Blumenfeld, Baruch (Toladi)

Was born on January 6, 1914 in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, to a well-to-do family that aspired to educate him for a free profession, while he was caught in high school when he was 16 years old. He joined a group of woodcutters in Bacau and later to an agricultural training group in Moldova, and the parents brought him home and only after graduating did he succeed in immigrating to Israel, joining an immigrant convoy that organized through Bulgaria to Constantinople, And then through Syria to the border of the country, but here the group was captured and brought back to Romania On the deck of the illegal immigrant ship Ester, which sailed from Constanta on February 2, 1939, and after four months of rocking in the sea, he was caught near the shores of Ashkelon near the shores of the country and barely succeeded in immigrating to Israel. He was sent to the Engineers Corps and served in Italy and Persia, and when he was liberated in 1946 he settled with his wife in Even Yehuda and worked as a laborer in orchards, where he had a daughter and was a natural lover. In his civilian life and in the army, he was known for his “extreme honesty” (according to his friends). In January 1948, he was drafted into the Hagana and served as a quartermaster in the Hefer sub-district and afterwards in the Alexandroni Brigade and participated in its operations. On November 3, 1948, he returned to a camp near Kfar Yona, where he was allegedly ambushed by Arab prisoners who had worked in the camp the previous day. He was seriously injured in both his eyes, his hands, his stomach, and his chest. Baruch was transferred to Beilinson Hospital, where both his hands were cut to the elbows and tried to save him, but in vain. On November 5, 1948, feeling that his end was approaching, he tried to calm his wife and asked her not to cry and be strong for the child. Two days later, on Tuesday, 5 November 1948, he died and was put to rest in the military cemetery in Netanya, leaving a wife and daughter, and his daughter died nine months later.