Early Life and Activity
Cohen was born in the British Mandate of Palestine in 1922, the son of a farmer. He joined the Lehi at age sixteen, and soon became a prominent fighter within the organization. In 1942, after the arrest of a number of Lehi members, Cohen was "among the few who remained at large and recruited a new generation" of members. During the period, Cohen escaped the authorities despite a $3,000 bounty on his head, and in addition to recruiting new members, he practiced his marksmanship, training for future missions.
In September 1942, Cohen helped Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir escape from a British prison. Cohen smuggled two Polish Army uniforms to Shamir and another prisoner, Eliahu Gilaldi, who disguised themselves in the uniforms and then crawled under the barbed wire surrounding the prison. For his role in the escape, Cohen became recognized as "Lehi's most valued fighter".
After helping Shamir escape from prison, Cohen became a leader in Lehi. He trained members in the tactics of guerilla warfare, and taught them how to build bombs and land mines.
Read more about this topic: Yehoshua Cohen
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or activity:
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorized with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland he had built. Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity ... irresistibly reminiscent of the movement of maggots upon rotting meat.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)