Fred Monosson was a wealthy American Jewish industrialist. At the end of the second world war, he used his wealth to buy the best colour video camera and film that was available and traveled to post-war Europe and pre-Israeli state Palestine and filmed in colour many of the historic events that have only ever been available in black and white. His footage includes Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion, Chaim Weizman, the Wailing Wall, the streets of Tel Aviv, even shots of the German camps and post-war Europe. If not for a lucky discovery, these videos may have been lost.

Never before have these images of the early days of the state of Israel been seen in colour. And the world looks different in colour. In one scene, shot in 1948, Jews in Tel Aviv are enjoying some cake at a cafe, not 15 km away from where fighting is occurring in what came to be known as the War of Independence. This is not what our impression is of life during the early days of the state, leading to the observation that life indeed does look harsher in black and white. The colour footage helps us realize that these people’s lives, their joys and desires, were not so far away from ours.

Here are two videos that show some of the footage.

The first is a short trailer for the edited 55-minute movie assembled by Avishai Kfir and Yitzchak Rubin. The video image quality in this trailer is incredible.

The second is an Israeli news piece about the video and their discovery. It shows more footage, but is not as clear.

(Thanks to AF for sharing this with me.)