his workmates hacking out coal. Returning to London, he held a one man exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Bloomsbury Galleries and was proclaimed an artist of great promise. Called up to serve in 1939, he was present at the D Day landings and was injured in the head, losing the sight of his left eye.

Fast forward to 1949 and Sochachewsky found himself booking a passage to Israel—a country he felt was the answer to the post-war Jewish problem.

‘ I began to believe in the Israeli scheme of re-population. You felt that nothing mattered to them but to get to a country in which they each believed absolutely without question. The disappointments of the past did not merely fade in the face of their enthusiasm: it was as if they had never happened.

I shall never forget arriving at Haifa, the only Englishman in the place, wit the sun blistering down on to the glaring new concrete like a steel-cutter’s torch .

The chamzin was blowing straight off the desert, and I was never so nearly grilled alive in my life, but it was then—as soon as I walked down to the jetty—that I realised an extraordinary thing…These people were not visitors on the make, but farmers coming home to their own place…It is quite impossible to remain outside this overall personal enthusiasm throughout Israel…’