[HE GAVE EVERYTHING HE HAD: DR. SHLOMO GURFINKEL - A LAST DESCENDANT]

Holocaust survivors gave a significant contribution to Israel's fighting forces and to the victory in the War of Independence. Many of them lost their lives in the battlefields. Many doctors who were survivors took an active part in the war, and afterwards in the building of the base of public medicine in the country. The "Last Descendants" were those Holocaust survivors who remained the last remnant of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters), who immigrated to Israel, joined the army and fell in battle, thus ending forever their family legacy. One of them was Dr. Shlomo Gurfinkel. During World War II he was a member of the Jewish underground and served as a doctor in Vilna's ghetto and in the ranks of the partisans. In the War of Independence, he was a doctor in a "Haganah" battalion and lost his life in the battles in Jerusalem. By telling his personal story, we intend to throw light on the heroic actions of those Holocaust survivors, amongst them medical personnel, who came to Israel and joined the fighting forces, including those who were "last descendants".