Reiter, David

Son of Chaya and Yehuda, was born on December 8, 1913, in the city of Kalush, Galicia, to a well-to-do family. After completing elementary school, he worked as a clerk in an attorney’s office. The charms of the youth movement attracted him and his brothers and sisters to the Hashomer Hatzair movement, and he adhered to the Zionist idea and the aspiration to immigrate. In 1937 he was drafted into the Polish army, fought against the Germans. reached his town in eastern Galicia and when the German-Russian War broke out, he retreated with the Russian army to which he was recruited and served at the front. His entire family perished in the Nazi camps. In Turkmenistan, he married, and he continued with his wife on the illegal immigration route and in May 1947 arrived in Israel and joined Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, where he worked in his profession and was known as a responsible and dedicated worker. Two weeks before the last battle on Yad Mordechai, his wife was transferred to a maternity hospital but delivered a stillborn child. Shortly before the battle began, they returned home. On the morrow of his return, the heavy Egyptian attack began on Yad Mordecai, and David stood in the ranks of the defenders and fought with dedication until he fell on the 11th of Iyar 5708 (May 20, 1948) from a direct hit by a cannon shell in an observation post during a heavy Egyptian bombardment. David was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery at Yad Mordechai.