David Ben-Gurion's secretary passes away
Liza Shevetz, the veteran secretary of the first prime minister, passes away at the age of 103. In a recent interview with Ynet, she recalled her experience of working alongside David Ben-Gurion and his close relations with Shimon Peres.
Shevetz, who was born as Liza Welbel and immigrated to Israel in 1938, studied at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Poland. She later became the secretary of the leader of the Yishuv Ben-Gurion (the Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine), who eventually became the first prime minister. She continued to serve as Ben-Gurion's secretary until he decided to retire from political life and move to Kibbutz Sdeh Boker in the Negev.
"In one of the conversations with Ben-Gurion, he asked me if I was happy with my work and I told him that I always choose to work with the person I love. He then told me, 'so do I,'" she told Ynet in September. "When I retired, I used to go to him often when people came over for meetings. They would send a car to pick me up and take me to Sdeh Boker, and there I recorded all the interviews he had with people."
In an interview after Shimon Peres' death, Shevetz said that Peres, while still a young politician, was a dominant figure in Ben-Gurion's circle. "He was very popular and appreciated by him. He was very devoted, and Ben-Gurion simply loved it.
"I remember that during one of our meetings I asked him to go over a memo I wrote and he replied with half a smile: 'You know Hebrew better than all of us,' because I had studied in the Hebrew Gymnasium, which was known for its Hebrew language studies."
She recalled of Peres and his wife Sonia: "I visited them at their home several times and she was always very nice. We were not close like friends, but she was always caring for us. She was a cordial woman who did not like all the noise around her. She wanted peace and quiet and Shimon could not live without public work. Such people are a minority in our generation, this old-fashioned generation is disappearing."
