Efrat, Raphael (“Rafi”)

Son of Shlomo and Pnina detailed. He was born on May 10, 1924, in Hamburg, Germany, where he studied at the “Talmud Torah” and in 1935, after the Nazis’ rise to power, immigrated to Israel with his family in Kiryat Bialik and Kiryat Motzkin High School In 1942, he joined the Royal Army Corps of Engineers and joined the Transportation Control Unit and was the commander of various railway stations in Egypt, maintaining strong ties with Hagana representatives to benefit the security effort of the Yishuv. On trucks loaded with ammunition and Haganah personnel in the transport units, they knew how to transport these cars to reach a destination other than planned “I have never encountered a man more systematic and thorough than he was,” he said. “He often discovered the ‘holes’ in the traditional British military pyramid. Needless to say, these “holes” conveyed entire trains that brought tangible benefit to the headquarters of the Haganah. “In 1946 he was discharged as a sergeant from the British army and was accepted to work as a civilian in the Haifa area. Rafi, who strengthened his ties with the Haganah and the Shai, continued the holy work of providing materials and information about the steps taken by the government. His nickname “wanderer” justified himself. Rafi passed through all the railway stations, entered the various offices and saw and heard – he was able to convey to the right ears: information about an army movement, measures to be taken against settlement points, curfews, searches, etc. When the struggle against the British intensified, this news had a double value. Especially after the UN’s decision to establish a Hebrew state, the news service needed information about the position of the British army in the struggle, what the policy of the commander of the army would be, etc. The importance of the information Rafi conveyed was extremely significant and had a direct impact on successful operations. A news item about the transfer of General Storrs’ archive to Beirut, including the wealth of secret documents that he had contained.Rafi received information about the date and exact route of the archive. That night Rafi was arrested. After much effort and intervention of attorney Hoter-Yishai, Rafi was released but was fired from his job, and since then he was a full-time member of the Israel Defense Forces and was one of the founders of SHAM 3, which was a combination of field security and the General Security Service. – to the Intelligence Corps. And since then – except for a short period, which had been loaned to the Special Police Department – he served in that corps. He was a graduate of the fifth graduating class of the Command and Staff School and served as the head of the office of Major General Amit when he was head of the Mossad. He was head of the Military Intelligence Bureau during the period before the “shameful business” And the head of the bureau of the chief of staff, Lieutenant General Yitzhak Rabin, before and after the Six-Day War, and was a partner in all the dilemmas and dilemmas. “- the Israeli and foreign press – and after the war he was appointed spokesman for the IDF and his friends noted that” he was a press representative at the IDF and an IDF representative at the newspaper “Rafi underwent various training abroad and was finally appointed as an advisor to the Israeli Embassy in Bonn. On the 21st of Tevet 5731 (21.1.1971), he died during his service. He left a wife, a boy and a girl. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Kiryat Shaul. At the open grave, the chief of staff, Lieutenant General Bar-Lev, eulogized him: “We know what he did and what he achieved in his life”In a condolence letter to the widow, Lt. Gen. Rabin wrote, among other things:” The three years of our joint work in the chief of staff’s office were great years that we will not forget. He was not a man who was closer to me than Murphy, and there was no one I could trust and trust more than Rafi, his intelligence, his judgment, his lack of personal appeals, Rafi is gifted with extraordinary talent and ability, and Rafi is gifted with integrity and dedication that knows no bounds. “Rafi Sherf himself bore the heavy burden of feeling responsible for the security of Israel.”