Kimchi, Shlomo (Shalmke)

Shlomo, son of Gisha and Jacob Kimchi, was born on ther 23rd of Tamuz, July 4, 1925 in Tel Aviv where he attended the Tachkemoni School. He joined the Palmach in 1944. In August-October 1945 he took a boat commander course No. 5 in Caesarea. Shlomo was 18 years old and at the end of the course he taught in short courses in Caesarea, where he lived and worked in Kibbutz Ma’abarot before he was attached to the Yochai Squad. Yochai Squad protected the Jews in the port and participated in the attacks on the deportation ships and the British Coast Guard ships. In November 1945 he participated in the explosion of the Giv’at Olga police station, occupied by the British, which was at the time the illegal immigration ship “Berl Katzenelson” arrived in Shefayim. All these actions were enacted by the best of the group, including Shlomo. In February 1946 he participated in an attack on the Qalqiliya police (which was carried out in parallel to the attack on Sharona). In 1947 it was decided to sink a British destroyer anchored at the Haifa port. The commando, Commander Krab, discovered the plan and ordered the destruction of the destroyer, and Yochai summoned Shlomo to a squadron that had prepared a heavy two-meter boat with two engines and two rifles. The operation was canceled on the orders of David son of-Gurion, for fear of a harsh reaction by the British. In March 1947, Shlomo participated in the immigration of illegal immigrants from the ship “Shabtai Luzinski.” In the middle of 1947 he joined a naval training course that was held at the Technion in Haifa and lasted about six months. At the beginning of the War of Independence, Palmach squadrons were sent to carry out various retaliation operations in the Sharon area and later set out to defend the road to Jerusalem before Operation Nachshon. On the 2nd of Adar 2 5708 (March 3, 1948), Shlomo joined a convoy headed for Jerusalem, where the armored vehicles sank in Wadi Sarar, whose land was muddy due to the rains. Arabs fired on the convoy from three directions. Most of the wounded were concentrated in one armored vehicle and evacuated to Hulda. On the way the armored vehicle was stuck in the mud near Hulda and could not be rescued. The Arabs approached the armored vehicle and the commander in the armored vehicle ordered to blow it up. The wounded in the armored vehicle were burned, so they were buried in a mass grave in Kibbutz Hulda cemetery.