Remembering the Boykos and the Ben-Gurion Dream

On the day of his yahrzeit, Israel pays tribute to David Ben-Gurion and his dreams and historic accomplishments. He dreamed of a homeland for the Jewish people and brought it to life. Where others saw a desert, he saw the heart and soul of the Modern State of Israel. He once stated: “It is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneer vigor of Israel shall be tested.” Later, others followed, helping to make those dreams come true…

If there were ever a family of special achievers in the positive sense, it was the family of the Boykos, all former refugees from Austria.

Five brothers and one sister: Max, Fred, Hugo, Rudolph, Walter, and Heidi, along with their spouses and relatives, played a vital role with significant contributions to mankind in the fields of science, the arts, industry, and the humanities. It started however with a dream and commitment to the reborn State of Israel from this prolific family, one of a few which managed to escape Hitler’s iron furnace.

Rudolph was the elder statesman of the Boyko clan. When he arrived in the United States from Austria in the critical year of 1939 as a refugee, he became a laborer in a firm that manufactured lenses for binoculars for the war effort. Starting from scratch the ingenious Rudolph soon advanced as an expert in his field and within the lapse of a few years initiated his own business in the steel industry. The business flourished in the late 1940’s and Rudolph became the proprietor of the global multi-million-dollar company, Silbo Steel Corporation in Denville, N. J.

United Nations Correspondent David Horowitz had the privilege of a close friendship with Rudolph the industrialist and his wife Rhoda, and through them others in this distinguished family including Professor Hugo and Dr. Elizabeth Boyko.

I don’t remember Horowitz ever mentioning Rudolph Boyko and sadly, I had no knowledge of his story or of the vast contributions made by the large Boyko family to the re-born State of Israel and to all of mankind. Now, years after the passing of both, we learn previously uncovered facts drawn from the rich history of archival records.

The steel executive was one of the pioneers of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel in 1969 and along with his wife, the former Rhoda Greenblatt, he created the Boyko Institute for Saline Water Agriculture in 1980, perpetuating the research of his late brother, Hugo Boyko, a scientist. In 1963, the Boykos won the support of the late Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Agriculture, who happily leased the company 4,000 acres of forsaken sandy wasteland in the Wadi Arab region of the Negev. Rhoda was fond of saying “What Ben-Gurion wanted, we provided.”

Brother Hugo and his famous partner-scientist wife, Dr. Elizabeth Boyko, are both renowned in Israel for their scientific accomplishments in bringing new life to the previously barren Negev. Their pioneering work in fructifying this arid region of the ancient land has seen the emergence of two centers: the Beersheba metropolis with its ever-growing Ben-Gurion University and Eilat, the Miami of the Jewish State. Elizabeth Boyko was instrumental in the creation of a garden paradise out of a rough, rocky barren zone at Eliat, today a flourishing park that has become an attraction for tourists from all parts of the world.

For their accomplishments, the Boyko husband and wife team received the prestigious Fleming Award in 1959 for the advancement of human welfare through outstanding achievement in science.

The late Fred Boyko, brother of Rudolph and Hugo, was himself an accomplished artist who had won acclaim in the United States as a portrait painter. His daughter, Anitta Boyko Fox, who had also fled Austria with her family in 1939 at the height of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, was a rehabilitation therapist and had played an important role in America in fostering her uncle Hugo’s and Elizabeth’s projects.

It was during a meeting Horowitz had with Anitta’s mother, Helen, at Rudolph and Rhoda’s picturesque sanctuary-residence, that he learned the full account of Anitta’s famous aunt, Rudolfino Menzel. Helen carefully recounted the dramatic story of her distinguished sister Rudolfino’s encounter with the Nazis and how she managed to foil their plans. Her story resonates through the decades.

Dr. Menzel had lived in pre-Hitler Vienna in the late 1920s. There, in association with her physician-husband, Dr. Rudolph Menzel, she embarked on a series of long-range experiments on the psychology of dogs. She bred over one thousand dogs, a combined total of some 16 generations of males and females and presented her statistical conclusions, the world’s first, at the International Cynological Congress in 1935 on the dog’s mental inheritance. During this period, she also served as an advisor to the Austrian police and the German army.

Then Hitler took over Austria.

He issued orders that Dr. Menzel was to be commandeered to train her dogs for the Nazi shock troops. However, as soon as her friends learned of this, they smuggled her out of Vienna, just two weeks before Hitler sent a large fleet of automobiles to escort the woman-scientist to the elaborate headquarters he had set up for her in Berlin.

But Hitler was too late. By that time, she was already in British Mandate Palestine and, as her sister Helen recounted, “what a shock it was for the Nazis to discover that the dogs she had trained for the Austrian police were taught to follow commands only in Hebrew.”

The year was 1938. Of the hundreds of pureblooded dogs, all Dr. Menzel was able to take with her was a half dozen. But, as her friends themselves kept coming over to Palestine, each was able to bring along a dog or two and in that way she in time assembled enough of her prized canines to establish her Research Institute for Canine Psychology and Training.

As America Jewish writer Simon Bloom pointed out, “this was a logical outcome for her work of almost twenty years before she solved a problem dealing with the dog’s ability to search out specific odors of the human body. It was this work that found its place in criminology and led to the post as the canine advisor to the Austrian police.”

When Rudolfino and her husband settled in Palestine in 1938, she became acquainted with the many problems that faced the Jewish pioneers there under the British Mandate. She soon became an adjunct of the heroic Haganah (the main paramilitary organization) and began to train her dogs for defense purposes that included the searching out of mines, the recognition of enemies, and the delivery of vital messages through enemy lines.

The dogs were also taught to guide Israeli workers away from the mines of saboteurs, and toiled faithfully in the Palmach ranks (the elite fighting force of the Haganah) in the interests of the Jewish resident’s security. Moreover, some 400 of her dogs fought in the English army in Africa after the late Prime Minister Moshe Sharett had given Rudolfino the go-ahead.

With doctorates in Psychology, Biology, and Chemistry, Rudolfino eventually was appointed Inspector-General for Dogs in the Armed Services of the new State, and in 1959 she became the director of the Israel Foundation of Guide Dogs for the Blind.

In addition to her work at the center, Professor Menzel taught animal psychology at Tel Aviv University in the 1960s. In 1966, her name was inscribed in the Golden Book of the Jewish National Fund for her distinguished contribution to the Zionist movement. She died in 1973, not long after her husband, who had been the physician of the Haifa-based Oil Refineries.

David Horowitz and his wife Nan were among the special guests in attendance at the dedication of the Boyko Research Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev on September 3, 1981, and at the dedication of a huge bronze sculpture titled “Chavvah, the mother of all life,” at the research center on May 11, 1983.

Family elder-statesman Rudy Boyko died of complications from surgery at Newton (New Jersey) General Hospital in October of 1989 at the age of 93.

Horowitz’s friendship with Rudolph and Rhoda Boyko and the long forgotten archival records lifts the curtain on this renowned household, a family of achievers, who by their acts, deeds, and contributions symbolize the miracle that democratic Israel has proven to be.

Recently, Doug Seserman, CEO of Americans for Ben-Gurion University stated, “Even geographically speaking, I believe Jerusalem represents Israel’s history, Tel Aviv represents the current, modern Israel, and the Negev is where you can imagine the future of the country.”

May it continue…