Licht, Eliezer-Moshe (Leo)

Eliezer Moshe (Leo), son of Perl and Yaakov Dovid Licht, was born on July 30, 1928 in Wiesbaden, Germany. At the age of four he began studying in a Talmud Torah, but after the first attacks of the Nazis (one of those attacked was his father), the family had to move to Berlin. With the intensification of anti-Jewish riots in Germany in 1938, his father, who was a Polish national, was deported to Poland and murdered there, while the family found refuge in Belgium. In 1942, the Gestapo broke into the house where he lived with his mother and younger brother. The mother woke the children from their sleep, ordered Eliezer Moshe to jump through the window, threw his little brother into his arms and jumped too, but broke her leg. They found shelter in a peasant house in the vicinity of Brussels and hid there for more than two years. In 1944 they managed to escape to Switzerland. Eliezer Moshe and his brother entered a children’s home in a refugee camp. In August 1945, Eliezer Moshe immigrated to Palestine with the first group of “Youth Aliyah” from Switzerland. With the outbreak of the War of Independence he joined the army and served in the Carmeli Brigade. After stopping the invasion of the Jordan Valley, our forces took the initiative and attacked the Gilboa area. The Iraqi army, which had moved to Samaria after its failure in the Jordan Valley counterattacked and our forces were forced to withdraw. In this battle Eliezer Moshe fell, on the 25th of Iyar 5708 (June 3, 1948). He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Afula.