Esther Cailingold (Hebrew: אסתר קיילינגולד) (28 June 1925 – 29 May 1948) was a British-born schoolteacher of Polish extraction, who fought with the Jewish forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and died of wounds received in the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem.
In England she is remembered through the Esther Cailingold society in North London, part of Emunah UK, a worldwide Jewish children's welfare charity.
[4] Her youthful convictions were strengthened by awareness of international events such as the rise of Hitler, the growth of European (and British) anti-semitism[5] and later, during and immediately after the war, the emerging details of the Holocaust.
Thereafter her belief strengthened that her future lay with the Jewish community in Palestine, and in the autumn of 1946 she successfully applied for a post as an English teacher at the Evelina de Rothschild school in Jerusalem.
In the ensuing months, whilst immersing herself in the local culture, she witnessed the growing street violence, the imposition of curfews and other restrictions on movement, attacks on Jewish property and personnel, and specific events such as the trial, conviction and execution of Irgun activist Dov Gruner, and the drawn out saga of the refugee ships such as the Exodus.
[7] By October 1947 she had joined Haganah, and while continuing with her teaching job for the time being, she began attending training camps to prepare for possible combat duty.
[9] The Quarter was entirely cut off from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem, surrounded by hostile Arab districts and effectively indefensible in the face of attack.
[12][13] On 16 May, during the first sustained attack on the Quarter, Esther was wounded, though not disabled - she quickly returned to her duties after a field-dressing, often using the exposed rooftops as her means of access between posts.
None of the men or women who fought for the Jewish Quarter in 1948 received citations for bravery, although Moshe Rusnak, her commander, singled Esther out as deserving.
[19] Along with the 38 other Old City fighters who died, Esther was posthumously enlisted in the Israeli Defence Forces and, after temporary burial in a West Jerusalem quarry, her body was re-interred in Mount Herzl military cemetery in September 1950.