Gottesman, Mordechai (Moti)

Son of-Esther and Shmuel was born on June 16, 1930, in the city of Fadlshovitz, Czech Republic, until the age of 14. He lived with his parents in the Czech Republic, attended a general school and at the same time received a traditional Jewish education In 1944 he was deported to the ghetto by the Nazis, with the large family (parents and eight children) who were taken to a concentration camp where they separated the parents from their children without ever seeing them again. After his liberation, he returned home hoping to find someone in the family, but to his disappointment he found no one, and only when he arrived in Israel did he learn that his sister He was hoping to meet with her in Eretz Israel, but he did not, while in Italy he joined a Zionist youth group in Florence, and when he encountered the possibility of immigrating to Israel he arrived early on the ship Kedma, After two months in Atlit, he was released and attached to the youth group of Kibbutz Alonim, but due to his religious education he decided to join the religious-Zionist institution “Neve Amiel” in Sde Ya’akov, near Kibbutz Alonim. The War of Independence was immediately mobilized in Haifa. Since he was already trained, he was immediately sent to Yavne’el, then worked in the castle near Haifa, and at Kibbutz Gesher he was in the most difficult moments of defending the kibbutz against the Iraqi invader. Later he joined the “Barak” battalion of the Golani Brigade. His first operations with this battalion were in the Lower Galilee, until the days of the Sejera Protection, which were the days of the battalion’s most bitter battles. On July 12, 1948, Mordechai was wounded in battles for Sejera, injured in his lungs and abdomen. He was transferred to the hospital in Afula and on the 16th of Tammuz 5708 (16.7.1948) he died of his wounds and was buried in the cemetery in Sde Ya’akov On 7/10/1957 he was transferred to the eternal military cemetery in Haifa