Weissman, Yosef
Yosef, son of Rivka and Avraham David, was born in Poland in the city of Biala-Podlaska in the eastern part of the country in 1920. The only survivor of the family, Yosef was sent from the Vilna ghetto to various labor camps in Latvia and Germany, and was severely tortured. At the end of the war, the Americans found him lying in a pile of cold bodies. He was brought to a hospital, and after three months of treatment he recovered. Yosef moved to Landsberg, Germany, where he spent one year in the DP camp. He was one of the founders of the “Bnei Akiva” kibbutz and taught Hebrew and Torah lessons. The long-awaited moment arrived on August 2, 1946, when Yosef and his group boarded the illegal immigrant ship “23 Yordei Hasira”. The ship was brought to a detention camp in Cyprus. In February 1947, Yosef arrived in Palestine. He spent some time in an immigrant camp in Kiryat Shmuel, and then reunited with his relatives in Jerusalem, but only briefly. They wanted him to stay with them, but his passionate desire was to serve the homeland. In the last and largest attack on Gush Etzion, which took place on May 13-12, 1948, Yosef fell and he was brought to eternal rest in a large mass grave on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem at a state ceremony held on November 17, 1949.
