Eitan, son of Hanna and Yosef, was born on July 24, 1954 in Tel Aviv. From the very beginning of his career in life, and from the moment it was possible to discern his character and uniqueness, Eitan stood out as having a complex and unusual personality. His teacher at the elementary school “The Clair”, who said: “In all his ways, he characterized him with originality, he almost always presented an unacceptable position, an anti-thesis thesis, whether on top of the world or on current affairs, , When he based his views on logic, reasoning, and evidence, often in discussions about the internal affairs of the class, embarrassed the teacher and his friends in his relentless pursuit of justice, not always identical with others’, but you could not feel feelings of respect and respect for me A student who has consistently, without surrender, dealt with principles he thought were right … you could see in the eye Will never be blurred in a crowd. There will always be one in public, even though also not detached from it, that loves life and loves company was unparalleled. ” Indeed, the love of life and the strong desire to learn to walk in their tortuous paths always stood before him as a wise sign. “He was wise,” writes his teacher at the Ironi Aleph High School, “a clear type of sage who wanted to know, and was absorbed in the class for a long time in a special gathering of concentration, and suddenly he began to ask and listen to his questions All his friends, and therefore they listened silently to his voice. ” But Eitan’s attitude to life was not confined to the aspiration, which was positive in itself, to teach them ignorant. More than that was his interest in man, or more precisely in the relations between people, who led them on the path of morality saw the key to a “whole” life, as has been expressed more than once. On the personal level, this view is fully reflected in his unique connections with his many friends. “Friend,” notes one of his friends, “was the most important word for Eitan, and he could not see or hear about a friend’s treachery, about an ugly act among friends, he really hated it because he loved his friends.” For several years – “He was a good friend, he knew what it meant to be a good friend and believe it – it is often much more than a brother, a relative or a parent.” Thanks to his original personality and impressive qualities, he soon became the center of the high school and a source of admiration for his friends, who recognized his natural leadership and accepted his opinions and advice without hesitation, with a lot of humor and mature cleverness. One of his good friends recalled: “Before all this nonsense of pride and self-respect, I would have felt like I was losing my Lev to someone older than myself, with a lot of experience behind him. But if the picture taken so far is that of an older, serious and responsible adult, it does not seem to reflect faithfully in Eitan’s variety of personality, because there was also another aspect (but no less significant) in his character – youthful passion, From mattresses, which kept sleeping for long nights from the eyes of teachers and educators. “Lotti” – it was his nickname – “long black hair, guitar, success and laughter.” And it seems that there are no better words than these to paint in a few bold brush strokes his portrait of those who did not know him, just as there is no credibility in his own words, to illustrate that famous humor with such a generous hand. Shortly before his enlistment in the IDF, Eitan faced the traditional problem of every average urban soldier – the haircut – in a letter to a friend in the army he describes his feelings after the “gas ceremony”Is at a low … contributed to this to quite a bit of the new image I developed with a cut military haircut. Yesterday evening I went on a farewell tour of all kinds of acquaintances and uncles and everyone seemed Simcha to Edie, but I smiled bravely and only Eitan was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces in late October 1972. After completing basic training he was sent to an aviation course, but after half a year he was forced to stop him. The training is tough, the mood is low at first, after the bull But as soon as the company rips the … together, they form and form a special feeling, and to me, that these things are very important, it helps to overcome them. “Eitan He is a certified driver of a tank and his success in “subjugating the mighty steel monster”, as he puts it, gives him an exuberant sense of satisfaction, yet neither the military framework dulls his feelings nor does he succeed in suppressing the sense of humanity that occupies so much of his personality. In a poetic passage, he describes to a girl he used to correspond with, a training day somewhere in the middle of the desert: “Now one soldier enters the tank and apparently goes back to inspect it, there are sands here and he is building a cloud of dust. , Like on the other hand, there are fields of Bedouin Arabs who work from the morning in the fields, in all kinds of primitive means … Tell us, you once thought about what contradictions there are – on the one hand tanks and soldiers, and on the other hand fellahin who cultivate their fields and a mosque in the background. A calm picture that evokes a desire to break a little and suddenly all of this is cut by wire fences that separate the base from the fields and watchtowers … ” Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War’s unit was sent to stand firm against the forces of the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal, and try and link up with strongholds were attacked. In a battle that took place that night in the marshes of Kantara, the force encountered an ambush and the blow of fire on it was damaged by the turret of the tank with which it was driving. He remained the only soldier to prepare for action among the four crew members. Throughout the night, Eitan conducted a single war in the dozens of Egyptians who had been wandering around, refusing to abandon his wounded comrades and fleeing for his life. He demanded complete self-control, instructions for evacuating the wounded. In the terrible chaos of the region, he was not answered. The remnants of the attacking force retreated, and at dawn, after a desperate battle of grenades, Eitan was hit and killed. After eight months of long and protracted nightmare, in which he was declared a “missing person,” months when his family roamed between desperation and hope, and then between desperation and despair, For a greater despair, his body was found and he was brought to eternal rest in the military section of the Kiryat Shaul cemetery, leaving behind a house without light, stunned parents, a brother and sister too naive to digest, and perhaps one casual sentence, The war, between a high school teacher, where Eitan studied, and one of his students, to express the magnitude of the loss – “… and Eitan – it was really a firm. You remember who it was. It’s a kind of feeling that such a person simply can not disappear, he simply exists … “
