Esther Cailingold
| Esther Cailingold | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Esther Cailingold 28 June 1925 Whitechapel, London |
| Died | 29 May 1948 (aged 22) Jerusalem |
| Cause of death | Killed in action |
| Resting place | Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, Israel |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Schoolteacher and volunteer Haganah soldier |
Esther Cailingold (1925–1948) was a British-born schoolteacher of Polish extraction, who fought with the Jewish forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and died of wounds received in the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem. She is commemorated, in Israel, by the Esther Cailingold memorial forest at Kibbutz Lavi in the Lower Galilee, by a scholarship fund at Yeshivat HaKotel in Jerusalem, and on various war memorials including that of the Israeli Armored Corps at Latrun. Several libraries and other rooms in children's homes in Israel are named after her. In England she is remembered through the Esther Cailingold society in North London, part of Emunah UK, a worldwide Jewish children's welfare charity.
Esther Cailingold was born in Whitechapel, London, on 28 June 1925, eldest child of Moshe Cailingold and Anne, née Fenechel. Moshe had immigrated from Warsaw in 1920, and had opened up a London branch of his family's bookselling and publishing business. After the family moved to Stamford Hill, North London, in 1936, Esther attended the North London Collegiate School for girls, eventually winning a scholarship to Goldsmiths College, University of London (temporarily based in Nottingham), to study English. She graduated with first-class honours in 1946.
Esther's Zionism derived principally from her strict Orthodox Jewish background. Her father, one of the founders of Poland's Young Mizrachi movement, ("Mizrachi" here refers to the worldwide religious Zionist movement, the name has also been used by a now-defunct Israeli political party) maintained a fervent Zionism in the family home, such that "Esther was a Zionist...before she knew of any formal movement or heard her first Zionist speech". Her youthful convictions were strengthened by awareness of international events such as the rise of Hitler, the growth of European (and British) anti-semitism and later, during and immediately after the war, the emerging details of the Holocaust. Until then her Zionism had expressed itself mainly in religious and youth-related activities, such as her involvement with Bachad, (Bachad's origins are as a pre war German Jewish youth movement which came to England with refugees) which ran training farms in Britain and Europe to prepare young people for future life on a kibbutz. Thereafter her belief strengthened that her future lay with the Jewish community in Palestine, and in the autumn of 1946 she successfully applied for a post as an English teacher at the Evelina de Rothschild school in Jerusalem.
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