Maranin (Markovitz), Yosef

Son of Gershon and Golda. He was born on the 23rd of Iyar, 5623 (9.4.1923) in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Where he completed an elementary school and continued his studies in a commercial school. During World War II, tens of thousands of Romanian Jews were sent to forced labor in Transdnistria, near the Russian front. His strong spirit was about to overcome the difficult conditions and to live longer. At the end of the war, he returned to Bucharest and made a living as a library owner in the city until 1947, when he was able to leave Romania and try to immigrate to Palestine as an “illegal” immigrant. The ship was caught by the British and its passengers were deported to Cyprus. In Cyprus he served as a Hebrew teacher. After the establishment of the state he won and reached the homeland. In February 1949, Yosef was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, where he had since tied his fate to the day of his death and completed compulsory military service in 1951. At the end of 1955, he accepted the request of his superiors, In April 1958 he received a letter of thanks and a prize for financial encouragement for his contribution to the efficiency and agriculture of the army, and it was recommended that he be promoted to the rank of sergeant. While he was actually acting as a lieutenant, a quartermaster officer, he was promoted to the rank of major sergeant in February 1961. He successfully completed a training course for staff officers. His main expertise was in the handling of technical equipment and spare parts. Yoskeh captivated his commanders and friends not only because of his technical knowledge and because he was “efficient at work, meticulous and dynamic,” as they put it. He was also honest, decent, diligent, gifted in decision-making, and capable of fulfilling any task they had assigned to him during his service, while his loyalty to the IDF was unquestionable. On 26.8.1974, when he returned from Tel Aviv, where he was staying in his post, to his base in the north, he was the victim of a fatal road accident. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Haifa. He left behind a wife and a daughter.