Contributed by Yossi Cohen, Sasa, in memory of Edgar S. Bony who established the diesel shop.

Shlomo Bondy – Diesel Expert Extraordinaire

Shlomo (Edgar S. Bondy) Bondy was born in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia in 1921. As a teenager he joined Blau Weiss (a Czech Zionist youth group) where Teddy Kolek was his madrich and strengthened his budding Zionism.

After living in Prague under Nazi occupation for one year, the family arrived in NY in 1939 and Shlomo joined Hashomer Hatzair. While training in Hightstown NJ for the founding of a new kibbutz in Israel, Shlomo met his wife Rivka (born Ruth Fleischer in Nuremburg, Germany).

Shlomo was always fascinated with engines and especially diesel engines.

After Hachshara he went to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yards testing diesel engines on destroyers and large ships. He had to spend days at a time in the bellies of these giant war ships with giant engines running all the time. He learned to sleep on gratings in the company of very loud engines (which is why he was the only person ever able to fall asleep in Sasa’s thunderous generator house).

In 1949 when Kibbutz Sasa was founded on the Lebanese border in the Upper Galilee, Shlomo and his Rivka were among the original founders.

Life in the 50’s was tough in Israel, no food, no electricity, no running water , isolation, border skirmishes and cold snowy windy winters.

Bondy founded Sasa’s first income producing branch, a garage for heavy equipment (trucks, bulldozers, tanks, etc) which served the whole Galilee. His imaginative and often hilarious antics are still legendary in northern Israel. That Sasa garage has seen many sick tractors come in and healthy ones go out, usually with parts from many injured tractors.

I hope this Fuel Injection Pump Tester will remind many of the good old days and bring on some good “chizbatim” (old stories).

Shlomo Bondy – my father - was my biggest hero and my best role model.
I grew up loving the smell of oil and grease because that meant that Abba was near.
I am constantly impressed when I rediscover how many lives he had touched in his 88 years.