Fryer, Yehoshua (Baba)

Son of Claretta and Israel, was born on November 23, 1962, in the city of Iasi, Romania. He was educated by his mother, grandmother and aunt and was called “the three-year-old mother.” His mother, a musical wife, cultivated the tendency to music from the beginning of his life. At school, he excelled in his studies and marveled at his extreme diligence in order and cleanliness. He excelled in honesty, seriousness and humility. At the age of 9, he began to study piano and at the age of 15 overcame the director of the conservatory with the ability to perform, but was forced to stop his studies because of the Nazi “race law” in Romania. He parted from the institution in a public concert he was very successful at, and his teachers continued to invite him to chamber concerts in their homes and received his criticism with appreciation. Yehoshua continued to play and study in a private Jewish gymnasium, completed it at the age of 19, and in the family decided to send him to Eretz Israel as part of Youth Aliyah. His father’s property remained in Bessarabia, annexed to the Soviet Union, and he did not have enough money to join the Youth Aliyah. But given his great talent he was granted the right to immigrate to Israel free of charge, and in 1941 he was sent to the Ginnegar group for training and study. Seeing that the work of the agriculture lose his ability to play piano artistically asked the Youth Aliyah leadership to allow him to stand to examine his artistic ability. The founder of Youth Aliyah, Henrietta Szold, rejected his first request, saying that the country needed farmers and not musicians, but when he heard his music before the committee, he recommended that he help him. , And was appointed to the music teacher as a “pianist with outstanding talent and great promise.” He managed to test candidates for the position of music teacher at a girls’ school but was not accepted because of his youth (he was 20.) Yehoshua struggled for his existence and progress while giving private lessons in music , And his girlfriend who later married the wife, helped him in his artistic acclimatization (Before the arrival of his parents to Israel he played with great success in a concert held by the Association of Romanian Immigrants for the benefit of immigrants who came from there with nothing), worked as a music teacher in Kiryat Motzkin and tried to be of help to his parents.In January 1948, during the War of Independence, He served in the Carmeli Brigade and participated in combat service in the Jenin, Rosh Hanikra and other areas, and his battalion spent three months under siege in Yechiam, was released on 14 May and participated in the purification of the Western Galilee. He fell in the Battle of Tarshiha on July 19, 1948. Only nine days later, when the remains of five of the seven fallen members were collected by the UN officers, his parents identified by special marks his body among them, and he was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Nahariya.