Ritblit, Shmuel (Shmulik)

Son of Shraga and Yehudit. He was born on the 18th of Sivan, June 6, 1947 in Haifa. He began his elementary education at the Tel Hai School in Haifa and completed his studies at the Kishon School. Afterward, he attended the “A” high school and the “Gymnasium” in Haifa. In November 1965, he was recruited to the IDF and assigned to the Signal Corps. Since he was a child, he knew that he was facing a world of challenges. He went through a long and complicated line of difficult and dangerous operations until the eve of the war. In the war itself, Shmuel, who was quiet and slender, was discovered. As a sergeant, he knew how to overcome dozens of shelling on the Suez Canal. But at the end of his discharge from the army, he fell as a result of an attack on a mine near Be’er Menucha, on the 13th of Tishrei, October 5, 1968. He was brought to rest in the military cemetery in Haifa. In a letter of condolences to his parents, the commander of the unit wrote that, he was about to part with him the day after his last operation “for an action that summed up his entire life in the IDF”. The heroism, the sacrifice and the glory of a warrior who did everything in his own right, but he preceded me and gave me one more day when I would be able to say good-bye to him. He smiled as he always did, smiling at death, with a smile of heroism and victory, a smile of those willing to sacrifice their lives on the altar of the rebirth of Israel. The entire ladder, his courage and his loyalty to the people of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, he fell, but he is among us, and in the unit he saw the mission of his life and signed it on the eve of his release – in his death, from which we draw the encouragement to continue our existence and our struggle, day and night as heroic deeds. ” A booklet appeared in his memory bearing the name “Shmulik”.