31 October 2019
Back in October 2019, I took our daughter, Amber, to an army-related appointment in Haifa, and she was out in ten minutes. Well we had planned to take the opportunity for some quality father-daughter time, and now we had more of it!
We began by exploring a little around the Yefe Nof—Mercaz HaCarmel area of Haifa, where the big hotels sit at the top of the Bahá’í gardens, overlooking the bay. Here in a quiet suburban street we discovered a memorial and gardens to Lt. Horace Michael Hynman Allenby, MC, a casualty of Paschendaale, who is buried at Coxyde Commonwealth War Cemetery in Belgium! This is of course the connexion mentioned in my blog's title, but who was he and why does he have a memorial in Haifa?
To anyone who knows anything about Israel, the name Allenby naturally provides a clue. The exploits in Ottoman Palestine of Field Marshal Sir Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby of Megiddo, against the Turks and his liberation of Jerusalem are legend, even today, in Israel, and remembered in the names of countless streets, gardens, squares and buildings across the country. Lt. Horace Michael Hynman Allenby—always known to his dearest as Michael—was his beloved son. He was educated at Wellington College from 1911-1915, and fought in the First World War, gaining the rank of Lieutenant on October 27th 1915 in the service of the Royal Horse Artillery. He took part in the offensive in the Somme and Ancre areas, and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and valuable observation work. His citation said "He ran out communications to the two forward companies and sent back very useful reports on the situation. Later, he rescued a wounded man under heavy fire. He displayed marked courage and determination throughout the operations."
Michael fell shortly after his father left France―on being appointed commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, the British forces in Egypt and Palestine―in July 1917, dying of wounds received in action. On his grave it is inscribed, "How shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone and what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love," a line from Walt Whitman's elegy to President Abraham Lincoln, written in the summer of 1865, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Michael’s death profoundly affected Sir Edmund, who was known in the army as “Bull" Allenby because of his impressive physique and reputed mentality.
So what is this memorial doing in Haifa? It turns out that Sir Edmund’s wife, Mabel Chapman, had a sister, Florence Maria, who became the second wife of a distinguished British civil service medical officer, Sir Arthur Downes. Thus Lady Florence was Sir Edmund’s sister-in-law. When Downes retired, he and his wife decided, on Allenby’s recommendation, to come to Palestine to live. After looking round the country, they chose to settle in Haifa. They found the residence they were looking for in an old German Templer house at 120 Yefe Nof Road, which they renovated and extended, and Lady Florence became a noted local philanthropist and high society woman, to the extent that (at the time of writing) the only language in which she has a Wikipedia page is Hebrew! Today, the remains of their house form a dilapidated combination restaurant, discotheque and night-club, divided from what was the large garden by Yefe Nof Road.
The Downes had one child, a daughter named Elizabeth, who was married to a Frenchman working with the Suez Canal Company in Egypt. But it was Lady Downes who put up the monument to her nephew in that garden. She donated the garden and memorial, which is now on the northern edge of the road, to the city in 1934, when it was named the Allenby Garden in honor of Edmund Allenby and in memory of his son.
On 11 March 1938, Lady Downes was widowed, and the following month, the opening ceremony of the garden was held in the presence of the commander of the British army in Palestine, Lieutenant-General Archibald Wavell, mayor of Haifa Hassan Bey Shukri and his deputy Shabtai Levy, representatives of the Jewish community including Moshe Guttel-Levine and David Bar-Rav-Hai, the Anglo-Jewish Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Hermann Kisch, the district officer Barukh Binah (grandfather of the former Israeli Ambassador to Denmark, Barukh Binah), representatives of Hadar HaCarmel, Muslim representatives and many journalists . The celebration was photographed by Yomnei Carmel, a newsreel company founded by Natan Axelrod, active from 1935-1971.
Lady Florence Downes at the dedication of the Allenby Garden, 11 March 1938 [Yomnei Carmel (יומני כרמל 131-1 מרץ 20 1938) via Israel National Archives]
The Allenby garden, on the slope below the memorial, today
After becoming a widow, Lady Downes moved to a new house the couple had begun building in the 1930s—Whincather Court—on Ventura Hill (today at 21 Givat Downs St, Ahuza); a magnificent house surrounded by a pink wall, which stood alone for several years. In the courtyard of the villa stood a copy of the sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo. Nothing remains today.
After returning from a trip to England in 1939, in June 1940 , Lady Downes held a celebration in honor of Shabtai Levy's appointment as mayor of Haifa—the first Jew to hold this position.
Lady Downes died on 31 March 31 1941 and was buried next to her husband in the Anglican Cemetery in Haifa, which was reserved for British Mandatory Police officials and Civil Servants. The funeral was attended by many senior officials, including Captain Sir James Huey Hamill Pollock, District Commissioner for Jerusalem, who represented the High Commissioner; his deputy, Mr Evans, who represented the Governor of Jerusalem, Edward Keith-Roach; and various senior military, police and municipal figures, including Shabtai Levy. In accordance with her will, no women attended the funeral at all, with the exception of her only daughter and several nuns. In her memory, the street of her house in Ahuza was named Givat Downes ('Downes Heights').
We then decided to continue exploring the area―rather than our original plan which had been to go down to the bay. We first went to the nearby Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art―which we have visited several times before―but decided against paying the entry as half of the museum was closed for renovation. So we walked a few yards to the Mané Katz Museum, adjacent to the top entrance to the Bahá’í gardens.
Emmanuel Mané-Katz―born Mane Leyzerovich Kats (1894–1962)―was a Litvak painter born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, best known for his depictions of the shtetl in Eastern Europe. He was one of the most prominent artists of the “School of Paris”, a group of young artists, some Jewish, who came to Paris from Eastern and Central Europe in the beginning of the twentieth century. The school changed the face of art in Paris during the period between the two world wars, and grounded the status of Paris as the global capital of art, which draws to it fresh and extraordinary creative forces. Mané-Katz decided to make aliyah in 1957, in a deal he made with the mayor of Haifa, Abba Hushi, that he would bequeath his entire estate and works to the city of Haifa, while the city would provide him with a house and, after his death, establish a museum that would commemorate his name and work. Opened in 1977 in his former home and studio, the museum's collection includes hundreds of his paintings as well as a number of very valuable sculptures. There are items of antique furniture, carpets, statuettes, ceramic toys from Eastern Europe, bronze figurines from the Far East, and many other items. The collection of Jewish religious and ceremonial articles is rich and unique, and includes menorahs, Torah salvers, crowns and pomegranates, coverings for the Ark of the Law, and texts.
However, when we visited we saw none of this!
We arrived half an hour before it opened, and repaired to the delightfully situated (and open!) café beneath the house, on a deck overlooking the bay, where we had ice coffee and pear pie. Here we made friends with a delightful cat. On our getting up to leave, the cat jumped onto the water cooler. I went to give her a farewell stroke, whereupon she pawed my arm towards the water tap; I understood her request!
Having refreshed ourselves we entered the small museum to find it entirely taken over by a temporary exhibition, In the Golem’s Garden. Against our better judgement we paid a hefty fee to get in, to see three small rooms of appalling paintings, sculpture and video trash! All the Mané-Katz articles I described above had been removed to temporary storage. Oh well. It was still a lovely day.
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