Castro, Eliyahu

Eliyahu (Lucky), son of Matilda (nee Richter) and Moshe Castro, was born in 1926 in Haifa, and after graduating from school, he began working as a mechanic at Ford. At the outbreak of the War of Independence he went out to accompany convoys, to bring supplies to any place under siege. On the afternoon of 16 Adar II, March 27, 1948, a convoy of seven vehicles and 90 people left Nahariya to deliver supplies, fortifications and reinforcements to Yechiam. Near Kabri, the convoy encountered an Arab ambush. The first armored vehicle managed to break into Yechiam, but the rest of the vehicles were ambushed. The convoy members fought until the evening and under cover of darkness some of them managed to escape, but about half of them fell in battle. A driver who traveled in the same convoy says that Eliyahu, who helped him steer his car, could have saved himself, but his devotion to his friends in those moments of despair did not allow him to leave them alone and with them he fell. He was brought to rest in the cemetery in Nahariya. He was survived by his parents and three sisters.