Shvishia, Yosef (“Yossi”)

Son of Mordechai and Rivka. He was born on April 5, 1936 in the Old City of Jerusalem. At the outbreak of the War of Independence, Yossi was eleven and the family had to leave the old city. The boy was aware of what was going on in the city during the siege. When the first convoy arrived in Jerusalem, the mother and son left for her, and Joseph’s question was: “Weapons of bringing them?” He would deliver water buckets to the artillery and his mother’s wishes that he would not endanger himself would reply: “Every shell has an address.” After the War of Independence he moved to Kabri, where he spent six months receiving private lessons. But at the beginning of the school year of 1949 he moved to the school of Kibbutz Gvat, where he studied until the twelfth grade. He belonged to the Hanoar Haoved movement and was active in its branches in the transit camps in the Nehalel bloc. He worked in the art of painting and sculpture. In the year he completed his studies in Gvat, he was accepted as a member of the kibbutz but a few months later, in August 1954, he was drafted into the paratroopers unit on July 21, 1956. Two days after his injury, while performing his duty. Yosef was brought to rest at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, where his friends took out a booklet of his own in the 1930s, and on the first anniversary of his death the kibbutz published an album of paintings and sculptures of his own.