in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Haganah Soldier Esther arrived in Jerusalem on 1 December 1946 to take up her teaching post. In the ensuing months, whilst immersing herself in the local culture, she witnessed the growing street violence, the imposition of curfews and other restrictions on movement, attacks on Jewish property and personnel, and specific events such as the trial, conviction and execution of Irgun activist Dov Gruner, and the drawn out saga of the refugee ships such as the Exodus. As a result, her perspective changed; her letters home reflect a harder attitude and an increasingly sharp anti-British sentiment. By October 1947 she had joined Haganah, and while continuing with her teaching job for the time being, she began attending training camps to prepare for possible combat duty. In January 1948 she left Evelina de Rothschild and became a full-time Haganah soldier. In addition to military duties and continuing training she acted as a continuity announcer for Haganah's English-language broadcasting service, whilst seeking a posting to the garrison defending the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, the most vulnerable of all the Jewish sectors within Jerusalem. The Jewish Quarter There are two distinct narratives relating to the 1948 battle for the Jewish Quarter. The Arab narrative tells of a well-planned and executed military victory against a fanatical and determined foe. The Jewish narrative recounts a struggle against hopeless odds by a tiny force that by its bravery and determination held out for two weeks before being overwhelmed. There is truth in each version. In 1948 the Jewish Quarter covered a smaller area than it had once and does now. It then housed around 1700 civilians, mainly women, children and elderly, and was defended by a small garrison of mixed Haganah, Irgun and Lehi troops under a Haganah commander. The Quarter was entirely cut off from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem, surrounded by hostile Arab districts and effectively indefensible in the face of attack. It had no strategic military value but was of great symbolic importance. However, its garrison was severely undermanned and undersupplied, dependent for food and other necessities on a weekly convoy escorted by British troops, through which arms and additional combat troops had to be smuggled. Esther entered the Old City, ostensibly as a teacher, in the last of such convoys, on 7 May 1948 and reported to the Haganah commander. Her assigned task was a mobile role