Rachel, daughter of Shoshana-Zelda (nee Goldstein) and Yechezkel (Haskel), was born on March 9, 1924 in Lodz, Poland, the daughter of well-to-do parents, who were educated in a home dominated by a spirit of peace and love. At the age of 15 she had a good and quiet life, studied at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Lodz, and was a good and diligent student, and she was particularly prominent in her musical talent. On February 8, 1940, a ghetto was set up in Lodz, where the transfer of Jews was accompanied by an increase in robberies, abuse, and murder.The ghetto was closed in April and about 200,000 men, women and children were crammed into it Rachel’s parents died of starvation in the ghetto and she remained alone with her younger brother, seven years younger than her, and managed to hide him when the children who were not yet fit for labor were taken to the camps Death, and then managed to arrange it at the age of 14 – even though he was only 11. He survived for a few more years, but in 1944, when the Lodz Ghetto was liquidated and all its inhabitants transported to Auschwitz, she could no longer protect him and he was taken to crematoria. Rachel was sent to the Mittelstein labor camp, and from there she wandered among various concentration and labor camps. She suffered from hunger and cold, and her figure was like a human shadow – pale and weak, but Rachel was able to see the end of the war. Rachel’s acquaintances testified about her difficulties in remaining alone after the war: “… the disappointment was bitter, and even more bitter was the return to a free life with daily demands and concerns for all the little things without which there would not be one day. He lived in all his attacks and went through everything that was without stopping for a moment … Life dragged Rachel and she had a hard time keeping up with them, especially since in the general confusion no one knew where to go, and her ‘ All, and without it – an empty space. ” Rachel, who was looking for a goal or an ideal to give herself, soon found her way. After the Nazi extermination, she returned to Lodz where she found the first religious pioneers. She joined the Torah v’Avodah movement and participated in the founding and operation of the first kibbutzim. Later on she moved to Krakow, where she participated in organizing the “Victory” group. At the outbreak of the pogrom against the Jews in Kraków in the summer of 1945, the kibbutz was guarded and it was established in the Tachkemoni school. She then moved to an agricultural training farm of Bnei Akiva in the city of Esbach, Germany, and from there, through France, immigrated to Israel with her group on the Latrun ship towards the end of 1946. The British followed the ship from the moment of its departure and reached the sea by force. Latrun was towed to the port of Haifa, and at the beginning of November 1946 the immigrants were forcibly removed and loaded onto deportation ships, which took them to detention camps in Cyprus. Rachel only arrived in Palestine in the summer of 1947, and joined the place where she found people like her Lev – Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. She got in there, did her duty to take care of the children and all the farm jobs, but shut herself up under the burden of painful memories. Her friends talked about the process she had undergone: “The beginning was difficult, and all the problems of a new person who had been absorbed in society and in new living conditions underwent a dilemma, And in her Lev, Lernan secretly began to hope for victory in the struggle, after many years of constant turmoil, she began to feel restlessAnd wonder in her soul and at the same time hidden creative powers that began to come within her. The bitterness that accompanied her all the time began to expire, and her place was taken by the blessed heat of love. She was filled with understanding and love for all. Her natural intelligence gave her the opportunity to delve deeper into creative life and she began to develop. Anyone who saw Renia on the kibbutz found it hard to understand how she became another person, full of life and joy, a fertile joy that sends rays around. “According to the United Nations partition resolution of 29 November 1947, the Etzion bloc was not included within the boundaries of the Jewish state. Immediately after the decision, the Arabs of the area attacked the Gush and the roads from Jerusalem, and besieged it from all sides. All the residents of the older bloc, including Rachel, served in the Haganah as part of the Etzioni Brigade (Brigade 6). Rachel bore faith and devotion to the burden of the siege. In the winter of 1948, she participated in the guard, completed a first aid course and was ready for every job: In one of her letters she wrote: “Do not get mad at me that I do not write often but you will understand that the mail from us comes out once every twenty years. “At the time, in the midst of the storm of battle, she even met a friend of her own kind.” She said in a letter: “My private life has changed a bit. Yes … Despite everything, we go forward and believe that we are going to better times and quieter times. We are all in a good mood, and that is the main thing … “On May 12, 1948, the Etzion Bloc was attacked by soldiers of the Jordanian Legion, reinforced with armored vehicles and artillery and together with a large Arab force from nearby villages, On May 13, 1948, the Arabs attacked the village itself with great force. When the Arab Legion armor broke into the village, Rachel – along with the other medics – was in a shelter under the building of the German monastery that served as the headquarters. The enemy, who could not penetrate the shelter, blew up the building, and its ruins buried the occupants. Instead Rachel was killed, and she was twenty-four. Over one hundred defenders of Kfar Etzion fell on the same day, among them Rachel and her friend Yosef Weissman, whom she was about to marry. The bodies of the fallen remained there for about a year or more. Their remains were collected in a special operation by the military rabbinate in 1949. Rachel was brought to rest with the rest of the Gush Etzion Bloc in a large mass grave on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, at a state ceremony held on the 17th of Cheshvan 5710 (17.11.1949). Rachel’s friends eulogized her: “Her image will not be forgotten by the few who knew her, her image will not be forgotten even in the eternity of our history, just as all the sanctifiers of the name and the homeland are not forgotten, the unknowns who give us the spirit that drives us to create and establish the state. – And to them fame. ” This hero is a “last scion”. The survivors of the Holocaust are survivors of the Holocaust who survived the last remnant of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters) who experienced the Holocaust in the ghettos and / or concentration camps and / or in hiding and hiding in territories occupied by the Nazis and / Or in combat alongside members of the underground movements or partisans in the Nazi-occupied territories who immigrated to Israel during or after World War II, wore uniforms and fell in the Israeli army.
