Cohen, Moshe

Son of Chaya and Abraham. Moshe was born in Jerusalem in December 1920. He was the first son of a family, a middle child, and a brother of Pnina, Yaffa, Sarah and Chava, who began his studies in the Mishnah and Talmud, and then attended the “Tachkemoni” In the center of Jerusalem. He was a member of the “Mahanot Haolim” movement and was a partner in the construction of the first hut for members of the movement in Haifa Bay. For this purpose he was in contact with the state’s institutions and raised money, and he did all this while making sure to continue his regular studies. After three years of study, Moshe left the school and put himself at the disposal of the movement. These were the days of the 1936-1939 events, and a group of “hagurim”, Moshe among them, was formed in preparation for a life of training. The group moved to a training program for settlement at Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh, near Kfar Sava. Meanwhile, Moshe’s family returned to live in Jerusalem, in the Old City, and he visited them once every two weeks. Later, as the camp progressed to the north of the Dead Sea, a point to which the name of the Arava was named, there was much work and fewer visits to his parents’ home. Instead, he wrote a lot about the hard work of the small group that “already counts more than a minyan,” as he puts it, about raising animals, about trying to grow something in the soil that contains 12 percent salt, vegetables. Moshe fell in the night of 2 Av, August 6, 1940, when he was in a guard post in Beit Ha’arava. A bullet was fired from his rifle and he was wounded and unconscious near the post and rushed to the hospital in Jerusalem. He was laid to rest at the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem, leaving his parents and four sisters, and his friends produced a memorial booklet on the anniversary of his all.