Efenshalk, Haim (Henryk)

Son of Yaakov and Paulina. The father – poet and Polish translator of Shalom Aleichem and editor of the only Zionist newspaper in Poland; The mother – a journalist and a writer. He was born in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and was educated in the spirit of Zionism in 1937. After graduating from high school in 1937, he immigrated to Israel in 1937, and began to study chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Two years later, in 1939, he went to Warsaw to spend his summer vacation in his parents’ home, but could not return to Palestine at the outbreak of World War I. He spent the first days of September in Warsaw but after many hardships managed to reach Romania together with his mother, In 1942, he graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was a chemist at the Haifa Refinery, One of his dreams was to go to the United States to study and meet with his father, whom he had not seen for several years, and even during his studies he fulfilled his duty in the ranks of the Haganah, the Haganah, And on consecutive nights he was on duty, and upon the declaration of the state he joined the IDF. After he took part in several battles in and around Jaffa, he was transferred to the “Science Corps” and sent to work in a very dangerous and responsible manner, during which he was recruited as a first lieutenant under enemy artillery. But on one day, on 15 May 1949, when he returned to his lab full of energy for work, an explosion took place and ended his life. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery at Nahalat Yitzhak. Employees of the Israeli consulate in New York planted a forest in his name by the Jewish National Fund.