A window into a top-secret bullet factory – and the Israeli spirit of determination

Photo: Anne Taillandier

The Ayalon Institute Museum reconstructs the incredible story of the clandestine munitions factory near Rehovot where young workers manufactured more than 2 million bullets between 1945 and 1948. 

By Leslie Katz 

Usually you learn about history from books or see it unfold on the big screen. Occasionally, if you're very, very lucky, you meet history in person.

That's what happened last Thursday, when my travel companions in Israel and I met Shlomo Hillel, a 92-year-old Iraqi-born Israeli who played a remarkable and dramatic role in the establishment of Israel.

Hillel was among the young Hebrew scouts who worked at a clandestine underground Haganah munitions factory from 1945-1948. To do so, they climbed through a narrow hole in the ground, down a steep spiral staircase, to spend 10-hour days in a hot, air-choked machine shop shaping metal into bullets to be used in the fight for Jewish independence. The 45 factory workers produced more than 2 million 9-millimeter machine gun bullets overall, ammunition considered key to the early fight for statehood. 

Dramatic story of top-secret pre-state bullet factory headed to big screen

A film crew recaptures the dramatic story of the secret factory where more than 2 million bullets were manufactured. 

By June Glazer

One of the most dramatic chapters in the struggle to establish the state of Israel will soon be portrayed in a documentary, thanks to an American news reporter turned movie producer who recently filmed at the site where the story of a clandestine bullet factory unfolded 70 years ago. 

Laurel Fairworth, an Emmy-Award-winning television journalist based in Philadelphia, was inspired to re-create for posterity this little-known story of secrecy and heroism after visiting Israel for the first time two years ago. 

"My parents loved Israel, and before my mother passed away she made me promise to visit. Frankly, I had no desire to do so, but to fulfill my promise I went on a mega-mission with our Jewish Federation. Very simply, I was smitten," Fairworth said at the Ayalon Institute on the day filming for the documentary "The Secret Beneath the Hill" began there in March. "Ayalon Institute" was the code name for the clandestine underground munitions plant that today is a national museum.

The Bullet Factory: Always something new

By Alyse Golden Berkley, Makor member

The Ayalon Institute is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of a secret bullet factory, set up by the Haganah, and built right under the nose of the British. The factory was built to look like a Kibbutz laundry. Volunteers led a double life, telling everyone they knew that they were going to work in the laundry but really working tirelessly underground manufacturing ammunition.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit my favorite tourist attraction in all of Israel, The Ayalon Institute, also known as the Bullet Factory. I accompanied the wife of an American Executive. As our guide fascinated us with the personal stories of the workers from the Factory, our guest shared stories of her father fighting at Normandy during World War II. She saw that we all had to sacrifice and fight together for freedom. It was touching to see how moved she was by this experience.

Some might say that returning to this site is the same old, same old; however, it has never been the same. I always learn something new. This time, our guide told us of a Holocaust survivor who came to see the Bullet Factory. During the war, she endured torture when forced to make bullets for the very enemy that was trying to annihilate her and her people. In coming to this place, she saw that at the same time, Jews were doing the very same thing, but for their own defense. In the words of this survivor, her life had come full circle and was given the closure that she has always sought. Her thought and feelings have been memorialized in the letter that is below.