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 GABRIEL "GABI" KNOLLER
IN HIS OWN WORDS
I was born in 1921 in Poland.
My whole family immigrated to Palestine in 1932 and settled in Haifa. My father, Dr. Joseph
Knoller, a district pediatrician with the Worker"s Sick Fund (Kapat Cholim) built his house
on Mt. Carmel where the whole family (three generations) has lived since then. As a young
boy I joined the Haganah and was an active leading member of the Haifa Scouts
Troops.
I graduated from the Reali Hebrew High School (Bet Ha'sefer Ha'reali Ha'ivir) in 1939 and
started my studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem after spending a year on a
Kibbutz.
In 1942 I volunteered for the
British Army and joined the Jewish units of "The Buffs" which were later formed into Jewish
Battalions of the Palestine Regiment. I saw service in Palestine and Egypt and when the
Jewish Brigade was formed in 1944, moved with it into Italy. The Brigade was active in
Northern Italy and was later, after the Armistice in 1945, moved to northwestern Europe as
part of the BAOR (British Army of the Rhine).
My first meetings and
contacts with the Jewish Holocaust survivors were in northern Italy on the Austrian border.
The most moving and long-remembered one was in Tarvisio where we first heard from them the
atrocities of the war. It was then that I started taking part in the Brigade activities of
saving the survivors and smuggling them to Palestine.
In 1947, a short time before
the outbreak of our War of Liberation, I joined the staff of my Alma Mater, the Hebrew
Reali School in Haifa, as a teacher of History on Civics, and served on the staff of that
school for forty years, retiring as an Assistant Principal in 1987.
In 1948 I joined the I.D.F.,
served with the Carmel Brigade and was later transferred to the Youth Battalions where I
met my wife Shoshana. I was released from the I.D.F. in 1950 as a Major and we were married
in December that year. I returned to the school and stayed there till my retirement. During
my term with the school, I taught at the University of Haifa on the staff of the Teacher"s
Training Department for eighteen years. We built our home on Mt. Carmel in the family house
that my later father had built in 1936 and where our three sons were born.
My sabbaticals were spent in
Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota where I worked for my Ph.D.
During the years I became an
active member of the Israel Veterans League and of other voluntary organizations such as
the Lion"s Club, The Association of Senior Citizens in Israel, The Members of the Haganah
Organization and the Conservative Movement in Israel. Since my retirement from the school I
am working as the Director of Senior Citizens College in Haifa.
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