Yehoshua, the son of Chaya (Chaika) and Jacob, was born on 10.6.1927 in Poland, in the city of Stolpache in the Novogrudek region, on the border with Russia, where his father was engaged in a small flour mill, In September 1939, with the start of World War II, Stolpachi was captured by the Russian Red Army and annexed to the Soviet Union, and less than two years later, the alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union And on June 27, 1941, the Germans occupied Stolpecki, and a short time later a ghetto was established in the city, where all 3,000 Jews were concentrated. A small group escaped to the forest, and all the rest were murdered in September 1942. Shortly afterwards, the two were among the most courageous Jews in Minsk who decided to escape to the partisans. He later found his father in the Naliboki forest in Belorussia, in the Bielski partisan camp, where they did not sit still, and began to organize a flour mill, and Joshua was the one who drove the horses from morning to half the day every day. He never complained about the work, he liked to help the people of his town and brought them flour to paralyze their hunger. In those days Joshua was known as “the partisan launch.” After a search by the Germans in the partisan forest, many Jews fell in their hands and were killed. Nevertheless, a large partisan camp united and continued the campaign. Finally the German retreat began. The Jewish partisans were ordered to strike at the enemy’s rear, and the Jews began to disarm the fleeing Germans and make a bride. When the Soviets came, Joshua and his father continued this purification system against the remnants of the Nazi army. The day before the liberation Yehoshua’s father fell in battle. When Joshua returned from the forest to his hometown, he learned that his whole family had perished with all the Jews of the ghetto on the 23rd of Tishrei, 23.9.1942. A few months later, in the winter of 1945, Joshua heard that a way had been opened to travel to Eretz Yisrael and was one of the first to leave their homeland. On the way, in Lodz, he found a family: the training company of Hashomer Hatzair. On June 19, 1946, Joshua boarded the port of Savannah, Italy, aboard the illegal immigrant ship Josiah Wedgewood. The ship, which was organized by the Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet of the Haganah, carried 1,257 immigrants from 14 countries, including survivors from camps, members of youth movements and former partisans. The British spotted the ship at sea, attached a destroyer to it and landed soldiers on it. The immigrants raised an English banner reading: “We survived Hitler, death is no stranger to us, nothing will alienate us from the homeland of the Jews. The British did not fire, but accompanied the ship until it reached the port of Haifa, where the immigrants were taken off and taken to the Atlit detention camp. Yehoshua was released from the Atlit camp two weeks later. His first stop was Kibbutz Gat of Hashomer Hatzair. He spent more than a year there, working in various jobs and especially in the building, and all the members loved him for his kindness, honesty and devotion to everything. Then he moved to Kibbutz Yakum. Later the group moved to Gal-On, near Mordechai, and from there Yehoshua moved to Kibbutz Kfar Menachem. While in the universe, Joshua made contact with his grandfather’s sister, and was very Simcha to learn that he had another relative in life. Before the outbreak of the War of Independence, Yehoshua volunteered for the Palmach and served in the “Harel” Brigade, and later joined the “Negev” Brigade, the 12th Brigade in the Hagana. In the deviceMany vultures fought and beat the enemy with a machine gun, “Bren” in his hand, when he stood erect and sometimes without a steel cap on his head. In June 1948 Yehoshua participated in the “Philist” operation in the Battle of Ashdod. The Egyptian invasion army entered the country from the south immediately after the declaration of independence. At the end of May 1948, it reached the Arab town of Isdud (now Ashdod), about 30 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. The Egyptian column was delayed by a ruined bridge on the Lachish River (today the “Ad Halom” bridge east of Ashdod), which had been blown up a few weeks earlier by Givati fighters. After an attempt to damage the Egyptian air force in an air strike failed, it was decided to arrest the Egyptians in a major ground attack, called the “Philistine” operation. For this purpose, a large Israeli force was concentrated in the Negev and Givati brigades. On the night of the 25th of Iyar 5708 (June 3, 1948) the forces attempted to attack, but immediately at the beginning of the attack the enemy began a heavy bombardment and the Israeli forces were ordered to retreat. Joshua heard the order, but paused to shoot two remaining magazines and throw a grenade at the enemy. When he was forty meters from enemy lines he was hit and killed. Despite the failure of the attack, the Egyptian army was stopped and did not advance further north toward Tel Aviv. Joshua was twenty-one years old when he fell. He was buried in Nitzanim and about a year later, on August 31, 1949, he was brought to eternal rest in the military cemetery in Nachalat Yitzhak, telling his neighbor Yehoshua: “… I will remember the words he said when our ship arrived at the beach. To our friends, to the kibbutz, the Hahahana, a year ago when you entered a kibbutz in Poland, that we are now going to the shores of our homeland? ” Yes, one of our ambitions and ambitions was fulfilled … Joshua excelled in battles. The nervous Joshua excelled in his coolness, the quiet Joshua – the activist, the sick Joshua, the weak – became a hero and a hero. He was in close contact with the kibbutz members and friends. When he came home he took an interest in every detail and took care of everything. And the same concern accompanied him even when he was far away somewhere between the “animals of the Negev” … “I will not fall alive as long as my spirit is in me, and the grenade is for me,” were his last words. Yehoshua, who was seriously wounded, remained on the battlefield and the murderers’ hands reached him … Anyone who knew him would soon forget the young man, full of energy and life, with his healthy smile and wild hair, his “sabra.” “They are survivors of the Holocaust who survived the last vestige of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters) who experienced the Holocaust in the ghettos and / or the concentration and extermination camps and / or in hiding and hiding in territories occupied by the Nazis and / The undergrounds 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.
