Invested in this piece of paper are two months of work and the hope and consolation of a full century. The equipment and the materials to build it, came almost exclusively from one source: empty old oil cans, margarine packages, and cigarette packs; for tools I used wooden rods, bamboo, razor-blades, and junk. The main attraction in my "papermill" is the self-made grindstone; it works like a coffee-mill, rotating a basalt stone which was shaped by hand with a chisel. Have you ever pierced a stone? During five days I acted much like a dropping stalactite. For the mould I found a piece of copper mosquito net and I framed it. My raw materials are sisal fibers, the famous Mauritius hemp, and the marrow of aloe stalks; I also use some waste paper and rugs. The color is not satisfactory yet, but I have no bleaching agents at my disposal, not to mention the fact that never in my dreams have I thought to have a try at making paper." These words come from a letter that Mrs. Rose Harburger received in Israel during World War II. The writer was her father, Dr. Alfred Heller, who had been detained by the British Army on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean.1 Dr. Heller was born in 1885, in Munich, Germany. His father owned a small printing shop. He learned the printing profession and worked in several printing shops before joining his father as a partner. Simultaneously he pursued studies in political economy. When Hitler rose to power in Germany, in 1933, Dr. Heller, like thousands of other German Jews, believed that this was a transient situation. Only too late he decided to leave his home country with his wife, to join their married daughter, Rose, in Palestine. Palestine was then a British protectorate. Only a limited number of immigration certificates were issued for Jews and the Hellers could not secure one. In the spring of 1939 they left Munich for German-occupied Vienna, with the hope of eventually reaching Palestine. The Hellers first went to Bratislava, where they lived for almost a year. Then they joined other Jewish refugees from Prague, Danzig, and Vienna and embarked on a 500-ton cargo ship, supposedly bound for Palestine. Six weeks from Bratislava, after the passengers had mutinied and taken control of the ship, the British Royal Navy intercepted them and interned them in a camp ten miles south of Haifa. The British troops did not allow them to contact their relatives in the Land. Rose Harburger lived in Haifa and worked as a printer in a local plant. Her husband, Fritz, worked as a bus driver. When the detainees were brought for embarkation on the French steamer Patria, Fritz managed to be the driver of the bus that carried his parents-in-law. The British soldiers did not allow the passengers to speak with the driver, but Fritz succeeded in smuggling some money to Dr. Heller. In order to prevent the Patria from weighing anchor, the Jewish Haganah had sabotaged the engines. However the charge was miscalculated and the Patria exploded with almost two thousand refugees on board. Three hundred lost their lives. The British authorities considered allowing the remaining refugees to stay in Palestine but, a few days later, they reconsidered and deported fifteen hundred persons to the island of Mauritius. Why Mauritius? The governors of Kenya and Uganda refused to receive the Jewish prisoners. Only the governor of the crown colony of Mauritius, who had previously served in Palestine, had accepted. All men were lodged in an ancient French prison on the island and the women in a separate camp. The detainees were allowed some extent of activity. They created a Zionist association, aimed at obtaining the right to emigrate to Palestine. Dr. Heller worked actively for this association and wrote several forceful letters to the British Authorities in London. The conditions in the camps were hardly bearable. The detainees suffered from typhus and malaria. Mrs. Heller was a frail and sickly woman and her husband could do very little to mitigate her miseries. Step by step, the detainees adapted to the circumstances. They tilled a little farm and, with the help of the bishop of the island and the English officers' wives, they opened schools. Dr. Heller taught English and studied Hebrew and Arabic. The detainees also formed an orchestra and a theater group, and published a camp newspaper. Some inmates improvised artisan industries; one made sweets from sugar cane, another created toys and small decorative articles from shells. One of Dr. Heller's relatives sent him a copy of Dard Hunter's now well-known book on papermaking.2 As a printer he appreciated paper and the book gave him the idea of manufacturing paper in the camp. He started immediately searching for the necessary equipment, tools, and raw materials. From his letter, quoted above, we know he succeeded! His first mould was 9 x 12 cm. in size. The paper was heavy and its surface rough. With other frames he made paper as big as 13 x 18 cm. and over time his paper had a smoother surface. An artist in the camp used the paper for woodcuts. At the end of 1943, the bishop of the colony ordered one hundred Christmas cards made on the paper. The ordeal in Mauritius lasted five years, until the British authorities decided finally to allow the detainees' immigration to Palestine. They embarked in August, 1945 and eighteen days later they arrived once again in Haifa. Mrs. Heller's health changed for the worse during the voyage and she died a few days later, barely having seen her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, aged seven. At the age of sixty, Dr. Heller got himself a job in a Haifa printing plant. In his spare time he experimented making paper with local fiber, receiving limited support from the Haifa Institute of Technology. When Dr. Heller's son-in-law got a job with the government of the recently created State of Israel, in 1952, the family moved to Jerusalem. Dr. Heller could not get a job there, but he had proven that he would not remain inactive. First he resumed his experiments in hand papermaking. Hearing that the government's Research Council was experimenting with the juncus rush, which grew in the Aravah and the Negev, as a source of raw material for the paper industry, he offered his services and the Council accepted them. Being aware of the economic difficulties of the country, the government's concern with absorption of new immigrants, and the particular problems of the elderly and the impaired, he approached an immigrants' welfare organization with the idea of creating a paper workshop. The organization offered to pay the salaries of a few disabled workers until the "company" could stand on its own. An old inmate from the Mauritius camp joined Dr. Heller and they bought what remained of a former cardboard factory, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The most important item that they found among the rusty equipment was a Hollander beater. They formed a team of five and worked as a cooperative. One worker, who had been a pharmacist, took charge of chemistry. He experimented with new methods to improve the surface of the paper and to make it suitable for printing and for writing with liquid ink or a ballpoint pen. A former cigar maker and a tailor whose eyes were failing also worked at the mill. For all of them, papermaking served as a way to escape the distress of dependence and as a form of occupational therapy, as it had been for Dr. Heller and his fellow inmates on Mauritius. They sold the paper for special printing jobs, for diplomas, woodcuts, and aquarelles. The first important exhibition in independent Israel, the Conquest of the Desert International Exhibition, held in Jerusalem in 1953, included a woodcut by Jacob Steinhardt printed on paper from Dr. Heller's cooperative; Israel's first handmade paper, molded from home-grown fibers. Still, the economic situation of the country was hard and Dr. Heller's venture could be only romantic, hardly a sustainable business. Orders rarely came. Dr. Alfred Heller died in March 1956, after a short illness. On his death, the workshop closed.3   Notes 1) Because the letter contained first-hand information on the general untenable conditions of the detainees, two newspapers published it at the time: The Palestine Post and the South African Jewish Times. 2) Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1943. 3) I owe to my friend, Dr. Benjamin De Vries, the gracious gift of a collection of samples of "Jerusalem Papyrus Handmade Paper" (Dr. Heller's brand name) and of several paper clippings on the paper industry in Israel, from which I first learned about this story. I am most thankful to Mrs. Shoshana (Rose) Harburger, and to her son, Mr. Yoram Harel, for their most kind assistance in obtaining additional first-hand information.