Frenkel, Yehoshua

Yehoshua, son of Batya and Shalom Frenkel, was born on October 22, 1928, in the Old City of Jerusalem. He studied at the “Etz Chaim” Talmud Torah, and with the desire to acquire general knowledge, he moved to the Mizrachi Talmud Torah school. In the winter of 1948, when he was drafted into full military service in the Irgun, he pushed aside all his private affairs and one of his wishes was to be sent to defend the Old City, which was under British siege. When he said goodbye to his colleagues, he said to one of them, “I do not think of going back to the city alive. If we see you again one day, it will be the day of the liberation of all of Jerusalem from the yoke of strangers.” Yehoshua was placed in charge of the dangerous position on the roof of the Nissan Beck Synagogue, near an Arab post, and when he tried to fix something in the post he raised his head from the shelter, was hit and fell from an Arab sniper’s shot on May 16, 1948. His body was exhumed only a few days later and brought for burial in a mass grave in the “Batei Machse” courtyard in the Old City of Jerusalem.