Mendel, David

Son of Moshe. He was born on May 14, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary, to a traditional family. As his brother’s testimony, he was a youth of his own and thirsty with idealistic aspirations … a man who loved and was loved by his friends.” Even at a young age he was drawn to the Zionist idea and even worked for it in his hometown. Later he stopped his studies in order to acquire a profession and learn languages ​​with a dictionary. He also learned Hebrew. In 1939 he immigrated to Israel as an immigrant and immediately upon his arrival he joined the Sha’ar Hanegev group. He was associated with agricultural work and the idea of ​​living together, and everywhere he worked, he was known as a devoted and responsible worker and as someone who “treated friends well, was simple … he bought hearts, never quarreled with a man and was hard to irritate”. When a group of immigrants from Transylvania left Shaar Hanegev and settled in an independent settlement group that eventually established the Kibbutz Kfar Szold, David did not join them because he saw in Sha’ar Hanegev the future of immigration from Hungary. With the establishment of the Jewish Brigade in September 1944 and his joining the brigade with his company, he received it with great enthusiasm, although he regretted not being allowed to participate in the aliyah on the land in the new village of Kfar Szold. On 29 Nisan, April 12, 1945, as he advanced with his battalion across the Senio River in the Italian front, and the retreating Germans returned fire, he was hit and fell. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Ravenna, Italy. He left two brothers. The rest of his family perished in the Holocaust. In 1947 his friends in the village of Szold set up a plaque in his memory, near the amphitheater grove.