Yakov Bar

Yakov Bar was born in 1928 in Białobrzegi

Yakov Bar was born Yakov David Birnbaum in 1928 in Białobrzegi, Poland, the eldest son of Shlomo Meir and Chava Esther. In 1942 his mother and sisters were taken to Treblinka and murdered, and he was sent to labor camps. He later passed through Buchenwald and Theresienstadt, where he was liberated in May 1945.

After the war he joined a training group in Prague and worked with the Bricha movement. In 1947 he sailed for the Land of Israel on the ship Sha'ar Yashuv, which the British stopped, and he was held in Cyprus. He then entered the country and was sent to the Armored Corps.

He drove a Hotchkiss tank in Battalion 82 during the War of Independence and later became the battalion sergeant major. He served in the battalion for 14 years and fought in the Sinai campaign. After an officers course he returned in 1958 as deputy battalion commander.

He set up the Armored Corps training base 500 and became its commander in 1962. In the Six-Day War he led the maintenance group of the Steel Division. In 1971 he was named commander of the General Staff camp and held the post for about 10 years, becoming a colonel in 1974 and retiring in 1980.

After leaving the army he headed the Association for the Soldier's Welfare. In 1986 he founded Yad La-Shiryon at Latrun and was its first director general. In 1993 he took charge of a neighborhood renewal project in Ashkelon and Beersheba, and he died in 2008.