What was it like to make aliyah and find a new life in Eretz Israel?
Rivka Machneimy was a fiercely independent 17 year-old woman and kept a
detailed diary after she went against the advice of her father, Baruch
Hodorenko, a leading Zionist. "How will you earn a living when you have
never worked even one day?" her father asked. "I replied: 'There must be
other people like me and they are working...'" She writes, in the Yizkor
book of Bendery, Moldova of the daily work, struggles and hardships,
including the scourge of malaria that ravaged the settlers who sought to
transform the desert lands and swamps. She performed all sorts of labors

from kitchen work to learning how to drive a truck, and during her time

working in the fields proudly wrote in her diary: "After a few days I was
earning as much as the men." She had a child. This is her story.

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/1589825717706244

Bruce Drake
Silver Spring MD

Researching: DRACH, EBERT, KIMMEL, ZLOTNICK
Towns: Wojnilow, Kovel