Mizrachi, Yosef (Yoske)

Yosef, son of Esther and Abraham Mizrachi, was born in 1918 in the city of Nagada in Azerbaijan, Turkish Kurdistan. After the First World War, when all the Jews left the city to immigrate to Palestine, his family also departed from Iraq and in 1922 came to Palestine. The family settled in the Old City of Jerusalem. He studied at Talmud Torah for a few years, spent a year working as a shoemaker and later studied the art of plastering and specialized in it. When the bloody riots of 1936-1939 began, he joined the Haganah and urged the rest of his community to do the same. He served on the West Jerusalem front, in the vicinity of Beit Hakerem, Bayit VeGan and Yefe Nof, and a good motorbike served as a link between the neighborhoods. In the War of Independence, he served as a driver in the armored cars division and took part in the breakthrough from Jerusalem to the coastal plain, and was later transferred to serve as an ambulance driver. He often carried wounded people to his car within a meter of gunfire. On a two-hour vacation, he was informed that a man was wounded in an open area and could not be reached because of enemy fire. He immediately drove in his armored car and took the wounded man to the hospital. On the way he encountered a large gathering on the street near the Bikur Holim Hospital. To prevent a disaster he suddenly stopped the car. The armored door hit him in the head and he was killed on the spot. This happened on the afternoon of Shabbat, October 30, 1948. He was buried in Sheikh Bader A. On the 17th of Elul 5710 (August 30, 1950) he was transferred to eternal rest in the military cemetery on Har Herzl, Jerusalem.