Levi, Menachem

Son of Rachel and David. He was born on 7 February 1927 in Jerusalem and later served in his city as a fighter and at the age of 18 joined the Irgun. In the underground, he fulfilled his duties with devotion and love, and took part in many activities: the kidnapping of British hostages to rescue fighters sentenced to death by hanging, the transfer of weapons and the confiscation of cars for operational purposes, and the attack on the British Officers’ Club on March 1, 1947. At the end of 1947, he learned that the Latrun detention camp was in the final stages of digging a tunnel for the escape of prisoners and that he had been chosen to be among those involved. On the 7th of Kislev (November 20, 1947), a group of three, and Levi was one of them, dressed in Arab clothes, went to the detention camp to inspect the escape route outside the camp’s fences and to remove light installations intended for detecting nighttime escapes. When Levi didn’t show up on time his friends went searching for him and found his body that was hit from a bullet. He left behind his parents, four brothers, and four sisters, and was buried on the Mount of Olives,. After the Six Day War, the family realized that the Jordanians had paved the road to Jericho on his grave. Therefore, tombstones were erected in his memory on the Mount of Olives, at the presumed burial place, and in the section of the missing on Mount Herzl.