Levitov, Zahara

Daughter of Zeita and Yehuda, was born on October 27, 1927 in Tel Aviv. A year later, her parents returned to Kiryat Anavim. Where Zahara grew until she was six years old. Her smallness stood out in her strong and independent character. At the beginning of the bloody events of 1936-1939, she moved with her family to Tel Aviv, where she stayed until she finished elementary school. During the Second World War she moved with her family to the streets. She studied in the continuing classes at Givat Brenner. Afterward she returned with her parents to Tel Aviv and completed her last two years at the New High School and received a matriculation certificate. During her studies she was involved in sports. In Ramat Yohanan she completed a sports course and successfully passed a platoon commander’s course, although she was allowed to take a four-month leave after graduating from high school – she immediately joined the Palmach at Kibbutz Ein Harod. In one of the operations she was hurt in her eyes, recovered and returned to Ein Harod. In the second year of her career in the Palmach, she was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and trained in training. Where she called the company Shmuel Kaufman and after the war they said they would pay together in the United States. On Passover 5747 they decided to marry, but on May 2, 1947, her fiancé Shmulik was killed by a hand grenade explosion and three months later she accepted her family’s request and went to the United States to pursue her ambition to be a doctor. To Columbia University in the middle of the year – an unusual thing – and the most outstanding – with the first draft – after 29.11.1947 – she decided to return to Israel, and in the meantime, flight courses were organized in the United States and she was chosen – one of two girls – to participate in this course. At the helm of the plane, she took long flights alone, and after being qualified as a pilot, she returned to Israel and was accepted enthusiastically in the pilots’ circles She was only a six-week squadron commander at the airport in Tel Aviv and spent only six weeks in Israel as a veteran pilot, and on her first vacation she flew home with her own airplane, She has been trying to bring down the social barriers between a boy and a girl, and she has continued to do so all her life with great effort and various revelations – and has proved it in her letter, describing the autumn landscape she had seen in the United States for the time The first in her life: “Leaves yellowing-reddish-green, golden-brown – colorful leaves-dance, without knowing why why”. But in all the peace and quiet around her, she asks herself: “What are the tears, what is happiness, and the terrible emptiness in my Lev, after six years, why do not I exist without it?” When she was asked, at the beginning of the pilot’s course, why she had decided to choose a dangerous profession like flying, she answered: “I knew anyway that I would die young.” Upon returning home from her vacation, she crashed from a plane and together with her friend Emanuel Rotstein, they perished in Jerusalem on August 3, 1948. She was buried in Sheik-Bader Aleph. After she fell she was promoted to the rank of superintendent (lieutenant). On the 17th of Elul 5706 (August 30, 1950) she was transferred to the eternal rest of the military cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.