Deutsch, Eitan

Son of Yehuda and Clara. He was born on August 12, 1948, in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, before immigrating to Israel with his family, where he studied at the Kiryat Amal elementary school and the Chaim Grinberg High School in Kiryat Tivon. For four years he was a player in the basketball team of Hapoel Kiryat Tivon, Eitan was drafted into the IDF in August 1966 and began to rise to the rank of lieutenant. On Tuesday, June 19, 1969, before he completed his mandatory service, he fell to the military cemetery in Haifa, and his good friend wrote: “I had a commander with them first of all a friend. I got to work with him and live with him, close to him, a few months. These were long and tense months in the line of fire with the Jordan. I enjoyed being with him and saw him as an example of a good commander. He knew how to manage and behave well with his riflemen, soldiers who were not easy to command. The communal life and the conditions that dictated great closeness between the people of the outpost brought us to very close conversations. From these conversations I learned to know Eitan. He told me a great deal about his plans for the future and I remember how he would have learned Italian at that time so that he could go to Italy to study medicine at the end of his service. He had a great personal charm and his manner was human, so that in these plans he could buy the hearts of his soldiers, activate them and bring them to carry out his orders, not only because he commanded them but out of recognition and will. “