Cohen, Yehuda-Leib (Leonard)
(One of the first activists among the Zionist women) and Shalom (a member of the Zionist movement in England and a delegate to the first congresses). Born on 28.8.1919 in Liverpool, England, when his parents fulfilled their Zionist aspiration and immigrated to Israel on March 9, 1924, they brought him to Haifa where he studied at the preparatory program and later at the Reali high school and was a member of the Scouts On the Carmel. “One of his friends writes:” From his eyes glittering the clever, mischievous, prankish laugh. From his childhood, he had a mixture of extraordinary talents and the character of a “demon-ointment” – a man of iron will. A hard nut for cracking, a very difficult material for parents and teachers. “Even during his years of activity at” Scopus “his friends know many of his exploits and his notes from the old days reveal a boy who is capable of looking, His parents continued his studies in Liverpool, where he went on to study at the university and made Zionist propaganda among them, excelling as a speaker, and once competing with an anti-Semitic street speaker, Leonard was sent as a delegate to the Young Congress in Britain. He also received military training in a training department He came to visit his parents on vacation in the Carmel Forest in the summer of 1938. In September 1939 he took the final exams, but at the outbreak of World War II he gave up everything and volunteered for the army, serving two years in the South Lancashire Battalion as a second lieutenant and later As a lieutenant, and in the absence of any satisfaction in the routine of the ground forces, he asked to be transferred to the Royal Air Force, and was flown to Germany, occupied France, the Netherlands and Norway and later took part in the defense of Malta. In 1944 he was transferred to a service in Southeast Asia and on the way to his place of service he found an opportunity to visit his parents in Haifa. Once, flying high-ranking officers for an important consultation on a giant transport plane across the Pacific, engines were damaged and he landed the plane unharmed on a deserted island and immediately organized a successful rescue service. During his service he accumulated important medals and a Yaffa future was promised to him in the IAF. In 1946 he moved to civilian service as a pilot in British Airways, entered the course of ordinary citizen life, married a wife and had two children. When the United Nations resolution was passed on the basis of a Jewish state and Israel, the battles of the War of Independence broke out, and he felt that his place in the Israeli Air Force had succeeded in breaking free of his employment contract with the British Airline. “When he tried to take off from the airport with his friend George (Buzz) Burling (a celebrated pilot, a Christian from Canada, also a hero of Malta, who volunteered The plane fell due to an accident whose circumstances were not clear, and both were killed on the 11th of Iyar 5708 (May 20, 1948). He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Rome, but his death was a heavy mourning for the Jewish community, and on September 9, 1950 he was put to rest at the military cemetery in Haifa. – When I died I remembered that I loved Mount Carmel in the sun, the fox crying in the grove; In my death, if my body fell among strangers, please remember and seek my spirit in the Carmel. “
