Kopelowitz, Arie (“Coppalo”)

Son of Avraham and Eve. He was born on the 15th of Tevet 5706 (15.12.1945) in the city of Magnitogorsk in the USSR. He was three months old when his parents left Russia when they wished to immigrate to Israel. They were delayed in Poland for a short time until the Brichah transferred them through the Czech Republic and Austria to Germany. After the family volunteered to immigrate to Eretz Israel with their two young children, they were transferred to France for immigration to Caesarea. When Aryeh reached school age, he began studying at the Dror elementary school in Kiryat Eliezer, near Haifa, where he completed his studies. Afterward he studied at the Samet High School near the Hebrew Technion in Haifa and completed high school there. From the age of the school he was a member of the United Movement and also a youth counselor in the movement. He joined the Yodfat Brigade after his discharge, and was a veteran in the field of light athletics.In January 1964 he was drafted into the IDF and after basic training he volunteered for the paratroopers. In the course of his career as a deputy company commander, the Six-Day War broke out, and on the first day of the battles, he joined the Paratroopers Brigade and took part in several reprisals, , Was killed on June 5, 1967. He was killed in a battle that took place at the Rafah post, while the first IDF soldier entered the outpost before the brigade was hit by artillery fire and Aryeh was hit immediately. Particularly noteworthy is the heroism of Aryeh; He did not escape first from the burning caterpillar, but stayed in the caterpillar out of coolness and made sure that the last of the wounded had left. He even shouted at them: “Jump out and roll in the sand.” But when he too wanted to jump up, he was hit by enemy bullets. He was buried in the military emergency cemetery in Bari and was later transferred to the eternal rest of the military cemetery in Haifa. In the Dror school, where he studied as a child, a cultural room was opened in his name – “Aryeh’s Room”. The pupils of the Dror school, where he studied, planted a hundred trees in the “IDF Forest” in his memory, and his parents published a booklet in his memory called “Aryeh.” His memory was placed in the ” (“Face to Face”), “Bnei Dror” – the monthly of the Dror school “From his estate was brought in” Gogli Esh “, Volume IV, is the Yalkut of the estate of the sons who fell in the Israeli army.