Biller, Ilan

Son of Nechama and Fatgiyah, was born on May 12, 1930 in Tel Aviv. He attended elementary school and continued to study until the sixth grade at the Montefiore School. Ilan was known as one of the best athletes in the Brit Maccabim-Atid association. He was one of the best swimmers in the country, a young back-to-back champion and excelled in water polo. Ilan represented the country in international swimming competitions, and in one of them he won the cup. After a short training he went on a reconnaissance and groping operation, as a burglar and a thief, and he became a member of the Yiftah Brigade. He was accompanied by convoys between Tiberias and the northern Galilee, in the battles of the Galilee, in the cleansing of Arab villages, in the conquest of Ein Zeitun, and was one of the first two Hebrew soldiers to enter the Arab part of Safed in battles to liberate the city. He was then transferred with his battalion to the central front, to Operation Danny, And on the verge of a second truce with his company in the village of al-Burj, on the way to Latrun-Ramallah, and took part in the effort to sever Latrun for its conquest On July 16, 1948, when the counterattack Of the Arabs with a force of five times and with armored support, Ilan took refuge behind a sabra hedge and saw the enemy movement threatening the flank that was constantly firing at the armored vehicles. When his machine-gunned friends warned him of the danger in his actions that might reveal their place and draw the enemy’s fire to them while they had no shelter from it, he said: “There is nothing, as long as the armored vehicles are stopped.” His action achieved its purpose, but he himself was hit by a bullet in the spine. He stopped himself from screaming from the pain of his pain as they passed him to the gathering place, so that he would not let go of his friends. Only once did he ask why he was not being transferred from there, and when he was told that the ambulance could no longer arrive because of the enemy fire, he no longer spoke about it, restrained his suffering and made fun of it. Finally he died of an internal hemorrhage. Ilan was brought to rest in the Nahalat Yitzhak Military Cemetery.