Friedman, Yehoshua (Shio)

Son of Bruria and Zvi. He was born on March 22, 1926, in Transylvania, and immigrated with his family to Eretz Israel in 1933. The family settled in Tel Aviv, where he studied at the Bilu School in the city and later in Kfar Haroeh. The war and the Holocaust, which seriously hurt his father’s family, influenced him deeply, and he sought a path like many others in those days, to liberate the land from the occupiers and establish a Jewish state. He wanted to “do something real” and ideas of the underground began to shape his outlook and life, and with many of his friends in the Bnei Akiva youth movement he joined the ranks of the Hagana. In the last year of his life he began to work as a painter and sculptor and dreamed of continuing studies according to his skills, hiding his underground activities from his parents and shared his experiences with his sisters. In November 1945, the country was in turmoil following Bevin’s announcement that the gates of the country were closed to the world, a public sabbatical was declared in Israel and many demonstrations took place. The stormy residents of Tel Aviv flocked to the government offices with the intention of protesting the decision. The British soldiers shot into the crowd. Dozens were injured in clashes with the “Kalaniot” and six Jews were killed. Yehoshua was seriously injured and on 10 Kislev, 15 November 1945 he died on the operating table. On that day a curfew was declared and Yehoshua was laid to rest under British guard, accompanied by his closest family and friends of the Haganah in the Haapala section of the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery. Memories were published in the booklet “The Matter of Eli Zur”.