One of the first things I remember was the Arab riots in Jerusalem when I was barely four years old. I could hear the screams of the Jewish victims under our window as my mother covered our heads and hurried my two small brothers, Isaac and Yehuda, and myself to the cellar. We were terrified. Till then, we had lived peaceably with our Arab neighbors. They were our playmates and my mother spoke perfect Arabic.

My parents had both been halutsim (pioneers) on Kibbutz Kinneret but as there was then no budget for married couples with children, they were forced to leave and moved to Jerusalem. My father could find no work and we were nearly destitute, so he made up his mind to move to South Africa where he found work in a factory and sent us money every month. His plan was to stay there for one year and return to Palestine but it was not to be. He was heartbroken as he had been brought over from Russia to Palestine by Josef Trumpeldor himself to till the land as a Jewish farmer.

We joined him and my mother brought us over in a cargo ship from Haifa. We three children were tied with ropes round our waists so that we wouldn't go overboard. After two weeks of misery, we finally landed in Durban and then took a train to Johannesburg where we were reunited.

I started going to nursery school and later to the government school. When the teachers wanted to change my name to an English one, I refused and told them that Ziporah was my Jewish name and I insisted on being called by it.

My parents worked hard day and night. My mother opened her home to boarders who had not yet saved enough money to bring their wives, still in Lithuania or Russia, to South Africa. We were not allowed to eat until the boarders had finished and were always very hungry by then.

Despite our poverty, my mother insisted that we learn music and are. I loved art and won prizes at school for my portraits of Africans. Isaac played the violin and Yehuda played the piano and every Friday night we would sing and dance to Hebrew folk songs. We were ardent Zionists and even had in our home the very meeting of the Shomer Hazair movement.

I was very fond of sport, getting my honors for hockey and enjoying tennis and swimming. But my greatest love was  always painting and drawing which I practiced at every opportunity.

   Ziporah Segal

At Witwaters University in Johannesburg (Wits), I did a BA degree i Fine Arts and it was there that I met Zundel Segal who was then chairman of the South Africa Youth Council. He came to lecture the Jewish Students on Zionism. I was enthralled - ast last I could get back to my beloved country, Israel. Zundel promised that if i married him, we would get to Israel as soon as we could. We had two children, Moshe and Ilana, and finally returned to IUsrael on November 14, 1952.

We lived in an apartment in Shikun Drom Africa in Tel Aviv. For the first two weeks we literally had no food as one then needed rationing coupons to buy the little tht was available. Fortunately, my mother sent us food parcels consisting of tins of bully beef and jam, tea, coffee, sugar and toilet paper. The last item was very important to us, although to my Israeli cousins who were Holocaust survivors, this was a complete waste of money; only the food meant anything to them.

Times then were hard. There was no food to be had and no one to help. In addition, the container of goods which we had so carefully selected for months to bring to Israel, was damaged. The Israeli ship, the "Atzmaut", was one of the first and the sailors had n experience in loading her so they threw the container into the hold and it split open, The seawater got in and damaged everything. I sat and cried - there was nothing to buy so we slept on mattresses on the floor.

In the early 50's, after coming from South Africa, the land of plenty, we were shocked to see how scarce everything was. There were hardly any fruits and vegetables and the only item that could be bought without coupons was bread. Meat was severely rationed and we could only get it once a month. One month, the joke that went around was that we could get meat twice tht month - once from the radio and once from the newspaper. My bully-beef cutlets were delicious and somehow we managed.

Because of the scarcity of food, the black market flourished and the authorities fought this, stopping and searching cars on the road. My husband had a school friend from Lithuania, Betzia, who lived on a small farm in Binyamina.  One Saturday she invite4d us for lunch and it was the first real meal we had in Israel. When we got home that night, she phoned us to tell us to look in the boot of the car. She had hidden egg, sugar and wonderful homemade cheese and yoghurt. If we had been caught on the road, the food would have been confiscated so she hid it without telling us. We feasted for a week.

We had no refrigerators then, only an icebox. One a week, the iceman would come and sell us a block of ice which he would carry up three flights of steps. Not having a fridge, we used to buy live fish for the Friday night meal. If we bought it before Friday, we would keep it alive by filling the bath with water and letting it swim around. The children would get attached to the fish which they treated as a pet and would get most upset when I whacked it on the head and made the weekly gefilte fish out of it.

Despite these difficulties, I loved being in Israel and was proud to be a Jerusalem-born sabra. My son Doron, now an architect, was born here, the people were warm and helpful and I loved every minute of being here - and still do.

I continued to paint throughout everything that has happened and have had many exhibitions in Israel, South Africa, the USA and Italy. My greatest happiness i when I get letters from people round the world who have taken home a painting from my "Jerusalem of Gold" series, and tell me how much they miss Israel when they look at it.

I am extremely proud of the next generations. My son Doron has passed army age but still voluntarily goes to reserve servicer as he is in a special unit. My grandson David, born and raised in England, has come to Israel to do army service and continue his doctorate in chemistry. Our pride in being Israelis lives on.

** Ziporah Segal, sadly, passed away in 2015.