Mitler, Aharon

Son of Gisela and Shmuel. He was born on April 5, 1921 in the city of Stomara, Romania. After graduating from elementary school in his hometown he studied carpentry. He was active in the Hashomer Hatzair movement and excelled in various sports, mainly in swimming. In 1938 he joined a group of pioneers from Poland who had moved to Romania on their way to Eretz Israel. In January of that year, after swimming in ice water, he boarded a ship sailing from a Romanian port to the Mediterranean. When the ship reached the Italian coast, a fire broke out and Aharon was among the survivors. After six weeks he managed to board another ship and reach Eretz Yisrael. After the outbreak of World War II, when the Jewish Yishuv was conscripted into the British Army, Aaron joined the ranks of the transport corps in Company 462, first in Zrifin and then in Egypt. On 27 Nisan, 1.5.1943, Aharon was with his company on a ship en route from Alexandria, Egypt to Malta, to participate in the invasion of Europe by the Allied forces, and the ship was bombed by German planes, and a hundred and forty soldiers of unit 462 went down to the bottom of the sea, and Aharon among them. In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, a monument was established in memory of the fallen. A ship-shaped monument beside a pool of water on the bottom the engraved names of the fallen.