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Ya'acov Samid: My Study Years

The Unpublished Article

YA'ACOV SAMID, THE AUTHOR

Driven by the spirit of Zionism which he nurtured in the Gymnasium, Ya'acov Samid, a freshly minted electrical engineer, said goodbye to his family in Poland, and carved a path for himself among the pioneers of Eretz Israel, lending his contribution to the establishment of the state of Israel. Ya'acov Samid, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, two graduates. Decades later, grateful for his survival, and Zionist way of life, Ya'acov Samid, now a father and a grandfather, found himself in the good graces of a healthy retirement. "The time has come" he said to himself, "to resurrect a long forgotten dream!" The few fellow graduates who heard about his idea were very skeptic. "How would you find the surviving graduates?" they asked. And "where would you get the energy, and the persistence to mount such a huge enterprise?!" But the same spirit that moved Ya'acov from Poland to Israel, from the Hagana to Haga, from a design engineer to a consulting engineer, from an engineering practitioner to a math and science teacher -- has served him well once again. The graduates, even the teachers, were found one by one, in a painstaking detective work, and the call went out: Let's have a reunion to assert the undefeated vitality of the Gymnasium! And they came, from the cities and settlements of Israel, from America, from Europe, from Australia, even from the Soviet Union. United in one big triumphant celebration. Raising memories that were resting in oblivion for decades, renewing friendships which were washed by the waves of the times, even old romance flared up! Then came the books, and now this wonderful Hebrew institution is forever documented.