Termer, Gershon-Erich
Son of Berta and Adolf, was born on 31.3.1912 in Vienna, the capital of Austria. In his youth his parents had died on him. He went to his relatives in Czechoslovakia, where he attended high school and then at the German University in Prague in the Department of Law. He was a member of the Brisa Association, the Zionist Students’ Association in Prague, and worked for the Jewish National Fund. With the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Germans forced to stop his studies and the outbreak of World War II left Prague and asked to immigrate to Palestine. After about a year he left Bratislava on the way to Aliya Bet. He traveled on the ship “Elios” and then “Atlantic”, which was forced to anchor on the Cyprus coast, and then was transferred to the ship “Patria”, which sank on the coast of Haifa. He arrived at the Atlit detention camp in 1940. But the affair of his wanderings has not yet ended. He was deported with the rest of the immigrants to the island of Mauritius. After three years of hard work and a difficult climate, he was given the opportunity to join the war against the Nazis as a volunteer to the Czech army, and he did so enthusiastically. He trained in England, then fought in France in a tank unit. When the war ended, he arrived in Czechoslovakia in the hope that he would find his relatives. When he learned that he was the only survivor of his entire family, he turned his back on the exile and left for the second time on his way home. Arik arrived in Israel in July 1946. He found work at the Haifa refineries and was miraculously saved on Bloody Day (December 30, 1947), when Arab rioters broke out and murdered many Jews. A month before the declaration of the state, he married a wife and after long and difficult wandering he would set up a home in Israel, but the period of happiness did not last long. Arik was drafted into the IDF and served in the Carmeli Brigade, where he returned home for a 24-hour vacation, but before the end of the vacation he was called back to the battle area of Tel Aviv-Haifa. (18.7.1948), in the Battle of Jaba, was brought to rest in the military cemetery in Haifa.
