Holzker, Hanoch

Son of Rosa and Jacob, was born on December 18, 1930, in the town of Malinov, Volhynia, Poland, and was nine when the Second World War broke out. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet occupied zone, the family was imprisoned in the ghetto, where their parents and older brother perished. Together with the rest of his brothers, apart from one, he escaped to the forests. Hanoch was wounded in the head and the Nazis, who thought him dead, left him alone. When he recovered he crawled to a hiding place. Where he found a family from his town. The family adopted him and together with her fled to Russia and wandered on her bail, and with her returned to Poland. There his brother found him saved from death and returned to Poland as a soldier in the Soviet Army. Hanoch left the family with whom he wandered, entered a Jewish orphanage and contacted a youth group of Hashomer Hatzair. He left Poland with her, moved to the American occupation zone in Germany and was sent to a sanatorium in St. Ottilien. Hanoch began to look for his relatives. He had an uncle in America and two sisters in Israel. The uncle wanted to bring the boy to America, but his Lev was drawn to the Land of Israel. He asked for a way to communicate with his sisters and there was no end to his joy when he met a shaliach, a member of Kibbutz Negba, where one of his sisters was a member. “To be hungry – but to be with you in the land I want,” he wrote in one of his letters to his sisters, “and not with the rich uncle, I think all the youth should immigrate to Israel and build it together.” Hanoch sailed to Palestine on an illegal immigrant ship. Near the shores of the country, the sea jumped and tried to reach the swimmers, but was caught by the British and exiled to Cyprus. Where he spent eight months. When he came to Israel at the end of September 1947, he left the youth group, where he came to Israel and went to the Negev to be close to his sister. Here he joined another youth company and adapted to it quickly. He devoted himself to studying and reading, knowing that he had missed much in his wanderings. Hanoch studied the carpentry work, but after a short time the training took over the place of study. He surrendered heartily to the military exercises, despised the cowards and was full of faith: “If nothing has happened to me so far, the gangs will certainly not be able to me,” he would say. He underestimated the danger, and was often saved by a miracle. Hanoch fell on the 24th of Iyar 5708 (May 25, 1948) when an Egyptian shell hit a position in Negba near a machine gun. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Negba. A page in his memory appears in the pamphlet “Hatred the Storm” in memory of the fallen of Negba.