Marcus, Joshua

Son of Yehudit and Aryeh (Leopold), who owned an industry in southern Germany. He was born in Stuttgart, Germany on June 14, 1921. Yehoshua completed a Jewish high school in Frankfurt am Main during the period of Nazi oppression, and his national pride gave him the strength to remain strong in spirit. In the spring of 1939 he immigrated to Israel and the family settled in Moshav Shavei Zion. Joshua studied for two years in Mikvah Yisrael and enlisted with the entire British army. He served in a Jewish artillery company in Palestine, Cyprus, Egypt, and then moved with the Jewish Brigade through the battles of Italy to the Low Countries. He reached the rank of Saadiah, and for a while worked to investigate the war criminals (in this role he had a difficult clash with a British Jewish officer who wanted to divert him to British leniency towards the enemies of humanity). “The Nazis have shown us how to make people evil – why should not we try to turn them into human beings again?” He wrote in his article “If I Forget You, Exile.” (Belgium, April 1946) After his discharge, he began studying agriculture and natural sciences at the University of Jerusalem in December 1947, with the outbreak of war Independence After the United Nations General Assembly decided to divide the country into two states, he and his fellow students joined the service of the people and were sent with them to Gush Etzion. He wanted to serve as a simple corporal but was asked to command a squad. Revealed a lot of courage, judgment, and lofty virtues of man and soldier. He recently served as commander of the Beit Zechariah outpost, held out with his class in difficult combat conditions, pushed off the great attack, few against many, and in this battle he fell on 3 January 1948. He was laid to rest in the cemetery in captivity Zion, in his estate, many letters from the time of his service in the IDF were found, reflecting his profound and profound thinking, his ways of thinking, and his lofty worldviews.