Matt, Mendel

The only son of Gittel and Benjamin was born on the 22nd of Elul 5626 (August 22, 1926) in Brooklyn, New York, United States. His parents educated him as a Torah and a religious way of life. He studied at Yeshivat Chaim Berlin and Torat Chaim and later in a technical high school and continued Jewish studies at the Herzlia Beit Midrash in New York and even bought Torah from rabbis in private lessons. When he began studying at Brooklyn College, World War II broke out and Mendel was forced to stop his studies because of his enlistment in the US Army. He went through training and went to the European Expeditionary Force to participate in the German conquest campaign. Even in his army service, he made every effort to maintain his religious way of life. Met with the tortured Jews in the Dachau and Buchenwald camps, and when he was ordered to take part in the cleaning of the furnaces from the ashes of the burned Jews, he refused to obey the order because he was a kohen and forbidden to be defiled by the dead. They threatened him with a military trial, but in the end they respected his religious rationale and let him go. After his discharge from the army, he returned to his studies at Brooklyn College and completed two semesters, but the suffering of the Jews he saw in Europe left deep impressions in his mind and the lack of action by the US government to open the gates of the Land of Israel to She’erith Hapleitah and to rehabilitate the wounded. He organized an auxiliary group for the Hagana and when the fighting began in Israel after the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, divided the country into two states, he tried to organize a group of young people who would volunteer to immigrate to Israel and participate in the War of Independence. On May 21, 1948, a brigade of the Givati ​​Brigade was deployed in a number of armored vehicles to transfer ammunition to the Harel forces in the eastern sector. British forces near Dir Ayoub and wounded, and a reinforcements force was sent to his aid and after retreating, the forces seized the Latrun detention camp, . The next morning the force suffered heavy bombardment of cannons “Salvation Army” of Qawukji placed in Latrun. Force were injured and had to withdraw. In this battle fell on Wednesday Iyar (13/05/1948), the day before the declaration of the state. His burial place is unknown. A monument in his memory was erected in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. In June 2005, in the framework of the investigation of the Unit for Locating Missing Persons in the IDF, it was found that Mendel was buried in a mass grave with Shlomo Barber and Yoram Kaplan (Yehuda, Jiri) in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl.