Brightman, Joseph

He was born in 1917 in Plock, Poland, and immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1939. He was active in the Beitar youth movement and served as a guard in Be’er Yaakov. During the Second World War he enlisted in the British army and was assigned to the cavalry corps. He fought in Tobruk and in February 1941, in a raid on the fortress, he burst into a mine-bombed fence and was wounded. While he was seriously wounded, he threw two hand grenades at the enemy’s battery and the silence. He was brought to one of the temporary hospitals in Libya, operated on but died of his wounds. His friends buried him and placed a Bible on his head as he had requested before his death, and placed a Star of David on a tombstone and a wooden plank reading: “Joseph Breitman died a hero’s death.”