Cullen, Helmut

He was born in 1922 in Germany, and after immigrating to Eretz Israel worked in Rosh Pina. 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 in late April 1943 he sailed aboard the ship “Arinpura” from Egypt in the direction of Malta, in order to participate in the Allied invasion of Sicily. On 27 Nissan 5703 (1.5.1943), a German reconnaissance plane was flying over the convoy of ships. The plane bombed the convoy. Helmut’s ship suffered direct damage and drowned. One hundred and forty members of Company 462 drowned together with Helmut. His name was immortalized in “The Book of Volunteering,” in “The Book of the Year”, and in the Yizkor Book of the Jabotinsky Institute. In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, a monument was erected in the shape of a ship and next to it a water pool with engraved names of all the company’s missing soldiers.