Frank, Avraham

Son of Sarah and Yochanan Leib. He was born in 1885 in Jaffa, where he received a Jewish education and a Zionist education from his childhood. His father was the farm manager at the Mikveh Israel agricultural school and the whole family moved there. At the suggestion of Karl Netter, the founder of the school, the father sent them to study mechanics, frames, and constructions at the Wagner metal factory in Jaffa, which was set up by a group of German engineers, where he also studied drafting, planning and mathematics. In his spare time he read books and gained control of Arabic, French and Yiddish. In 1914 Avraham was sent by the factory where he worked as a foreman in the Alexandria port of Egypt, and his family joined in. Shortly after his arrival in Alexandria, the First World War broke out and Abraham found himself in a British-protected country. In 1915, a unit of detachment drivers was formed in Alexandria, where non-Turkish Jews who had been expelled from the country by the Turks after they entered the war were brought in. Abraham was one of the first recruits and it was not long before the battalion was sent to the front of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Dardanelles. The battalion was under the command of Colonel Peterson and his deputy Joseph Trumpeldor. It was the target of repeated shelling and many casualties. On the 1st of Sivan 5755 (May 1, 1915) Abraham fell in battle and was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Hachi Baba, in Gallipoli. He left a wife and five sons, parents and brothers.