Frenkel, Jacob (Julius)

Son of Etti and Wolf. He was born on April 7, 1914 in the city of Oberg near Schweinfurt, Germany. In his city he attended elementary school and in his youth he joined the Socialist Youth Movement. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Jacob fled from Germany, arrived in Czechoslovakia and joined a group of youth in the hachshara. In 1936 he immigrated to Eretz Israel with the members of the group and there they joined Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh. Jacob worked in the orchards of the area. After he married a wife they moved to Kfar Sava. After the outbreak of World War II, he worked in British army camps and at the end of 1940 enlisted in the British Army. At first he served in the Infantry Company (“Baps”), and after a while was transferred to the Engineering Corps. In May 1944 a powerful explosion occurred in a motorboat near Yaakov’s boat. Yaakov was badly burned by burning gasoline and rushed to a military hospital. On 26 Iyar, May 19, 1944, two days after his injury, he died of his wounds and was buried in the military cemetery in Qantara, Egypt. At the recommendation of his commander, he was awarded a medal of excellence, and in 1961 his family received the Volunteerism Award on behalf of the Israeli government. In a letter sent by Major Sirkin, Jacob’s commander, to his widow he said, among other things: “His courage found an echo among all the soldiers of his company, as well as in the British battalions, and on all sides received letters of admiration and sympathy in our deepest sorrow. An example of self-sacrifice, of courage, of willingness to sacrifice life for this future.” He left a wife and two daughters. His name was immortalized in the Kfar Saba Book.