Rotman, Yaakov (Jacques)

Son of Rivka and Yosef, was born on 29.1.1911 in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at an elementary school in New York. He was a smart and sensitive boy. After graduating from elementary school, he was accepted to Uppsala College in New Jersey. Where he encountered anti-Semitism for the first time. After learning that the student clubs did not accept Jews as members, he established a Jewish club and was its president. During the Second World War, he served in the US Commercial Fleet as chief radio officer on a ship carrying explosives. In September 1945 he was released. In his release, his faithful service was commended. After his discharge, he worked as a chief typist at a machine-making plant, and at the same time served as a professor of mechanics at Columbia University in New York. The struggle of the Jewish people for independence was exciting. “When I read,” he said, “that 40 million Arabs are fighting against 400,000 Jews and I decided to be 400,001.” He called the Haganah personnel who were involved in “purchasing” weapons and smuggling them to Israel, and was among its activists in the United States. In June 1948 he sailed to Israel as one of the men responsible for the “Kapelus” ship carrying arms to Israel. The ship was captured and its commanders, including him, were arrested. After many efforts, they were released and continued on the same ship, changing its name and flag, and arrived in Israel in September 1948, after a difficult voyage fraught with problems of lack of fuel, water and food, but full of good spirits. Many heard the long days of the journey, especially from his friend Arie Kesselman (who also fell in the War of Independence), the only Israeli on the ship, but the reality in Israel exceeded all his assumptions. “He was very impressed by the Israeli youth:” When you spit in your face, you do not say it’s raining – and woe to Jurek, “he wrote. In Israel and volunteered for the Israel Air Force, where he was sent to Italy and fell in an airplane accident near Rome on December 31, De United States. On the Badr Ts”t (06/03/1949), his body was brought to Israel and the rest-rest at the military cemetery in Nahalat Yitzhak.