Gross, Yehuda

Yehuda, son of Deborah and Shlomo Gross, was born on 13.6.1907 in Transgomshor, Transylvania (then Hungary), to a wealthy, assimilated family. Yehuda joined a pioneering movement, and he studied carpentry in the city of Brno, Czechoslovakia, with the intention of becoming an engineer. He made aliya in 1933 and moved to Gedera where he worked, married and became a father. In 1941 he moved to Ramat Gan, founded a factory for woodworking. Yehuda was modest,and a man of virtue. When the battles of the War of Independence began, he served as liaison officer between the Hagana headquarters and the community council and worked with dedication to ease the suffering of the residents. His words are remembered: “It will be good” and “We have no choice but to be heroes.” As the fighting intensified, Yehuda was given the opportunity to fulfill the request of his son, who was ten years old, to collect and bring him “a lot of backpacks and bullets of all kinds.” He was eager to visit his family, as he told a friend that “the family is the holiest sanctuary of human life.” But on the last night before the liberation of Safed, on Rosh Chodesh Iyar, May 10, 1948, a shell cut off his life. Leaving behind a wife and two children, Yehuda was brought to rest in the military cemetery in Safed.