Israel, son of Deborah and Gedaliah, was born on October 8, 1927 in the city of Kibart, Lithuania, near the German border. At the age of six he was circumcised by his mother, and the father moved with his two children – Yisrael and his older sister Yehudit – to Kovno, where he raised them with great devotion. Israel excelled in his elementary school studies, continued to high school and there stood out for his persistence and excellence. Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union on the eve of World War II, but a year and a half after the outbreak of the war, the alliance between Stalin and Hitler was breached and the Germans occupied the area in June 1941. On June 24, 1941 a ghetto was established in which all the Jews of Kovno were forced to work. From hunger. In the autumn of 1943, the Kovno ghetto was converted into a concentration camp. In March 1944, an Aktion was carried out in which children and elderly ghetto residents were murdered. In early July 1944, as the Russians approached, the Germans decided to liquidate the camp and the remaining Jews were evacuated to the Dachau and Stutthof concentration camps. Israel and his family were among the inhabitants of the ghetto. Israel’s sister, Judith, perished there. More than once, Israel was in mortal danger but survived. As he sat in the ghetto he wrote a diary detailing his impressions and sufferings. His memoirs, written in literary Yiddish, were grouped under the name “There is no Oyif Grund von LeSon of” (from the abyss of life). In one of the passages in the diary, Israel describes the mass execution of Jews: “… two thousand souls march towards the mountain, and their eyes are raised to heaven and the eyes are begging and the hearts are beating and the cries of weeping pierce the air … The picture is becoming clearer: Women are in their husbands, and with heavy steps they ascend the mountain when the sons of a fucking lail hurry up …. Here is an army man who is waiting to receive the order, to be the messenger of the angel of death … And there were gunshots in the drunken curses, but suddenly – and a daring act is taking place. A twelve-year-old boy erupts from his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, and without waiting for his death, or Mav Let me be led to him like all the rest, a sudden leap from the top of the mountain, and a horrifying sound that shakes every Lev: “Shema Israel!” And there was not a few moments and “Shema Yisrael” is superior to every language – and “Shema Yisrael” is hidden and drowned in a shower of shots that is given in an instant … and the white snow is tainted with pure Jewish blood! In 1944, Israel and his father were transferred to Dachau, Germany, where they were subjected to forced labor. Israel’s father died while working, and his son dug his grave. Israel was the only one of his family to arrive on the day of liberation, when the American army arrived in Dachau. Immediately after the liberation, Israel joined the youth movement and began its journey to the Land of Israel. He traveled with his group to Italy, where they settled in the refugee camp and waited for their turn to immigrate. For about a year and a half Israel was in the camp, served in the immigrant police and during his free time he worked on Hebrew. His uncle, who lives in America, sent him an invitation and an entry permit and demanded that he come to Israel, but Israel returned the documents with a reply: “Those who did not pass what we went through can not feel what is the homeland of the people. On September 11, 1946, Israel sailed on the illegal immigrant ship “Palmach” on its way to Eretz Israel, and the ship, which was purchased by the Mosad for Aliyah Bet of the Haganah, left the port of La Spezia, Italy, carrying 414 immigrants. A British destroyer was ordered to stop and at the beginning of the confrontation the British sprayed jets of water while the Ma’apilim returned by throwing stones, and dozens of British soldiers boarded the ship and for the first time since World War II they used firearms. To reach the beach by swimming, but were caught and returned to the ship.The ship was towed to the port of Haifa, where the immigrants were taken to deportation ships and deported to camps in Cyprus. He spent the time in the camp taking advantage of Israel’s studies and chess games, and waited impatiently for his resurgence. Six months later, in April 1947, he was released and immigrated to Israel. Here he was forced to spend several weeks in the Atlit detention camp, and when he was released he moved to Tel Aviv. At first he lived with his uncle, and then Israel rented a room in the Montefiore neighborhood. Having no means to continue his studies, as he wanted to do, he began to work in the telephone and electric telephone exchanges. At the beginning of the War of Independence, Israel was among the first to report. After two weeks of training, he joined the 42nd Battalion in the “Kiryati” Brigade – the 4th Brigade in the Haganah. The battalion’s fighters defended Tel Aviv and its environs against the harassing Arabs, and Israel took part in guarding and fighting in the south of the city, near the village of Salameh. On the 29th of Adar I 5708 (29.2.1948) Israel was sent with seven other members of the “Haganah” unit (“Stars of the Sock”) to the position of the “Yotzek” factory near Mikveh Israel, which was a guard post for securing the road to Jerusalem and the south. On the way to Arab Jaffa. The days were still British Mandate times, and the authorities used to send soldiers to search for illegal weapons. On the same day British soldiers arrived and began to search for weapons. The members of the Haganah received orders from their commander not to resist and gave up their weapons, so the British forced them to stand for several hours with their hands raised and in the meantime spoiled the vehicle in the yard. Only in the late evening did the British give the group of Jewish defenders, who had no weapons, two minutes to leave under their “protection”. In the short time allotted to them, the boys did not succeed in starting the damaged vehicle, and even before they moved to their second car, the British left. Immediately after they left, an Arab gang arrived from the village of Yasur, and its members opened fire on the Jews at the post. Ten of the Jews who were in position, fighters and workers, were murdered. Israel was one of those killed on the spot. He was twenty years old. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Nahalat Yitzhak. In Volume 1 of “Goily Ash” – a book edited by the Ministry of Defense and from the literary-artistic estate of the fallen boys – sections of the Ghetto Diary of Israel were published under the title “The Abyss of Life.” 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.
