Shemesh, Rachel
Daughter of Regina and Shalom, was born in April 1931 in Jerusalem. Rachel attended the “Spitzer” elementary school in her hometown and later studied and worked at the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. She devoted the evenings to voluntary work at the hospital cafeteria – a job she filled with a smile and a wide smile. On the morning of Wednesday, April 13, 1948, a convoy of medical workers headed for the hospital, and Rachel was attached to it. The road to Mount Scopus passed through the Arab Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and upon the outbreak of the war the movement was allowed to mount convoys, The convoy traveled to Mount Scopus after the British promised the road was open and safe, and the convoy encountered an Arab ambush in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and hundreds of Arabs hurled a fierce fire at it, some of which managed to get out and return, but two buses, an ambulance and a armored vehicle They were trapped in an ambush for many hours, and the convoy tried to prevent the Arabs from approaching the vehicles. The British army, who were in the area, intervened and did nothing to help, in spite of the appeals to them.In the afternoon the Arabs managed to set fire to two buses on their passengers, and only in the late evening did the British intervene and rescue The survivors of the trapped vehicles, among them 17-year-old Rachel, who was brought to rest in the cemetery in Sanhedria, and left her parents, four sisters and a brother.
