Jonathan Cohen's photos

The German Templers arrived in the Holy Land in 1868, inspired by religious fervor. Of the seven colonies that they were to establish in the Holy Land, the Haifa colony (est. 1869) was the first and became the largest and most important. It was also the first planned farming village in Eretz Israel. It featured a 30-meter wide tree-lined avenue along a main axis running north-south on a moderate slope at the foot of the Carmel (today's Ben Gurion Street) with, on either side, handsome houses of dressed stone topped by red gable roofs, beside which were farm buildings, workshops and large gardens. When in World War I General Allenby conquered Palestine from the Ottomans, the German colonists were regarded as enemy aliens. Many of the colonists were recruited for the units of the German Imperial Army, which fought together with the army of the Ottoman ally against the British conquest. In 1937, 34% of the Templers were card-carrying members of the Nazi party. On King George VI's Coronation Day in 1937, all the Templer colonies flew the swastika flag. At the start of World War II colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the British and sent, together with Italian and Hungarian enemy aliens, to internment camps in Waldheim and Bethlehem of Galilee. 661 Templers were deported to Australia via Egypt on July 31, 1941, leaving 345 in Palestine. Although the adjacent farms and gardens have disappeared with history, the solid and handsome Templer houses, and the wide and lovely avenue along which they were built, are today at the heart of an economically thriving commercial neighborhood that is among Haifa's most beautiful, whose open view up to the Bahá'i Gardens on Mount Carmel and down to the sea has been lovingly preserved.