Krause, Eliyahu

Son of Frida and Gronam. He was born in Lodz in Poland in 1920. In 1939 he immigrated to Eretz Israel and joined the Irgun. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the British Army and was assigned to Company 605 of the Israel Defense Forces. He served in the Western Desert – in Marsa Matruh in Sulum and in Tobruk – and in March 1941 he was sent to Greece with the force intended to stop the German invasion of this country. About a month later, the British army surrendered to the Germans and most of its men were taken prisoner, Eliyahu among them. Already on the first day of his detention in the POW camp he began to look for a way to escape and return to the front. After three years in a prison camp in Boiten, Germany, he spoke with a friend in captivity, Dov Eisenberg. On the 24th of Iyar 5704 (May 17, 1944) they attempted to escape but were immediately apprehended and returned to the camp. One of the Nazi sergeants ordered them to accompany him on the pretext of searching for a third prisoner who had disappeared and shot them from behind. Dov was badly wounded and Eliyahu was killed on the spot. He was laid to rest in the British military cemetery in Krakow, Poland. About a year after his fall, he received a commendation for “excellent and impressive services” – that is, his courage. A list in his memory was posted “In Their Eternal Memory”. His name was immortalized in “The Book of Volunteerism,” in the Yizkor book of the Jabotinsky Institute and in the “Book of the Year of the Journalists”, 1946. He was 24 years old when he died.