Neji, David

Son of Fanny and Joseph was born in 1924 in the city of Petroshany, South Transylvania, Romania. A single and spoiled son of the family of a wealthy craftsman. During his years in high school, he joined the Habonim youth movement and was one of its leading activists in sports and in cultural and social activities. With the takeover of the foreign and local Nazi regime (Iron Guard) at the beginning of the Second World War, his parents were taken to a detention camp and he was transferred to a slave labor camp. David joined the anti-Nazi underground and for four years was one of its best activists. As a reward for his service, he was appointed after the liberation of Romania as a police officer in the large city of Timisoara. he devoted himself heartfeltly to the Communist Party and worked hard against the reactionaries. Against this background, he once collided with his colleague, a Romanian officer, who told him: “You will take care of your Jews and not our novels, because in spite of everything admit for having been born a Jew.” These words made it clear to him what his real condition was. And the impossibility of escaping Jewish fate by changing a conceptual position. David found it difficult to find a way back to his comrades in the Zionist movement, but finally, after they realized that his regret was sincere repentance, he was accepted into the Gordonia movement and went with his friends on the “escape route” to Italy. Where he spent a year and a half, sailed on an illegal immigrant ship, was sent with her passengers to Cyprus and after nine months of detention in the camp he arrived in Israel in April 1947. Here he was hired at the Ata factory and was one of the best soccer players in Hapoel. In the spring of 1948, he enlisted to defend the homeland and served in the “Barak” battalion of the Golani Brigade, and participated in the operations of his battalion against the enemy. He fell on the 27th of Nissan 5708 (May 6, 1948). He was laid to rest in the cemetery at Beit Keshet.