In Jewish Sites
Batei Machse
The neighbourhood of Batei Machse was built by the ‘Kollel of Holland and Germany’, to benefit the poor of Yerushalayim. In the War of Independence it was the last Jewish stronghold in the Old City; from this neighbourhood the last remnants of the Jewish fighters were taken into Jordanian captivity.
The apartments built consisted of two rooms and a tiny kitchen. To the front of the apartments was a large paved courtyard, which contained within it water wells for the use of the inhabitants. Both the size and the quality of the dwellings were exceptional for the times, and a person who merited to receive an apartment was considered extremely fortunate.
The administrators of Kollel Holland and Germany intended that the recipients of the apartments live there for three years without payment of rent, or paying just a token amount. Many Jerusalem residents were eager to receive an apartment and great pressure was put on the administration to try to influence their decisions.
In the end, a third of the apartments were allocated to immigrants from Hungary, a third to those who had immigrated from Holland and Germany, and the final third to other poor immigrants from different countries. However, there were those who argued that since those who originated from Holland, Germany and Hungary were generally not destitute, the majority of the new settlement’s residents were therefore not the very poor. Thus the intentions of the founders had been undermined, since most recipients of apartments had merited them on the basis of their place of origin, rather than owing to their financial situation.
During the War of Independence, Batei Machse was the last area of the Old City to hold out against the arabs. Eventually the Jewish Quarter was forced to surrender and the remaining fighters were exiled from Batei Machse into Jordanian captivity. In the courtyard of the neighbourhood, at the end of Gal Ed street, was located a gravesite where those who fell in the course of the fighting in the Quarter were buried. Although burial within the walls of the Old City is normally forbidden, the rabbonim of the time issued a temporary reprieve, since the area was under siege; after the Six Day War, the bones of the fallen were transferred to the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives – the original site of their burial is still marked.
When the Jewish Quarter was renovated, the area of Batei Machse was also rebuilt, and new buildings were constructed there. Some of the original buildings still remain, including a block of apartments which is now used as a school, and also ‘Rothschild House’, which stands in the middle of the courtyard, and today serves as a Talmud Torah.