Steindler, Chanoch (Ernst)

Chanoch (Ernst), son of Berta and Menachem Steindler was born in 1916 in Kassel, Germany, but grew up in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he completed school. He was one of the last survivors who managed to leave Central Europe before the mass extermination began and immigrated to Israel on the illegal immigrant ship Patria in 1940. Upon his immigration, Chanoch enlisted in the British army, served in Italy and later returned to service in Israel. A year before his release he married. From the time of his release in 1944, Chanoch, worked as a gardener in a hospital in Bat Yam and
was a member of the Haganah. With the outbreak of the War of Independence, Chanoch participated in the defense of Bat Yam against the Arabs of Jaffa, and upon the declaration of the State he enlisted and served in the “Kiryati” Brigade. Chanoch was sent immediately to the front and on the tenth day that he left for battle at Abu Shusha, near Latrun, he fell on the 25th of Iyar, June 3, 1948. He was buried in Naan and left behind his wife, Idit, and a child. On the 2nd of Sivan, 18.5.1950, he was laid to rest in the Nachlat Yitzhak military cemetery.