Katznelson, Yosef

Son of Zelda and Nissan. He was born on 1.8.1896 in Bobruisk, in White Russia, to a family of four boys and two girls. His father was a member of the Jewish community in the city. Joseph, the youngest of the brothers, studied first in a reformed cheder, later in government gymnasiums and at the University of Vienna, where he studied history and philosophy. In Vienna he also completed a high school for commerce. Joseph immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1925 after completing his studies in Vienna, and was accepted to work in Solel Boneh. After the 1929 riots, he joined the Revisionist Alliance and, in the course of time, played key roles, including a member of the party’s central committee and a delegate to its World Congress in Vienna (1932). He was a member of “Brit Habiryonim”, the party’s maximalist-revolutionary wing. He was active in the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and in 1938 served as chairman of the New Zionist Organization in Eretz Israel and headed the campaign. In coordination with the armed activities of the Irgun underground during the period of bloody events. He was wanted by the British police but was able to evade them. At first he hid in various places and then boarded the port of Haifa aboard a ship sailing to Europe. In Europe, he was immediately assigned to the “Revisionist” illegal immigration to Eretz Israel, which was shared by the Betar and Irgun, Of Beitar. In June 1939 he fell ill in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and in September, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, was slightly injured in the air raid of the German aircraft invading this country. On the 21st of Tevet (2.1.1940) he fell to kidney disease. Before his death, he ordered his bones to be brought to the Land of Israel and buried on the Mount of Olives next to the grave of Yaakov Raz, an Irgun fighter who fell in Jerusalem in 1938. Seventeen years later, the first part of the will was fulfilled by his wife, Zlata, who was with him at the time of his death He was not buried on the Mount of Olives, then occupied by the Jordanians, but was buried in the Sanhedria cemetery in Jerusalem, and his biography was published in the book “The Death of Joseph Katznelson” (1974) with testimonies, studies and documents on the man and the national movement in the 1930s.