Schulerer, Yosef Yehuda

Yosef Yehuda, son of Berta and Yehoshua Schulerer, was born on July 14, 1927 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1940, when the Russian army entered the city and the family was sent to Siberia living there under harsh conditions, until April 1946. In Siberia the family lost their father and worried about the fate of the mother and little sister who remained alive. At the end of the war in May 1946 the survivors of the family arrived in Germany via Poland. During their stay in Stettin, Yosef joined Hashomer Hatza’ir and undertook to transfer 42 families from Poland to Germany. In August of that year he came to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where he served as a guard, and offered great help to those living there. Yosef could have emigrated to the United States since his uncle sent him all the necessary documents, but he rejected the invitation.
In May 1947 he immigrated to Israel and began working in construction. At the outbreak of the War of Independence he went to the recruitment office but was not accepted into the ranks of the fighters because of his health and the fact that he was the only child of his mother, but Yosef demanded active duty. In the Negev, he fought for half a year and fell on 2 Sivan (June 9, 1948) in an ambush near the Arab village of Beit Jirjeh. A monument in his memory was erected in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem; his burial place is unknown.