Yehudit was born in November 1917 in Liepāja, Latvia to Shmuel and Shoshana. At a young age, her mother passed away and she was adopted by relatives. She studied in a Yiddish-speaking school, though she did not know the language. Some time later, she returned to her father’s home and a secular school. She joined Beitar when an emissary of the movement reached her city. A fictitious marriage allowed her to get a certificate and make aliyah in 1935. This was right after Arlozorov’s murder, and Yehudit, who arrived dressed in a Beitar uniform, got a jaw-rattling slap as her welcome from the dock workers.

She was sent to the Rosh Pina company, which then had seventeen members, half of them young women. They worked on the farms in varous capacities. They were not paid much. She spent some time in Yesud HaMaala, and then she went north to Metula, as a company commander. There she helped smuggle in those making aliya illegally. After two years of service, she went to Jerusalem and joined the South African delegation, headed by Shmuel Katz.

In 1939, Yehudit was sent to Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, where many youths were organized for agricultural and military training to prepare for aliyah. This activity was brutally cut off by the outbreak of war. Yehudit manage to get back to the Land of Israel, using her passport to travel by way of Constanța, Romania. The CID had a list of IZL members, whom they would arrest when they entered the country. However, Yehudit outwitted them by using her “married” name, Bergman. At the time, the commanders of IZL were arrested; after the split, she and her friend Binyamin Zeroni joined Yair’s men.

The relations between the newly split organizations were difficult, and as a Lehi member, she was ordered to return to Jerusalem, to find an apartment where Lehi members could meet. She found such an apartment in the center of the city. It was also a meeting-place for the members of Kibbutz Beit HaArava. The cover was perfect. The police came, apparently due to informers, but the search and subsequent arrest turned up nothing, so Yehudit was freed. Throughout the War of Independence and the siege of Jerusalem, she remained active.

She married Yitzhak Kavelkin and they have a child.

After the war, they moved to Haifa, where Yehudit studied to become a laboratory technician. She worked in Rambam Hospital for forty years, retiring at age eighty.

Once a week she would volunteer to work at the IDF warehouse, fulfilling her lifelong dream of service to the nation.