The Power of Knowledge - HEMED: The Israeli Science Corps

Uriel Bachrach was born in Germany in 1926 and immigrated to Palestine in 1933. In 1945 he began studying chemistry at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. At the end of 1947, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion realized that once British forces left Palestine in May 1948, seven Arab countries would attack the newly formed Jewish state that at that time was home to only 500,000 people—including women, children, and the elderly, many of them Holocaust survivors. The State had only 10,000 rifles and 3,800 pistols, no anti-tank weapons, and no artillery. Since weapons could not be purchased from other countries due to an embargo, Ben-Gurion decided to produce weapons locally. On February 2, 1948, Bachrach was summoned to a secret meeting where he and twenty chemistry and physics students were literally told to save the nation. For three weeks they studied the secrets of explosives, incendiaries, gas, and smoke. Gradually more young scientists joined the group and on March 17, 1948, an IDF Science Corps named HEMED was formed. In 1949, Bachrach returned to The Hebrew University and became the chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology. He has been a visiting professor at various American and European universities and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bologna in Italy. The Hebrew version of this book was published in 2009 and the author received a special prize for the State of Israel from President Shimon Peres. Uriel Bachrach continues to lecture in various forums about this unique chapter in Israel’s history.