Altshuler, Yigal

Son of Chaya and Chaim. He was born in 1925 in Tel Aviv and attended the boys and girls school in the city. Due to the difficult economic situation of his family, Yigal stopped his studies at an early age and began to work as an assistant to the Ice Department. Yigal played a lot of football and belonged to the “Nation and Motherland” youth organization. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the British Army in spite of his young age and was assigned to the 462 Company of the Transport Corps. He served in Egypt and Lebanon and at the end of April 1943 he left for Egypt to join the Allied invasion of Sicily. On May 1, 1943, when the convoy of ships headed by the “Aryanpora” off the Benghazi coast was bombed by German planes. Yigal’s ship was damaged and sunk immediately, and with it one hundred and forty soldiers of the company were buried and Yigal was among them. Lay down parents and three brothers and a sister. In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, a ship-shaped memorial was erected in memory of the missing, and next to it is a water pool with the names of all the company’s missing people engraved on the bottom. This fallen hero is a “maklan” – a hero whose burial place is unknown.