(1926-1946)
Jewish resistance fighter, who died helping Jewish refugees enter Palestine in 1946. Barbara (Bracha[h]) Fuld immigrated to Palestine from Berlin, Germany, in June 1939. Her father had committed suicide after Kristallnacht, but she was met at Haifa by her mother, who had preceded her.
She entered Balfour High School where she engaged in sports, joined one of the youth organizations, danced, and hiked. At the start of World War II Palestine was a League of Nations Mandate governed by the British. When Nazi General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps threatened Egypt the Palmach was established May 16, 1941, as an elite ready reserve of the Haganah, a clandestine Jewish self-defense force formed in 1920. The members would work for 14 days each month on a kibbutz and then take military training for 10 days. Between 1941 and 1943 the British and the Pal-mach worked together in assaults on Vichy dominated Lebanon and Syria. After graduation Bracha Fuld joined the Palmach. She was sent to an officers’ course for training. At age eighteen she was made an officer and put in charge of instructing Jewish women soldiers. Eventually she led her own platoons and commanded several military detachments.
After World War II the British, fearing Arab opposition, sought to prevent the many thousands of the survivors of the Holocaust from immigrating to Palestine. The Jews revolted. From 1945 to mid-1946 the Palmach worked with the Irgun in raids, robberies, and other assaults on British military and civilian establishments. Bracha fought with the Palmach in a raid on the German colony of Sarona outside of Joppa (now the Kirya in Tel Aviv). From 1946 the Palmach sought to aid Jewish immigration to Palestine.
On March 27, 1946, the Wingate with 250 illegal Jewish immigrants on board was to arrive from Italy. To keep the British from interfering with the illegal immigrants thousands of people came to provide cover. Bracha Fuld and her squad tried to protect a road the illegal immigrants would use. However, the squad encountered a British tank unit. In the exchange of fire Bracha was badly wounded and died in a hospital shortly afterward.
Her funeral was attended by many people in Tel Aviv. Six months after she died a ship for transporting illegal immigrants was named for her, the S. S. Bracha Fuld. Also Bracha Fuld Street in Tel Aviv was named in her honor.
