Hikind-Tokcirov, Aryeh (Arik)

Aryeh (Arik), son of Batsheva and Avraham Hikind-Tokcirov, was born in 1923 in Jerusalem. During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Engineers Corps in the British Army after he had to wait, at the request of his parents, until he turned 18. He gave his release card to a refugee-partisan so that he could immigrate to Israel, and he himself remained abroad, organizing and leading illegal immigrant convoys. He returned to Israel on the ship Shabtai Lozinski, where he served as a radio operator. With the outbreak of the War of Independence, he enlisted in the Palmach’s Palmach battalion and fought to defend besieged Jerusalem, especially in the Battle of Katamon. Arik threw grenades from a rooftop at the Arabs who tried to approach the building and killed them. He refused to obey the order of the commander to get off the roof and continued this action until he was wounded when a shell hit him and smashed his thigh. He crawled closer to the door of the stairs and when the medic who came to help him arrived, Arik said, “Avraham, pity, take care of others, I have no chance.” In his last moments, he said to his friends: “Give my love to my parents and tell my mother that she should not regret it and not cry. It was worthwhile, I killed seven of them and we won”. Aryeh fell on the 2nd of Nissan (1.5.1948). He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Kiryat Anavim.