Friedler, Arie

Son of Chaya and Shaul, was born on January 31, 1962, in the city of Bedzin, Poland. His father was an engineer, a merchant in Turskai and the gabbai of the Great Synagogue. Aryeh graduated from elementary school. The years of World War II were spent in his hometown of Bedzin in the Kamionka ghetto and from August 1943 until the end of the war in a concentration camp. Nine brothers survived the Holocaust: three brothers: Arieh, Berl Dov and Yehoshua-Jay. The parents, Chaya and Shaul, the brothers, Mordechai and Yehuda and the sisters Gila and Miriam perished in Auschwitz. In 1945, at the end of the war, Aryeh managed to reach Germany and immigrate to Israel on the “Penn” as part of the “Youth Aliyah” project of the Jewish Agency. Upon his immigration, he joined the Tel Yitzhak Zionist youth group, where he worked in the building and excelled in his cheerfulness and his voice tonight. His friends remember him as a young man full of energy, cheerful and always Ran. At parties and celebrations, everywhere and every hour, the voice of a Aryeh who sang well, “Something always plays in my Lev and asks for an outlet,” he used to say. His knowledge of the Hebrew language helped him in his rapid absorption in the kibbutz, in his fondness for the older members and in the special and playful relationship with the children in the kibbutz. In the farm they remember him because he was fresh and alert to everything that was happening, always ready and alert. From the day of his immigration he was a member of the Haganah. As a pioneer and member of Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, he submitted in 1947 a request for certificates for his two surviving brothers. With the outbreak of the War of Independence he was among the first in the group to enlist and served in the Alexandroni Brigade. Four days before he was called to report to the absorption base, he left with a group of friends, in accordance with the decision of the Haganah regional institutions to launch an initiated action to repel the enemy from the eastern line of the Jewish settlement. In the bitter battle between the village of Tira and Tel Mond, 29 fighters fell. The day before the declaration of the state, on May 13, 1948, Aryeh fell in battle when he tried to rescue the wounded and was brought to rest in the cemetery at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, twenty-five years after his fall on June 9, 1958 , He was awarded a Haganah member’s badge.