Heftal, Joseph

Son of Brania and Israel. He was born in 1913 in Rymanow, Poland, where his father died when he was eight, leaving five young children in the orphanage in Frankfurt. He immigrated to Palestine in 1933. During the Second World War he enlisted in the British Army, joined the Transport Corps and served in Company 462. At the end of April 1943 he sailed with the British Army, soldiers of his unit and soldiers of other units on the deck of the ship “Arinapura” from the port of Alexandria towards Malta. On the afternoon of 27 Nisan, January 1, 1943, a German aircraft carrier attacked a convoy of ships headed by the “Aryanpura.” The ship sustained two direct hits and within minutes began to sink into the depths. One hundred and forty of the soldiers of Company 462, Joseph among them, drowned. He left three sisters and a brother. He is remembered in the “Soldier” booklet, the “Yearbook of the Journalists” and the “Volunteer Book.” In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, there is a ship with a water pool at its bottom, engraved with the names of the fallen. This fallen hero is a “maklan” – a hero whose burial place is unknown.