Yarost, Israel

The youngest son of Sarah and Zenevil HaCohen, was born on May 17, 1920, in the city of Pabianitz, Poland. After finishing school he worked as a laborer in his father’s weaving factory. When World War II broke out, he wandered eastward with the refugees to the Russian-occupied zone and was sent to work in a factory. From 1941 he served in the Russian army and in 1943 joined the Polish army, which was organized in Russia after the Stalin-Sikorski agreement and participated in the campaign to liberate Poland from the Germans. When he arrived in his hometown, he learned that no one remained alive from his entire family. He continued to serve in the Polish army and was sent with his battalion to the Guard on the Czechoslovak border. In this role he transferred many convoys of Jews from Russia and Poland and from the other Eastern European countries, who fled westward to the DP camps, to immigrate to Palestine. When he learned that he was to be imprisoned for his actions, he also escaped to the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. Israel enrolled in a training kibbutz and thanks to its assistance to the “Bricha” the institutions tried to allow him to immigrate as soon as possible. Meanwhile his relatives from America had solicited him in letters to come to them and were ready to send him documents and money for the expenses of the road, but he refused. When the camp received a number of certificates and one of the winners was absent, he was given the certificate and name of the missing person, and in 1947 he arrived in Israel as a legal immigrant named Yerachmiel Edelman. When he arrived in Israel he worked as a construction worker, joined the Hagana and served in Holon. In March 1948, he was assigned to the “Paratroopers” battalion of the Palmach “Harel” brigade, and was assisted by his commander in his military experience, and he participated in the conquest of the Castel and the Nachshon operation and fell in the attack of the Legion on the radar on May 27, 1948. To rest in the military cemetery in Kiryat Anavim.