History of David Leibovich, inventor of Israeli artillery from Russia - ForumDaily
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The story of David Leibovich, inventor of Israeli artillery from Russia

A Siberian Jew runs under bullets from Soviet Russia to revive the Land of Israel, and then creates the first "Jewish artillery" that saves a young country during the War of Independence.

Siberian Zionism

In 1928, the Mikve Israel agroschool recruited a new teacher of labor — an emaciated young Jew who had recently sailed by steamer from the USSR. The guy's name is David Leybovich.

He was born in the year of Theodor Herzl's death - January 28 1904 - in the distant Siberian city of Tomsk in the family of a gold miner and trader Mordechai Leibovich. His mother, Esther Gleihengojz, was a native of Minsk, but came to Siberia with her brother Shmuel, who headed the technical laboratory of Tomsk State University. For his inventions Shmuel was awarded the gold medal personally from the hands of Tsarevich Nicholas, the future last emperor of Russia. During the 1905 revolution, Shmuel was expelled from the university for his Jewish background. Probably, it was Uncle who instilled in David a love for technology. The family legend was one of the older relatives, who had been taken to cantonists under Nicholas I, but he managed to rise to the rank of colonel of the tsarist army, retaining his Jewishness.

After the Bolshevik coup, David graduated from the local polytechnic school and the course of geodesic-surveying department of the Tomsk Polytechnic. He enters the local Institute of Technology, from where he is expelled for participation in the Zionist organizations of Tomsk, in which he has been a member of 13 years. At the beginning of the 1920s, Leibovich participates in expeditions of the Academy of Sciences to Mongolia, and also studies the coal interior of the future Kuzbass.

In 1924, he is working in the Crimea in the underground agricultural farm "Tel-Hai": the Zionists are preparing future pioneers for the development of the Land of Israel. The bitter irony was that even this underground farm was split in 1925 by terrible ideological disputes. David left the group, founding a new Mishmar farm with his friends. In the future, almost all of David’s peers, who had not managed to get out of the USSR, died in a gulag or spent dozens of years in Soviet camps.

In 1926, the Zionist organization “Ghelugh” issued David a certificate - a permit to come to Eretz-Israel, certified by the British mandate authorities. But the Soviet authorities refuse him to leave. Then Leibowitz in January 1927 tries to cross the border with several friends illegally. They go across the ice across the Dniester to get to Romanian Bessarabia, but unsuccessfully. One of the friends is killed by the fire of the border guards, the other is injured and falls into the hands of the security officers.

Who knows if David Leibovich’s attempt to cross the Dniester in search of a better life in a sunny country became a prototype for a similar act by Ostap Bender in Ilf and Petrov... But if for the charming hero-adventurer failure on the Romanian border was the finale, then our hero the Zionist resolutely did not want to retrain as a house manager.

David manages to get out of the border skirmish unnoticed. He sneaks into Moscow. In the capital, Leybovich gets in touch with local Zionist underground workers, gets a job at a construction site, trying to legally get a passport to leave the country. Meanwhile, the gallant Red Army remembers David’s draft age and sends him a soldier to Kursk. David understands that the system sucks it up and does not release it.

Then he leaves his military unit, under the name of David Zeidis, rushing to Moscow to the representative of US Jewry Joseph Rosen, head of Agro-Joint, who provided material assistance to the Soviet Union from America. Rosen leads Leibovich with Ekaterina Peshkova - the first wife of the writer Maxim Gorky. It was after the request of the activist of the Political Red Cross that the young Zionist received a passport to leave "without the right to return to the territory of the USSR." From the port of Odessa, David sails to Jaffa on March 27 1927. It is with such adventures that David finds himself in the Promised Land.

The birth of "Russian" mortar
David Leibovich is formally listed as a teacher of labor in “Mikve Israel”, but in fact begins to design and create the first Jewish weapon on the instructions of the “Hagan”. Those who knew him noted that the “Siberian version of the Russian language” remained native and the main thing for Leibovich. But he quickly mastered Hebrew - and so well that he began to teach technical and military disciplines.

A year later, David was already in charge of the Western sector of the Tel Aviv front, and in 1929 he was in command of a detachment defending his sector during a wave of Arab unrest. There, in the battles and the underground, he finds the love of his life - Shulamith Moldavian.

Leybovich makes hand grenades according to the American models in the craft workshop “Mikve Israel”. Laughing at the English, he writes on “Made in USA” grenades and explains to friends that the USA is an abbreviation “Unser Shtickel Arbyte” [our skillful work is Yiddish]. The experience of the Soviet underground helps him to conduct underground work under the British authorities, masquerading as an agroschool teacher.

In the mid-1930s, a grenade exploded during testing, injuring its creator. At the same time, he receives a second wound - from a grenade thrown by the Arabs at his bus. From 1939 to 1945, the Siberian Jew - already the deputy commander of the Haganah in Holon and Tel Aviv - led the entire military industry of the Jewish underground.

In the winter of 1947-1948, David Leibovich develops a mortar and projectiles very simple for handicraft production. The gun, which received the nickname "David", shot over-caliber mine. The first mortar was secretly assembled in the old workshop of the school “Mikve Israel” - in the very place where the mustached Kaiser, making an equestrian exercise, listened to the dreams of Theodor Herzl.

The first prototype caused joy by the fact that he threw the projectile by as much as ... 220 meters. But the Jews of the Land of Israel before Leibovich did not even have such, if I may say so, “artillery”.

For the first time the mortar "Davidka" entered into business after the end of Saturday evening 13 in March 1948 of the year - during the attack of the "Haganah" on the nest of Arab bandits in Abu Kabir quarter near Tel Aviv. After the shelling of the quarter, the Arabs in a panic left it. On the night of April 21, the mortar fire Davidka prepared an attack on the Arab quarters of Haifa.

Arabs of the city of Safed in Safed in May 1948, the shots of "David" were horrified. Having a full advantage in strength, Muslims at night took shots of Jewish mortars for breaking ... atomic bombs. The rain that started right after the volley also played into the hands of the Jews: the dry season was already over, and the Arabs, having decided that it was a nuclear “rain of death”, fled in a hurry. In the military history of Israel, this success was called "the miracle of Safed."

"Davidka" had low accuracy and long range, but then the shot was very loud. The sound effect was heightened by rumors about the atomic bomb that Jews had. The roar of shots, howling mines and ruptures of powerful charges (up to 40 kilograms of explosive) had a strong psychological effect, compensating for the ugly accuracy of shooting. Grateful Israelis called the square in the center of Jerusalem the name "Davidka", erecting a monument to the creation of a Siberian Jew.

And what about our hero? After the War of Independence, David Leibovich was in charge of the agricultural machinery warehouse and lived peacefully with his family - his wife, son Zvi and daughter Hana - until his untimely death of 4 in March 1969, at the age of 65.

It was precisely such people as Leybovich, hardened in the Russian open spaces, that raised the fallen banner of the suddenly departed Herzl, making from his dream the living reality of a revived Jewish state. The century has changed - and the new generation of “Russian” Jews, breaking the iron curtain of the USSR, is changing Israel again today.

 

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