Levi-Harcher, Shimon Richard

Son of Matilda and Dr. Yitzhak was born on May 25, 1917, in Constantinople, Turkey, while his parents were on a Zionist mission there. His father, an agronomist by profession, was active in the Yishuv institutions and the mother ran the Alliance Girls School in Jerusalem for years. Richard graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at Reading University, England. In July 1942, after the death of his eldest brother, Avraham Leopold, on February 28, 1942, in Tobruk, in the ranks of the British Air Force, he joined the Air Force. In January 1943 he completed a course in Rhodesia and was assigned as a squadron commander in the Far East, in battles against the Japanese. He was the first Hebrew pilot in the ranks of the British army. After a year of fierce fighting, he was on his way back to Israel. On 8 Cheshvan, October 15, 1945, he was killed in an airplane accident in the town of Gahur in Malaya. His burial place is unknown.