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Kesler, Zvi (Yechiel)

Kesler, Zvi (Yechiel)


Son of Yaffa and Yitzhak, was born on May 12, 1924 in a small village in the Czech Republic, where he immigrated to Israel in 1933. He studied in the children’s village of Shfeya and studied agriculture, and then went to Tel Aviv to work with his mother He was a member of the Haganah and participated in the events of 1936, but as soon as he left, his ties with the Haganah were severed. He joined the Lehi underground and carried out many activities against the British authorities, and as a saboteur in the attack on Abu Kabir, he was wounded in the leg and the wounds were removed from his mother for fear of her health. Promoted to a platoon commander. The poet Avigdor Hameiri tells of him that the dream of his dreams was to hit the Egyptian enemy with a “Japanese method”, to plunge in a plane full of bombs, to destroy dams in the Nile and to flood their land with water – “like in the Red Sea …” The advanced half-track would give orders to his subordinates and despise the rampant death all around. In the battle of Sheik-Nuran, the half-track mounted a mine, and Zvi was wounded in the leg, but laughed at the idea that they would take him to the hospital on December 26, 1948, during Operation Horev to expel the Egyptian army from Israel. His unit was Auja al-Hafir, a Fiat bomb that hit his car, he was buried in Halutza, and was later transferred to the Nahalat Yitzhak Military Cemetery.

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