Markovitz-Kutner, Chaim

Son of Yosef was born in 1921 in Lodz, Poland. From childhood, he received a Zionist and traditional education. At the beginning of the Second World War, he was swept along with the influx of refugees to the Russian-occupied territory, and was taken to a detention camp. Because of a Zionist argument in the camp, he was imprisoned and sent to slave labor in northern Siberia, and because of malnutrition, almost all his teeth fell out. With the signing of the Stalin-Sikorski agreement, he was released in 1941 and joined the Polish army, which was organized in the southern part of the Russian Federation. He arrived here with his army and found his brother who arrived via Japan. Chaim left the Polish army, changed his surname to Kutner, his mother’s name, and volunteered for the Jewish Brigade in the British Army. He took part in the battles in Italy and in the rescue operations of the Jewish Brigade for She’erith Hapleitah and its immigration to Palestine via the illegal immigration routes. After his discharge from the British army he worked as a laborer and joined the Haganah. When the fighting began in the winter of 1948 after the United Nations General Assembly decided to divide the country into two states, he immediately went to the service of the homeland. He participated in the defense of Givat Herzl, in attacks on the rioters’ nest in Tel Arish and in the protection of the Jewish National Fund’s house near Beit Dagon. Once they told him to transfer him to a position in a unit of services, but in his opposition he managed to cancel the decree and remain in a combat unit. Finally, he served as a gunner in the combat brigade in the Negev and participated in all of its battles. During Operation Horev to remove the Egyptian army from Israel, in an attack on the Rafah outpost on January 4, 1949, a serious wound was injured on the spinal column, brought to a base in the borders and operated. After the operation, he was fully conscious and in a cheerful mood, but two days later, on the 5th of Tevet 5709 (January 6, 1949), he was buried on the borders, on the day of the 16th of Av 5709 (August 11, 1949) The military cemetery in Nahalat Yitzhak.