The Secret Factory that Saved Lives: A Hidden Chapter in Tel Aviv

Port of Haifa, month of Sh'vat 5696. Three British intelligence officers rubbed their hands together in the winter cold, watching the approaching lights of the Polish cargo ship. They had a full report from a mole within the underground organizations. He had photographed Jews in Warsaw loading crates of ammunition disguised as goods, and they knew exactly where to look. The moment the ship docked at the port, the British officers boarded it, pushed the captain and crew aside, and triumphantly headed to the pointed corner. They opened crate after crate, shouting orders at each other, but as the crates were opened, the orders turned to curses. It turned out there was nothing notable in the crates. Indeed, just goods.

What the British did not know was that a British intelligence officer named Yehuda Arazi was also on the ship. As it sailed, he diverted it to the port of Beirut, to unload goods 'for the British army.' The goods were loaded onto British army trucks, driven by members of the Jewish underground, and sent toward the customs in Haifa. Midway, all the crates intended for the underground were unloaded and transferred to private vehicles. Even the trucks that reached the port of Haifa were clean of any prohibited goods.

These crates contained machinery for ammunition production, secretly purchased in Poland. The Jews now had to set up an arms factory right under the noses of the British, who punished possession of weapons with hanging. A secluded, remote place was chosen, loaded with misleading signs. Today, the site of the Eastern Fair is part of the Tel Aviv Port complex and Reading Park. In the 1930s, a major international fair was held there. The place was scattered with abandoned pavilions, remnants of exhibitions, fences, a massive construction site, and distant from the city. Some of the pavilions were active as an industrial zone.

TAAS workers dug a channel 33 meters long, 8 meters wide, and 7 meters deep. They poured concrete walls and a ceiling half a meter thick and left only two entrances: one was a shaft that led to an oven in the center of a tiny bakery, and the other was beneath the floor of a laundry. The channel was covered with dirt and construction waste, and there was no way to know it was there.

Into this disguised bunker, now called the 'TAAS Factory,' around twenty people entered daily to produce weapons and ammunition for Israeli fighters. Each worker had to undergo a meticulous check on leaving to ensure nothing remained that would betray their occupation: not a speck of gunpowder in their hair, traces of copper on their hands, or even a telltale smell. Anything could expose the factory to the British, sentencing many Jews to death.

At one point, a worker's wife noticed an unusual smell from his clothes and found traces on his hands. Loyal to his oath of secrecy, he told her they were leftovers from spraying in the orchard, but she didn’t buy the story, causing tension at home... Desperate, he turned to his commander for advice. The commander ordered that the wife be taken on a tour of the factory. She came, marveled, and was filled with pride over her husband’s role.

Machines arrived from Poland, but copper and gunpowder were needed. So, the underground members took over a British train carrying ammunition to Camp Nahal Sorek. They immobilized the driver and loaded hundreds of crates of ammunition, tank shells. They melted the copper and molded it into 9mm bullets, carefully reusing gunpowder. Over a million bullets were cast at the underground TAAS factory beneath the Tel Aviv port, saving many Jewish lives, crafted with remarkable devotion by those involved.