Yosef, son of Bluma and Alter-Menachem Hacohen, was born in 1925 in Poland, in the town of Olkusz, in the province of Kielce, who was a well-to-do family in the city. And the family’s source of happiness was the source of his parents’ happiness: On the eve of World War II, about 2,700 Jews lived in Olkusz, and after the German forces entered the area (September 1939), the Jews were persecuted and confiscated. In September 1941, the Jews of the city were concentrated in Silesia, and in May 1942 the population was besieged by the Germans And in June 1942 all the Jews of Olkusz were deported to the Auschwitz death camp, and his parents, brothers and sisters perished in one of the death camps, and only survived the war years in one of the camps With the defeat of Germany, Joseph emerged from the camp and became whole, and his spirit began to grow stronger, and soon he began to adjust to the new conditions, joining the pioneering movement and preparing for immigration. On October 19, 1946, he boarded the La Ciota port on the French Riviera on the illegal immigrant ship Latrun, organized by the Haganah’s Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet. The ship, which carried 1,252 immigrants – Holocaust survivors from Eastern and Western Europe and members of youth movements – was under British surveillance from the moment it left. In the middle of the sea, the British took over the ship by force. The ship was towed to the port of Haifa. The immigrants were forcibly removed and loaded onto deportation ships, which took them to detention camps in Cyprus. Seven months later Joseph was released and arrived in Israel on May 5, 1947. Upon his arrival he lived in Haifa and worked in the Weizmann quarry near the city. Despite all the hardships he had gone through, he was Simcha, awake and cheerful and full of confidence in his future and his future. He liked the country and was very attached to it. He is remembered as an innocent and pure man, with a straight and pleasant disposition. He spoke little about the concentration camps in which he was staying, and it seems that the filth he dipped for years did not pollute him or leave any traces. Nothing deterred him: neither the shortage of the apartment nor the pains of adjustment made him angry. He dismissed his colleagues’ complaints with confidence in the future. From the same security, Yosef enlisted in the defense of the Yishuv even before the War of Independence. To his friends, who treated his devotion to devotion as a “idealist,” he replied that only with devotion to the people did he see a reason for his life. After the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, Yosef volunteered for the Haganah and joined the 22nd Battalion of the Carmeli Brigade, the 2nd Brigade. Since then he has been involved in the defense of the northern region, including escorting convoys along the Zichron Yaakov line. Yosef was supposed to go to a mortar course, but he and his classmates joined the brigade in April 1948. The battles of Mishmar Ha’emek and Ramat Yochanan, which took place in April 1948, were among the major battles that took place in the north of the country and even in the entire country at the beginning of the war. Which had emphasized the importance of the area, many reinforcements from the Golani, Alexandroni, Yiftach, and Carmeli brigades were already deployed there at the beginning of the war. Prime was placed in front Yitzhak Sadeh, a senior commander in the Haganah “and the Palmach. The fighting began on April 4, 1948, when the Arab “Salvation Army” under the command of Kaukji attacked Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek. Kaukji hoped he could block the Wadi Milek road near the kibbutz, where Jewish transportation from Tel Aviv and the Sharon passed to Haifa, and then storm the neighborhoodsJewish communities of Haifa. The Arab forces left Jenin and moved towards Mishmar HaEmek, shelling the kibbutz in one of the heavy attacks known to be a Jewish settlement. Following the continuous shelling, during which the enemy’s armored vehicles reached the fences of the kibbutz, casualties were lost among the defenders and members of the kibbutz. But the line of defense was not broken, the defenders stood bravely in front of the inferno and returned fire. The truce brokered by the British lasted a few days. The British offer to evacuate the place was rejected, but the wounded and the children were evacuated to safety. The battles of Mishmar Ha’emek lasted until April 13, 1948, during which time the outposts around the kibbutz passed from hand to hand. After ten days of fierce fighting, the Arabs were driven back to the wadi, Israeli forces occupied other villages in the area that served as enemy bases and blocked the road from Jenin to Arab Haifa. In the battle to conquer the Arab village of Abu Zurik (near Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek), on April 12, 1948, Yosef fought as a commander of the platoon, was seriously wounded in the head, rushed to Haemek Hospital in Afula, The Haganah managed to organize itself well in anticipation of the continuation of the fighting and the beginning of the spring offensive against the Arab forces in the country. Kaukji’s dream of cutting off the Galilee and the valley from the Haifa area was shattered, and the Israeli defense forces expanded their area of control. In 1998, he was considered a space whose burial place is not known, and following the family’s request, an investigation was launched in 1998 of the Unit for Locating Missing Persons in the IDF in order to locate Joseph’s burial place. The investigation led to the conclusion that Yosef Kochan was buried on April 15, 1948 in the cemetery in Afula in an anonymous grave from the battles of Mishmar HaEmek.In the wake of the findings of the investigation, the anonymous tombstone in Afula was replaced by Joseph Kochan’s name on 25.9.2011 ) The ceremony was held. On the gravestone was engraved “a shady light, the last scion of his family who perished in the Holocaust.” 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.
