Lapidot, Simcha

Son of Miriam and Moshe-Ze’ev. He was born in Kherson, Russia on July 23, 1909. In 1924, Simcha immigrated to Eretz Israel with his parents and two brothers following the first brother who immigrated to Israel before them. During the bloody riots of 1936-1939, he served as a patrolman in various places in the country and was a member of the Haganah organization, and at the outbreak of World War II he was enlisted in the British Army, In late April 1943, Simcha’s unit boarded the ship “Aryanpura”. On 27 Nisan, May 1, 1943, as the convoy was off the coast of Benghazi, the convoy discovered a German reconnaissance plane that summoned bombers who bombed the convoy. The Aryanpora suffered a direct hit and drowning injury, and 140 of the members of the company, Simcha among them, drowned. He left a wife and daughter, parents, six brothers and two sisters. Simcha was commemorated in “The Book of the Press” of the Jabotinsky Institute. On the first anniversary of the disaster, a list was published in their memory in the booklet “Soldier”. In the Department of the Absentees in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl is a memorial monument, erected in the shape of a ship and next to it a water pool with the names of the 140 fallen on the bottom. This fallen hero is a “maklan” – a hero whose burial place is unknown.