Aussie, Shlomo (Negi)

Son of Perahia and Ovadia, was born in Baghdad in 1910. When he was six years old, he died from his mother; His father remarried and the wife became a loving mother to Shlomo and his brother. In his youth, Zionism came to Iraq: the Balfour Declaration and the Jewish settlement in Palestine. As a Jewish child who grew up in a traditional home, Shlomo’s imagination ignited and he connected the stories of the Bible with Zionism in Eretz Israel. He decided to fulfill the verse “Next Year in Jerusalem”. When he was twenty, he married his wife and the couple had two sons, and then Solomon separated from his family and he and his pregnant wife and their two small children pretended to be Muslim pilgrims on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After many hardships, the family reached Amman and Damascus to Jerusalem. Shlomo and his family suffered a difficult life when they immigrated to Israel: crowded quarters and a stressful life in the Jewish quarter of the Old City, the bloody events of 1936-1939, and mainly difficulties in earning a living. He found his livelihood and his family’s livelihood by finding hard physical work in a shingles industry in the lower reaches when he had to make his way from Jerusalem to Jerusalem. He later worked as a porter at the potash plant in the Dead Sea and carried heavy sacks of potash and was stung on his back in the terrible heat of the Dead Sea. Shlomo did not spare himself any effort to provide for his family. In addition, when he worked as a night watchman in the car park near the Orion Cinema, Shlomo hid illegal weapons in his storeroom and in the parking lot as part of his service in Mishmar Ha’am. On the 22nd of Adar I 5708 (February 22, 1948), when he was standing near the parking lot heard a burst of gunfire and saw that British soldiers were preparing to blow up three car bombs on son of Yehuda Street. He began to shout to awaken the residents of the area to take care of themselves, but he himself was too late and caught in the ruins of the buildings. A few days passed before all the victims were rescued. Shlomo was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Sanhedria; He left behind a wife, three sons, two daughters, brothers and a sister.