Hahn, Mendel

Son of Yehudit and Meir, was born in 1930 in the city of Rodki, Poland. In 1934, the family immigrated to Israel and settled in Ness Ziona. Where he graduated from the elementary school and began to work in the British military camp Sarafand (now Zerifin). Unable to bear the hostile treatment of Jewish workers by the British, he began studying frameworks in Rishon Letzion. After a year he joined the Palmach and was wounded in an action against Arab gangs east of Petach Tikvah, where he was sent to the Negev during the War of Independence and during the winter of 1948 he served with convoys on the way to Tel Aviv. Once the armored vehicle he was riding on had hit a mine and turned over. Mendel was wounded when he recovered from his wounds and returned to service. In the war against the Egyptian invader he was among the defenders of Yad Mordechai. When he tried to pick up a friend who was hit, he hit four bullets in his left hand. He put on his wounds and continued to fight. When the order was given to withdraw, he and one other member remained with two machine guns. They dug on a hill and continued shooting the enemy, and when the enemy fire stopped, they buried the dead and then Mordecai immediately went out with the wounded. After he recovered from a hospital he was transferred to a paratroopers’ unit. Killed by the gunfire of the sentry near the gate of his unit’s camp in Netanya on the 10th of Shevat, 5709 (10.2.1949). He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Nes Tziona.