The Best School in Jerusalem: Annie Landau’s School for Girls, 1900–1960

3 | Rebuilding in British Jerusalem

82 {3} Rebuilding in British Jerusalem Jerusalem surrendered to General Edmund Allenby in early December 1917, one month after the Balfour Declaration, promising the Jews a homeland in Palestine,had been issued in London.Allenby’s humble walk through the Jaffa Gate into the Old City marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of the Middle East.1 Jerusalem, denuded by the retreating Turkish army of food, money, drugs, surgical instruments, furniture, records, and archives, became the responsibility of the British. GeneralAllenby,anxious to reassure the residents of the city of the benign intentions of his government, announced that the status quo would prevail regarding all holy places. He decreed that henceforth all official business would be conducted in three languages: English, Arabic, and Hebrew. This news immediately raised the ire of Arab leaders,who were happy to drop the use of Turkish but were alarmed by the inclusion of Hebrew, the language advocated by nationalist Jews.The general appointed Colonel Ronald Storrs as the first military governor of Jerusalem. Storrs noted in his diary that the residents of the city were starving and suffering from cold and that there was not a single private car or private phone in the city when he arrived. Storrs’s request for emergency food aid was met by General Allenby with alacrity: wheat and other essentials arrived daily by rail from Cairo for the next few months.Storrs established food control with rations for flour, sugar, and kerosene. Further help came from relief agencies that arrived in the first weeks of 1918. The Syrian Relief Fund, founded by Assistant Archbishop Rennie MacInnes in 1916 to provide relief in Syria and Palestine, donated food as well as wool to make blankets and warm clothing. Rebuilding in British Jerusalem · 83 The American Zionist Organization and the American Red Cross contributed personnel, equipment, and funds.2 Although the war was not over, Annie Landau, exiled in Alexandria, was eager to return home. She appealed to General Allenby and became the first woman permitted to return to her beloved Jerusalem, arriving in February 1918.Knowing the desperate plight of the city,she arranged to bring with her four tons of food and clothing supplied by her supporters Jack Mosseri of Cairo and Sir Elly Kadoorie of Shanghai.British authorities acceded to Landau ’s request to ship the goods free of charge on the military train from Cairo. Upon her arrival,she distributed food and clothing to the needy.She soon learned that there was an additional scourge in the city:starving young women were selling themselves as prostitutes to the thousands of soldiers stationed in Jerusalem. Landau, who had maintained good relations with the Turkish authorities,now began to develop ties to the British administration.She was determined to get as many girls and women off the streets as possible. One way she could help was to reopen her school quickly. The obstacles to reopening the Evelina de Rothschild School were many. Frutiger House had been requisitioned as an annex for the British military hospital, which operated out of the Italian Hospital across the street.3 The Abyssinian Palace,which had been used by theTurkish army,was now empty. The school furniture that had been salvaged by Jonas Marx remained in storage . None of the foreign teachers who had fled during the war had returned to Jerusalem. The coffers of the Anglo-Jewish Association were depleted as a result of the war. Nevertheless, Landau met with Governor Storrs and asked for the immediate return of Frutiger House. Storrs recorded his first impression of the headmistress: When, early in 1918, a lady, unlike the stage woman of Destiny in that she was neither tall, dark, nor thin, was ushered, with an expression of equal good humour and resolution, into my office, I immediately realized that a new planet had swum into my ken. Miss Annie Landau had been throughout the War exiled in Alexandria from her beloved Evelina de Rothschild Girls’ School, and demanded to return to it immediately. To my miserable pleading that her school was in use as a Military Hospital, she opposed a steely insistence: and very few minutes had elapsed before I had leased her the vast empty building known as the Abyssinian Palace.4 84 · The Best School in Jerusalem Landau’s unique combination of resolve and charm, tested earlier in her dealings with Ottoman representatives, worked well...