Buchbinder, Raphael

He was born in the city of Iasi, Romania, and from there immigrated to Eretz Israel. During the Second World War he enlisted in the British Army 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 on the deck of the ship “Arinapura” from Egypt to Malta, in a convoy that led the force to participate in the Allied invasion of Sicily. On the 27th of Nisan 5703 (1.5.1943), a German reconnaissance plane was flying over the ships off the Benghazi coast. The plane called the bomb planes that had arrived in the evening and bombed the convoy. Raphael’s ship suffered direct damage and drowned. One hundred and forty members of Company 462 drowned with her and Rafael among them. In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem a monument was erected in memory all the soldiers of the company who drowned, in the shape of a ship. His burial place is unknown.