The Ayalon Institute, in the town of Rehovot south of Tel Aviv, is one of the most remarkable stories of ingenuity and secrecy in Israel’s pre-state history. Beneath a kibbutz laundry, a secret underground factory operated from 1945 to 1948, producing millions of bullets for the Jewish underground while the British authorities, who visited the kibbutz regularly, never discovered what was beneath their feet.
Secret
During the British Mandate, the Jewish community was forbidden from manufacturing weapons or ammunition. The Haganah, the Jewish defense organization, needed ammunition desperately and decided to build a factory underground. The location chosen was Kibbutz Hill, a settlement established specifically to serve as a cover for the factory. The name was deliberate: a working kibbutz, complete with agricultural fields, livestock, and a bakery, provided the perfect explanation for the noise, heavy machinery, and constant truck traffic that a bullet factory required.
The factory was built 8 meters below the surface. The entrance was hidden beneath a large commercial laundry machine. To access the factory, workers would move the laundry machine aside, descend through a concealed opening, and climb down to the production floor. When British inspectors arrived for routine checks, the machine was rolled back into place, and the kibbutz members above carried on with their daily chores as though nothing existed below.
Factory
The underground factory produced 9mm bullets for Sten submachine guns, the standard weapon of the Haganah. At its peak, the factory produced approximately 40,000 bullets per day. The workers, about 45 young men and women, descended each morning through the hidden entrance, worked a full shift underground in cramped, hot, and noisy conditions, and emerged at the end of the day. The heat and lack of ventilation were severe, and the workers’ skin often had a yellowish tint from the chemicals, which they explained to outsiders as the result of working in the bakery or the laundry.
The finished bullets were smuggled out in laundry carts, milk containers, and other innocent-looking conveyances, then distributed to Haganah units across the country.
Numbers
The factory was never discovered by the British. It operated from September 1945 until the end of the Mandate in May 1948, producing over 2.25 million bullets. These bullets played a critical role in the early battles of the War of Independence, when ammunition was in desperately short supply. The factory was decommissioned after independence and sealed shut. It remained forgotten for years until it was excavated and turned into a museum.
The Museum
The museum preserves the original factory, including the hidden entrance with the laundry machine, the production line, the ventilation system, and the workers’ personal quarters. Visitors descend into the underground space exactly as the workers did, and the guided tour tells the story with a combination of original equipment, personal testimonies, and a short film.
Visit with Hoshen Tours
The Ayalon Institute is one of the best-told stories in any Israeli museum. Hoshen Tours includes it for groups interested in the ingenuity, courage, and secrecy that built the state.