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.
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