ABSTRACT
During the last two years of the war, Jerusalem had become a much more interesting place than before. It had been a predominantly Jewish city since the late nineteenth century, perhaps even earlier, but the old orthodox-religious community hardly ever met the newcomers and there was literally no common language. The orthodox spoke Yiddish; the Oriental Jews conversed either in Ladino or Arabic or their native dialect (Persian, Kurdish, Turkish). The new yishuv spoke Hebrew, with the exception of the most recent immigrants, who had not yet mastered the official language and often spoke German. The Old City was predominantly Arab, but there were sizable Greek and Armenian communities, not to mention the Jewish quarter. Monks and nuns came from just about every country; there were Copts and Ethiopians. Before the war the British community had consisted mainly of colonial civil servants and their families, of missionaries and a few archaeologists and churchmen.
