Degani, Aharon (Itzik)

Was born in the town of Zegocin, west of Galicia, to a family of Hasidim, who studied in a “cheder” and a Polish elementary school in 1923. In 1923, the family moved to the nearby town of Tarnow. Where he joined the Mizrachi Zionist party and even purchased a plot of land in Israel, and Aharon and his brothers joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement and worked for several years in the framework of training. He had already begun to live in Palestine and was drafted into the Polish army and served in the Artillery Corps, and he willingly accepted the hardships of the service, seeing it as training for the future, when it was necessary to fight for In the Second World War, he wandered eastward with the retreating Polish army until he was captured by the Germans, fleeing from captivity to the Russian occupation zone, and as he told his parents when he visited them on his wanderings, he saw the start of immigration to Russia, When he heard that the Polish army that had been established in Siberia was about to leave for the Middle East, he joined him and arrived with him through Persia in 1944. He changed his army uniform in civilian clothes and joined my comrades He was trained in Netanya and went up among the first to settle in Yad Mordechai. He also married a wife and eventually had two children, a boy and a daughter. In the farm he worked in a metalwork shop and as a veteran soldier he was active in security matters, especially in handling and guarding weapons. He was known as a cheerful and kind friend of the children, who gathered around him to enjoy his musical whistle. In the winter of 1948 he fulfilled the obligations of time in handling weapons, guarding, escorting convoys, etc. He then took part in defending the place against the Egyptian invaders, and during the bombing of the enemy planes he went out to save the farm’s property On 18.5.1948, , Standing ready for an order near the headquarters shelter, was hit by a shell that fell close to him, and a severely wounded man was covered in the dirt of the crater and only his leg remained outside, and when he was removed from the dustfall he was no longer alive. Aharon was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery at Yad Mordechai.