L ifestyles /C ulture
Documentary Narrates Secret Mission by Teens
to Secure State of Israel’s Independence
FI L M
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
ON THE EVE OF Israel’s War
of Independence, a group of
Jewish teenagers risked their
lives to secretly manufacture
bullets for freedom fighters.

Their work was memorial-
ized in a museum near Tel Aviv,
but relatively few people outside
the country know their story.

Now, a documentary by
a production crew from the
Philadelphia area is bringing their
experience to new audiences.

“Code Name: Ayalon”
premieres at the Israeli Film
Festival of Philadelphia on Oct.

29 (the festival was resched-
uled from the spring due to the
coronavirus). It will also run
at the Mandel JCC Cleveland
Jewish FilmFest, the Miami
Jewish Film Festival and more.

Broadcast reporter and
Cachet Communications
President Laurel Fairworth was
inspired to produce the film
during a mission to Israel in
2012 to honor her late mother.

She was assigned to a bus visiting
the Ayalon Institute Museum,
a museum built on the bullet
factory where the teens worked.

“I would never have chosen,
in all fairness, a bullet factory
from the ’40s to go visit, but I
was assigned that bus, and we
went and I was enchanted by
what I found,” she said.

She learned the story of
a group of scouts who were
selected by the Haganah for a
mission they knew could cost
them their lives.

“They said, ‘We want you
to take on this dangerous
mission. We can’t tell you what
it is, but you all have to agree. If
anyone says no, we can’t go for
it — in other words, it has to be
unanimous,’” Fairworth said.

“And they said yes. They
agreed to take this on before
knowing what it was they were
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM “Code Name: Ayalon” will premiere at the Israeli Film Festival of
Philadelphia. Courtesy of Laurel Fairworth.

If you ever make a documentary, don’t
make it about a secret factory. There’s no
documentation of secret stuff.”
MICHAEL LOPATIN
going to be asked to do,” she
continued. In 1945, the Haganah built
a factory under a kibbutz on
the outskirts of Rehovot, a
small town 30 minutes from
Tel Aviv. The teenagers would
live there and produce 2.5
million bullets to be smuggled
to Jewish freedom fighters
preparing to fight Arab forces
for independence.

It had to be done in complete
secret due to rising political
tensions in the region — the
British were trying to keep
peace by banning weapons
manufacturing. If they were
caught by British forces, they
would be hanged, and if they
were caught by Arab forces,
they would be blown up.

Their mission was ultimately
a success, and Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion credited
those 2.5 million bullets with
saving the state of Israel.

This, Fairworth thought, would
make a great documentary.

After a few months of delib-
eration, she decided to take on
the project. Michael Lopatin,
president of Ralph Lopatin
Productions and creative
director for the Marlo Group in
Los Angeles, joined as a director.

Initially, finding material to
work with was difficult.

“If you ever make a documen-
tary, don’t make it about a secret
factory. There’s no documenta-
tion of secret stuff,” said Lopatin,
who lives in Merion.

Through Fairworth’s
contacts at CNN, the produc-
tion team was able to track
down the last 10 survivors who
worked at the factory and hired
interviewers to speak with
them about their experiences.

“We commissioned these
interviews and got them on
tape and that became the
jumping off point,” Lopatin
said. “They were able to frame
the story pretty completely.”
He wanted the film to focus
mainly on the factory worker’s
memories. “We wanted the least
amount of narration as possible
and the most amount of survi-
vors to tell the story,” he said.

The former bullet manufac-
turers were happy to talk about
their work, but they had kept it
JEWISH EXPONENT
mostly quiet for decades since
the Haganah had impressed
upon them the importance of
secrecy. They also didn’t feel
like they had done anything
particularly heroic.

“They said, ‘They told us to
keep it a secret and once we left
we just never thought to tell
anyone,’” Fairworth said.

Composer Rodney Whittenberg,
who runs the recording studio
MelodyVision in Plymouth
Meeting, joined the team to
provide the documentary’s
soundtrack. “Being African American,
I’ve often found a fondness or
a connection to Jewish culture.

And so the story of the oppres-
sion of the Jews, both at the
end of World War II in Europe,
but also being occupied by the
British, it just struck me as a
story that I would like to be
involved in telling, like how
people found a way to covertly
protect themselves,” he said.

Whittenberg composed
tracks that incorporated
elements of Eastern European
klezmer and orchestral music,
as well as Middle Eastern
music and modern electronic
percussion. He focused on creating a
constant sense of tension to
convey what was at stake for
the young workers.

“If they got caught, it would
mean the fall of this new
country that they were trying
to create,” he said. l
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OCTOBER 22, 2020
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