Kraus, Hanan (Lipa)

Son of Gitel (Tova) and Mordechai, was born in 1924 in the Satmar region of Transylvania, on the Hungarian border. He studied in elementary school, in a room and in a yeshiva. At the age of 18 he was taken to a Hungarian military labor camp (in 1940 the place was restored to Hungarian rule), and after a hard year of forced labor he managed to escape from the camp with a number of friends and reach Romania. There he was offered the opportunity to go to America, but he rejected it by saying: “I am going to the Land of Israel, my home, where I will not go down.” With the help of the “Joint” he received a certificate, immigrated to Israel in 1944 on a Turkish ship and joined the Tirat Zvi group. The group did not see any possibility of helping his surviving family, so he moved to Jerusalem and worked in tannery. Later he joined the Nutras and served there for three years until the British left the country. At the outbreak of the War of Independence, he changed his uniform in military uniform and served in the Golani Brigade. He recently participated in the battles in Jenin, fell ill and died of his illness in a hospital in Haifa on 29.6.1948. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Haifa.