In 1960, a 7-foot deep swimming pool was built in the Kibbutz where my father grew up.Hot summers with no air-conditioning made the kibbutz pool a favorite attraction for many children from early morning to late evenings.Not knowing better and having no rules put in place, those responsible for the proper operation of the pool allowed it to be open with no lifeguard on duty.Safety was the responsibility of the adults, if they were around, and to a lesser degree the children themselves.On one Saturday afternoon in 1962, when the children were playing in the pool by themselves, a 12 years old child named Nathan dove down into the pool and did not come back up for air. Knowing they needed medical help, a few kids pulled him out of the water while others ran to get My grandmother from her home. She lived about 300 yards from the swimming pool. As soon as the boys came hurting in her door, she began to run to the swimming pool where she found an child lying on the side of the pool, not breathing.Knowing very well that a doctor or an ambulance would take hours to arrive, my grandmother began a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.Kneeling on the ground, she resuscitated Nathan for over four hours, the time it took for an ambulance to arrive and transport him to the hospital.When she eventually got up, four hours later, her knees were bleeding from holes in her skin caused by the stones on the side of the pool where she had been kneeling and keeping Nathan alive.
It is the holes in her knees that she will still reminisce about.Nathan spent a long time in the hospital before returning to school.He eventually made a complete recovery and lived a normal life. His parents, however, were upset with the system that ‘allowed’ their child to drown and packed up and left the Kibbutz to move to a big city.