Sheinkman, Yosef (Yoske)

Yosef (Yoshke), son of Batsheva (Anna) and Eliyahu Sheinkman, was born on October 27, 1919 in Riga, the capital of Latvia, and immigrated to Israel with his parents on May 1, 1921. He spent his childhood in Tel Aviv, where he graduated from school. After years of working as a craftsman, he joined the “Shalav” transport cooperative, and as a member of the Haganah he participated in the events of 1936 in the defense of son of Shemen.
In 1940 he volunteered for the British Army and was assigned to the Palestine Transport Company in Syria and was among the first to penetrate Damascus. During this period he also dealt with the transfer of weapons and immigrants on the northern border.
During the War of Independence, he worked as a driver of convoys that transported food on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Road. He left with the last convoy to Gush Etzion. On the way back, the caravan encountered a checkpoint near al-Khader and could not pass. The last cars of the envoy returned to Gush Etzion and the others barricaded themselves in a stone house near Nebi-Daniel. Joseph took part in the battle until he was hit by many bullets in his spinal cord as he tried to take the place of a wounded friend manning a machine gun.
Yosef was transferred to the hospital on Mount Scopus where he died of his wounds three months later on June 11, 1948. He was buried in the hospital’s garden, and on 18 January 1951 he was transferred to eternal rest in the military cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.