Caspi, Chaim
Son of Miriam and Hanoch Zilber. He was born in 1911 in Brisk Koyavsky, Poland, to a family of traditional observant Jews. He was a member of Hehalutz, the League for Labor Palestine and the Gordonia youth movement, which also underwent pioneering training. He immigrated to Eretz Israel at the end of 1932 and joined the Mishmar Hasharon group. He was active in the Hagana organization and during the bloody riots of 1936-1939 he served as a guard in Rosh Ayin, Haifa, Atlit and Tulkarm. After the outbreak of World War II he joined the British Army and was attached to the 462 Hebrew Transport Unit. He had writing skills and also edited publications of his military unit. At the end of April 1943 he sailed with about three hundred soldiers of his unit and with the soldiers of other units aboard the ship “Arinapura” from the port of Alexandria. The destination of the voyage was Malta, and the purpose was to help the Allies in the invasion of Sicily. On the afternoon of 27 Nisan, April 1, 1943, in the afternoon, a German aircraft carrier attacked a convoy of ships headed by the “Aryanpura”. The ship sustained two direct hits and within minutes began to sink into the depths. Along with the sinking ship, a hundred and forty of the unit’s soldiers also drowned. His name was immortalized in “The Book of Volunteerism,” in “The Yearbook of the Journalists” and in the book “Yizkor” of the Jabotinsky Institute. In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, a ship-shaped monument was erected in memory of the missing, and next to it is a small water pool, with the names of the hundred and forty people in the background engraved on the bottom.
