Page 22 - Underground Prisoner Museum, Advanced Level

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Advanced Level - ‫מוזיאון אסירי המחתרות‬

Bracha and Joni

Among the prisoners of the Hagana that sat in prison was a young
man by the name of Gidon Pil'i, or, as his companions called him,
"Joni".
Joni, a member of the Palmach (the regular fighting force of the
Hagana) from Kiryat Anavim, was caught with four of his friends in
1945, when they practiced with weapons next to the Kibbutz Beit
HaArava, on the shore of the Dead Sea. Joni and his friends were
sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
Joni had a girlfriend outside. At every opportunity that was given to
visit she would arrive. One day he waited for a visit like she had
promised him in the letter and she did not come…
Several days before that, they waited in Tel Aviv for the illegal
immigrant ship "Weingart". The people of the Hagana and many
youth went to the shore in the event of problems with the British, in
order to intermingle with the illegal immigrants and to absorb them
among them. Bracha, from the Palmach, commanded a group of
look-outs. The British discovered the group and opened fire on it.
Bracha was killed.
Bracha was the girlfriend of Joni.
Joni, who sat in prison and waited for her, discovered by
coincidence, when he worked in the kitchen, a page of an old
newspaper in the vegetable crate. He read the newspaper and found
a notice with a black border and in it the picture of a young woman –
it was the picture of Bracha…
That evening, the last letter of Bracha arrived:
"I wait and look forward to the moment when your feet will tread on
the threshold of freedom. It seems to me that this moment is not so
far. But if it is far or close and even if it will be delayed in coming –
I will not stop waiting for it. I do not know how we will meet.
Maybe I will stand and wait for you by the gate, maybe suddenly,
when I will sit bent in tears over a letter to you. Maybe like this and
maybe otherwise…"

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