Grodzinski, Ben-Zion
Son of Chaya-Sarah and Mordechai-Yosef, was born on March 19, 1916 in Bialystok, Poland. His father died in his childhood and his widowed mother bore the burden of supporting her children. Ben-Zion studied at the Tachkemoni high school and completed six classes there. From 1930 he was a member of the Hashomer Hadati youth movement and soon became the director. At the same time, he worked in the main leadership of the “Hashomer Hadati” in Warsaw and prepared to immigrate to Israel, but his enlistment in the Polish army in 1938 thwarted his plan. World War II found him in the ranks of the Polish army. After Poland’s defeat and surrender, he tried to cross the border into Romania and to immigrate to Eretz Israel. When he failed in his experience he moved to Vilna where he also took on the burden of public action as the secretary of the management of the Torah and Labor pioneers from Poland. In the spring of 1941 he arrived in Israel with the aliya from Lithuania and in 1942 he married. In 1943 Ben-Zion completed a course in communications and from then until the fall of Kfar Etzion he and his close friend Shlomo Rosen were responsible for work in the Gush Etzion transmitter. In the last battle of the Gush, in danger of death, he often boarded the roof to repair the damaged antenna. In one of his last letters, he wrote: “If I am in danger of sacrificing my life, I can save our settlement, then martyrdom is noble.” When the enemy’s armored vehicles burst into the village, he informed Jerusalem and Tel Aviv of permission to destroy the transmitter and even destroyed it and the important documents. On the 4th of Iyar, May 13, 1948, Ben-Zion died under the rubble of the convent house, which the enemy had blown up.He was laid to rest in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
