My father Bernard (Baruch) Brook was born in 1907 in Fraunkirchen, a
small town about 35 miles southeast of Vienna Austria. As one of seven children, he was
the only one who played soccer with the “Goyim” and his team won the regional
championship in 1930. He was “discovered” by Hacoach Vienna which recruited him
to their team (he was left front position). On a tour of the Middle East in
1933 which included Egypt and British
Palestine, he and another teammate (Stern) stayed behind in Palestine after
being enticed by Hapoeal Haifa soccer team (which promised him a job as a
welder in the Shemen (oil) factory in Haifa). The condition for getting him the
job was that he would play also on the factory’s soccer team.
He played on Hapoel Haifa, as well as the National Jewish
team of Palestine and kept playing into the nineteen forties. I remember as a
child (I was born in 1941) travelling on a truck with the Happoel soccer team
(buses were a luxury) on Shabbat to different parts of the country where they
played other teams in the national soccer league. Soccer remained my father’s
love all his life. He later became the coach of Hapoel Haifa’s youth team, and later
a referee. Being a referee was not easy
and I remember one time when he came home with a bloodied face, as the crowd
did not like his decision.
My father was fortunate to have stayed in Palestine. He was
able to entice two of his brothers to come before the Second World War broke
out. One of them (Uri), who was also a soccer player, got help in getting a
visa because he played with Hacoach Haifa.
Soccer helped my father and two of his siblings escape the
Holocaust. My grandmother, aunt and
niece were killed by the Nazis. My father’s other siblings and their families
tried to come to Palestine illegally despite the British blockade in 1940, but
their boat was captured by the British Navy and they were sent to a detention
center in Mauritius Africa. They finally made it to Palestine in 1946.
As a side story-- my father’s last name was “Brock” but the
British misspelled it on his tourist visa as “Brook.” Being an illegal emigrant,
he never protested and the name stayed.
The soccer connection also helped me during the Yom Kippur
War:
I was a physician for a supply battalion of an armored
division in the Sinai. We were stationed very close to the fighting area,
dangerously exposed to Egyptian commando attacks. My physician friends at the
field hospital nearby asked me to get them hand grenades so that they could
defend themselves.( The irony of war: physicians needed explosives to be able
to care for patients.) They promised that if I could get the hand grenades to
them, they would be able to give me some medical supplies that I needed.
Fortunately, the son of my father’s soccer mate from Hacoach
Vienna and Hapoel Haifa (Stern) was the Major in charge of the ammunition
company in my battalion. The young Stern climbed on top of an ammunition truck one
night at 11 pm and hand-delivered a box full of grenades, which I promptly
brought to my grateful friends at the field hospital. Happily they never had to
use them, but it surely made them feel better. And I was able to get the extra supplies
we needed.
This last story is also in my book “ In the Sands Of Sinai:
a Physician’s account of the Yom Kippur War,” on page 51. I am attaching the e
copy and also have mailed you a paperback copy.
So, as you can see soccer played an important role in my
life. I still watch the soccer leagues in Israel and happily, Hapoell Haifa is
having a good year.
Baruch (Bernard) Brook's Austrian amateur soccer ID organization card 1929
