Silbershpitz, Amnon

Amnon, son of Blanka and Yosef HaCohen, was born on 21 September 1924 in Romania, in the city of Sersgan in northern Transylvania. He is from a wealthy family. He grew up in his city, where there was a small Jewish community of 1,635 people. Until the outbreak of World War II he attended high school. In the summer of 1940, according to the terms of the second Vienna treaty that forced Germany and Italy on Romania, the northern Transylvania region was handed over to Hungary. The anti-Jewish laws enacted in Hungary, similar to the Nuremberg Laws, also applied to the Jews of Transylvania: they suffered social and economic discrimination and basic civil rights were taken from them. Jewish men of military age were charged with a “job service” in special units of the Hungarian army, many of whom perished on the eastern front. After the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, the Jews of Northern Transylvania were among the first to be operated on by the “Final Solution”. The Jews of the towns and villages were concentrated in the synagogues, valuables were taken from them, they were forced to wear the yellow star, and a few days later they were transferred to ghettos in the big cities. At the beginning of May 1944, the Jews of Surgergan were ordered to move to the ghetto, where the inhabitants of the surrounding towns were also concentrated. A month later, all of them were deported to Auschwitz, together with the other 131,000 Jews of Transylvania, and most of them were exterminated. Amnon, his parents, brother and sister were also sent to an extermination camp. As soon as they entered, he was separated from them and never saw them again. All the members of the family were murdered, only Amnon was sent to work and thus saved. After the liberation Amnon was in the DP camps. On the face of it, he was now a free man, but he could not find a place for himself. Each step involved pain and memories of the past. He therefore abandoned everything behind him, in order to reach the Land of Israel. Amnon moved to Italy and was granted a permit to board the ship “Dov Hoz” (“redeemer”), but after he boarded the ship he gave it up for the sick and children, and went ashore. Only a few months later did he immigrate to Israel – this time unofficially – on the ship “Josiah Wedgwood”. The ship, which was organized by the Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet of the Haganah, carried 1,257 Ma’apilim from 14 countries, including survivors, members of youth movements and former partisans. The British discovered the ship at sea, and on June 27, 1946, the ship reached the port of Haifa. The immigrants were taken off and taken to the Atlit detention camp. After his release from prison two weeks later, Amnon joined Kibbutz Dorot in the Negev. He had gone through a series of difficult introductions but overcame them, and in the agriculture they recognized him as a reliable person. He hardly spoke to anyone, and only in the evenings was the voice of his singing tonight, accompanied by the music, reached the ears of the friends. They merged with him, with Amnon, a strong body and a gentle soul, and he loved his friends because he was kind, quiet and modest. He did not emphasize himself in society, never quarreled with anyone, aspired to study and recognized his role. Whatever he did, he did consistently and thoroughly. Slowly he began to absorb the language and walk through it, albeit with failed and uncertain steps, but he always said, “Patience and I’ll know that, too.” Most of all he liked to listen to music and singing, and that was something he could feel while singing himself in a voice full of emotion. He began to love the country and settle it and devoted himself to the hard work in the field. Amnon underwent training with the Haganah. At the end of the training he said: “It is good that we have the right to take up arms and defend ourselves when necessary, and not to resort to others.” At the beginning of July 1947, Amnon left the kibbutz because he felt the need to learn a profession. He felt that without a profession a person could not live and would always be at the mercy of others. To this end he settled in Rishon Letzion and went to work in one of the garages in Sarafand (Tzrifin) as a driver. But this period did not last long, for in the meantime the war broke out and, like many others, stabilized. On November 30, 1947, One day after the UN partition resolution, Amnon writes to his friend: “If so, darling, the land is ours. The joy is great, but on the other hand, it is impossible to know what tomorrow will bring about, and how will the response of the Arabs be … Even in Jerusalem, there must have been great joy. Indeed, nothing has happened, a great and important thing that I wish will be good in the future. A few days later, he writes: “Who knows what might happen tomorrow and who will hurt the enemy’s bullets, and that they must not escape, and in one of them they must strike …” Later on, December 30, 1947: “Haviva, writing Lee was strong.” “Amnon enlisted at the beginning of January 1948 to the Givati ​​Brigade, the 5th Brigade of the Hagana, a member of the 52nd Battalion, a regiment formed at the beginning of the war from the” (Haganah field) in the southern moshavot, Rishon