Barkai (Grossbard), Yosef

Son of Chaya Tamar and Zvi Ozer. He was born on February 28, 1908 in Lodz, Poland. In 1924, at the age of 16, he immigrated to Eretz Israel and joined his two brothers who immigrated before him. As many pioneers who immigrated to Israel at that time, he worked in building and guarding. He worked at the Hebrew University building on Mount Scopus and was among the guards at the university’s grand opening in 1925. From Jerusalem he moved to Beit Alpha and Ein Harod. In 1929 he was hired to work as a laborer in the Israel Electric Corporation. He participated in the construction of the high voltage line from Naharayim, and later on leaving the Hadera-Tel Aviv line. When the electricity grid was completed, he was hired as a clerk at Nehushtan, where he worked until the end of 1939. From there he went to work in Sarafand, the British army camp. In 1941 he was transferred to the house of Nabala to stand there at the head of the department for electrical needs, and in this work he specialized and acquired considerable experience. In the Nabala house, the Arabs trained in the field and trained the Arabs in the nearby villages. On January 10, 1946, an Arab shopkeeper who worked in the Nabala camp disappeared and immediately the Arabs began to incite against the Jews as if they were guilty of his disappearing. As a result of this incitement there was a wild assault of Arab workers on Jewish workers. Yosef recalled that one of the workers remained in the camp and returned to save her. The worker was saved but he fell dead in his blood. He was laid to rest in the Defense Corps’ cemetery in the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery near Tel Aviv.