Rotman, Reuven

Reuven, son of Ilana and Emanuel, was born on April 4, 1953, in Kfar Saba. He studied at the regional elementary school in Tel Mond, then studied for one year at the Ruppin High School in Emek Hefer and three years at the naval officers’ school in Acre. Reuven was a diligent student, but devoted most of his energies to sports and social activities. At an early age, he was a counselor in the Hanoar Haoved youth movement. He was an outstanding athlete, was a member of the national football team of “Hapoel” Kfar Saba and in 1974 was to play in the adult team. At the Naval Officers School he was a member of the Mossad’s football and athletics team. He was particularly good at jumping to height and distance and playing basketball a lot. Reuven, who was known by all as “Goza,” was a strong and healthy young man, handsome, independent, bright and honest. His family and the residents of the moshav where he grew up, and all his friends knew that he could always be trusted because he would be in the right place when necessary, calm and cheer during times of distress, Simcha and joyous. In the many hours he spent on soccer fields and sports tracks, the qualities that characterized him were conspicuous – he was cool under pressure, fighting with all his might, a leader of his nature and a special treatment for friends and friends. Apart from sports, Reuven liked manual labor in agriculture, he liked to work the land and enjoy its fruit. After one year of high school, his love for the sea overcame him and he began studying at the naval officers’ school in Acre. There, too, he stood out for his talents as an athlete. He was well integrated into the special atmosphere of this institution, in discipline and meticulous study requirements, and was very much loved by his teachers and fellow students. One of his teachers wrote that Reuven was “listening, smiling and pleasant, but firm and demanding justice when he found that he had done an injustice to himself or to his friend.” Reuven was drafted into the IDF in early February 1972 and volunteered for the Paratroopers Brigade, where he was assigned to an elite reconnaissance unit and was known as a dedicated and loyal soldier, with great physical fitness and loved by his commanders and friends. , Where he acquired extensive combat experience and command. In the Yom Kippur War, Reuven served in one of the IDF’s glorious reconnaissance units, and during the first days of the war he was impatient when he saw that his unit had not yet entered the battle and then fought in a series of bloody battles in the eastern sector and the West Bank of the Suez Canal. , And was killed and killed by an Egyptian sniper on the last day of the war, on October 24, 1973. He was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Tel Mond, leaving behind his parents, two brothers and a sister. Reuven was published in a booklet of the Tel Mond Regional Council, and in the booklet of the Moshavim Movement, about its sons who fell during the Yom Kippur War.