The workers got up every day and pretended to go off to the fields. Instead, they disappeared into the factory. To keep up the pretense, a sunlamp gave the underground workers the tanned visages of field workers. They were indispensable to winning the war. The bullet factory, called the Ayalon Institute, has been preserved.
Tourists enter through secret staircases and sit in the tanning chamber.
The early months of fighting brought a mix of victories and tragic defeats. The Jews won tough battles in the Galilee and Safed. Twelve miles south of Jerusalem another tragic event was taking place. A cluster of villages called Gush Etzion had been built on land bought by observant Jews from an Arab sheik in 1928. After several unsuccessful starts, a kibbutz and three satellite settlements were in place through backbreaking labor in cold winters and scorching summers.