Bernstein, Moshe

Moshe was born in 1925 in Poland, in the town of Smorgon near Vilna (now in Belarus), his father was a teacher at the Tarbut Hebrew school and his mother was a midwife in the municipal hospital, Who were educated in this atmosphere, spoke fluent Hebrew from their childhood and dreamed of the Land of Israel Samorgon was annexed to Poland at the end of the First World War after more than a century of Russian rule, As an important Jewish center (as part of Lithuanian Jewry) Before World War II, the city was annexed to the Soviet Union A year and a half later, in 1941, after the breakup of the alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Germans occupied the area and the Jews of the city were later concentrated in the ghetto, following which Jews were sent to forced labor in Estonia and Latvia. Who were sent to the death camps in the town of Smorgon, where the mother and younger brother were murdered, and Moshe was sent to a labor camp in Estonia, where his father died. Moshe rolled between camps and miraculously survived. On May 3, 1945, he managed to escape from the German “death march” to the camp inmates when the front approached Germany, and with his last strength he reached Czechoslovakia. At the end of the war, Moshe returned to Poland and discovered that there was no remnant left of his family. He was admitted to an orphanage in Hallenbeck, near the city of Lodz, where he and other members established a Zionist cell with the sole purpose of immigrating to Palestine. After further shaking, Moshe managed to join an illegal immigrant ship sailing to Israel. The ship was caught by the British and its immigrants were sent to a detention camp in Cyprus. After a few months in detention, Moshe was allowed to enter the country, probably in early 1947. When he arrived, Moshe joined his comrades in a Zionist pioneering training program at Kibbutz Beit Zera in the Jordan Valley. After a short time he moved to her room, where his relatives lived, and began to build his life in this city. With the outbreak of the War of Independence, Moshe joined the Alexandroni Brigade, the 3rd Brigade of the Hagana, which was assigned to protect the Sharon region. He was among the first to enlist, and even urged all his acquaintances to do the same. After training at the Dora camp near Netanya and finishing with honors, he was stationed in the Asher district and was sent as a reinforcement to Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh. This kibbutz, north of Kfar Sava, was on the front line and suffered from Arab harassment from the beginning of the war, mainly by gang members who came from the Qalqiliya area. The Alexandroni fighters were involved in securing the settlement and protecting the workers in its fields. On April 20, 1948, two groups of workers from the kibbutz were attacked by a gang from Qalqiliya. After fighters were called in for help, a face-to-face battle developed, during which the defenders managed to eliminate three members of the gang and smuggle the others. Two members of the agriculture and three fighters, including Moshe, were killed. He was twenty-three when he fell. Moshe was laid to rest in the cemetery at Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh. This hero is a “last scion”. The survivors of the Holocaust are survivors of the Holocaust who survived the last remnant of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters) who experienced the Holocaust in the ghettos and / or concentration camps and / or in hiding and hiding in territories occupied by the Nazis and / Or in combat alongside members of the underground movements or partisans in the Nazi-occupied territories who immigrated to Israel during or after World War II, wore uniforms and fell in the Israeli army.