Letzion and Rehovot. Already during the first months of the war, the battalion was engaged in fighting, retaliating, and defending southern Israel. Later, his fighters participated in all the battlefields of Givati. After 11 young men whom he met were murdered near Gan Yavneh, Amnon’s spirit fell: “It’s hard to describe it … I knew all of them, just yesterday I spoke with them, healthy, young and full of energy, and now there is nothing left of them …” I have seen their parents, the Lev is torn, but there is no choice and no other way! … All that is left for us is to fight and hope that it will be good in the future, although according to the current situation it does not seem to me that something will change for good soon … I hope that all of us will overcome … even in the days of the camp, we would sing ‘Everything goes by once’ … “After watching the burial of three of the victims, he writes:” I saw I think I could not be shocked, but four years have passed since I saw death in this way … You must remember the doubts I had about the country when I came here, but now it is clear to me that until the day of my death I will not leave … a land that must be conquered by the blood of the dead, and not a land that is placed on the palm of the hand. At the beginning of April 1948, he writes: “The days pass quickly without joy, with the weapon in hand, shooting, killing and killing friends around, but it is painful, but we continue to try to forget the past, because everyone is uncertain about his life. … In a letter to relatives abroad in May 1948, he writes: “I am in the ranks of the Haganah and fulfill the duty imposed on each and every one of us . The situation here must be known to you – shoots and murderers. The whole country is one big front. Every day the young people fall and it is hard to see it, but there is no other way. We must buy the land for us. Must! For the time being, there is no thinking about the future or the future, and no plans are being edited. Everyone was Simcha that he was alive and fighting. Amnon took part in many activities, including the attack on enemy transportation on the Ramleh road, devoted his leisure time to reading and to Hebrew studies, and showed diligence and a desire to progress: In one of his letters he notes: “The main benefit I derive from the course He later moved to the south and participated in the battle for Hulikat during Operation “Yoav.” As part of the operation, the fighters of the 52nd Battalion captured the Greenhouse outposts west of Jolis, thus blocking the Egyptian withdrawal route. Sedud (Ashdod), then conquered the Hulikat outposts, and the road to the Negev was breached in a letter from those days(October 12, 1948), he writes to his friend: “From the newspapers you must have learned that there are all the chances that soon ‘the matter will begin.'” On October 18, 1948, he wrote: “I have nothing new in my life, healthy and sound, and I am very Simcha that our army is progressing and succeeding … I write around me a young orchard under the trees, pits and digs in which the friends listen to me together with the cacophony of the Egyptian guns. “On October 23 he wrote:” … when you look out from the occupied hills and see the road to the Negev open, from afar generations, Ruhama, it really is a feeling of all That’s good! ” A day later, he wrote: “Now we are quiet and we can not hear anything, but we are still in a state of readiness and conduct patrols in armored vehicles because a disconnected Egyptian division intends to break through the lines in order to connect with its home front. We hope that this truce will be, if not final, a truce that will bring about good results for the country, since the key to the Negev is in our hands, patience … “Amnon and his unit were sent to Beit Guvrin. During the War of Independence, Beit Guvrin and the local police station were captured by the Egyptian invasion army. Due to the fear that the area would serve as a link between their forces on Mount Hebron and the thousands of Egyptian soldiers trapped in the “Faluja pocket,” it was decided, at the end of Operation Yoav, to occupy the police station where Jordanian soldiers were sitting. The mission was assigned to the fighters of the 52nd Battalion of Givati, who on the night of the 22nd of Tishrei 5709 (25.10.1948) stormed the station with the help of half-tracks, and in a series of explosions managed to paralyze the Jordanian soldiers and take over the place. Was killed by a bullet in the neck and died at the age of 24. The letter of condolences received by Amnon’s fiancée wrote: “He devoted all his strength to making you Simcha and finding happiness. Here in the new homeland, and failed. But he died with dignity and happiness. “The space is” the last bastion. “The last survivor is Holocaust survivors who have survived the last remnant of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters) who personally experienced the Holocaust in the ghettos and / or the camps Concentration and extermination and / or fleeing and hiding in territories occupied by the Nazis and / or fighting alongside members of the underground movements or partisans in the Nazi-occupied territories who immigrated to Israel during or after World War II, wore uniforms and fell in the Israeli army.