Gurevitch, Aryeh (Lubka)

Aryeh (Lubka) was born in 1918, in Vilna, Poland. In 1941, he was drafted and sent to the Artillery School, where he participated in many battles against the Nazis and was injured six times. A Russian officer insulted the Jews during a feast. Aryeh took out his gun, shot and killed him, was put before a military court, sentenced to death, pardoned, and sent back to the front. In 1945, he embarked on the wandering route of the illegal immigration to Italy, and from there he immigrated to Israel on the illegal immigrant ship “Pada.” Aryeh arrived in Palestine in 1946.
With the outbreak of the War of Independence, he volunteered for the service even though he was disabled, out of the realization that he must do all he could to defend the homeland. Aryeh took part in Operation Brosh to destroy the Syrian bridgehead in the Mishmar Hayarden area. On the 9th of Tammuz (16.7.1948), when he was with his battery of cannons in a grove near Machanaim, an enemy shell hit and killed him. Aryeh was brought to eternal rest in the military cemetery in Rosh Pina on July 17, 1948. He was survived by a wife and a two-year-old child.