NAME: Gershon Salvator Tori

LEHI ALIAS: Avner

DATE OF BIRTH: January 6, 1921

DATE OF DEATH: July 24, 1989

Salvator, whose previous name was Yehoshua Geron, was born on January 6,1921 in Plovdiev Bulgaria. His father Nissim was a laborer and mother Mathilda a seamstress who raised their two children. Salvator studied at the local high-school. From childhood he studied music, played  violin, and joined the school orchestra where he was also the conductor. Music was his lifelong passion and his musical expertise  was vast.

At age 15 he joined Beitar together with his childhood friends. He went through WWII with his family in Bulgaria. In 1946 he came, through the Youth Aliya, without his parents, joining his sister Shelly who’d preceded him. After a brief adjustment period, he joined Lehi. He engaged in activities such as distributing information material, weapons training and learning how to handle explosives. He participated in attacks on British military bases and  blowing up the Haifa Railway Workshops during which eleven members were killed. Salvator was shot in the arm and captured, along with twenty two other members including four women. Salvator and his comrades were tried by the British and given the death penalty. Due to pressure from popular opinion in Eretz Yisrael and the world, their sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Salvator served his sentence in Akko prison and briefly in Jerusalem, until the War of Independence.  After the establishment of the State he was released from prison, enlisted in the IDF, and participated in the War of Liberation serving in the Artillery Corps. In 1949 he was discharged from the IDF. He married Ruth Ben-Naim in 1952. Salvator and Ruth had three daughters and have seven grandchildren. He worked in Tel-Aviv Municipality’s Lighting Dept  until  his retirement in 1986.

His hobbies were reading thrillers, science fiction and mysticism.

Salvator passed away on July 24,1989.