Yagon, Rachamim

Son of Malka and Nissim, was born in 1929 in Turkey. In 1933, when he was about four years old, the family immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. In the last year of his studies at the elementary school for boys, he was forced to stop his studies because of the difficult economic situation in his parents’ home and began to work in the sheds. He joined the Histadrut Hanoar Haoved and the Haganah. He continued to study in the evenings and his friends would say: “Do not complain about the Jews of the West neglecting the Jews of the East, you will learn, there are courses for everything” … For a time he was a guard at the Dead Sea Works. About three months before he was drafted, he developed an illness that confined him to his bed for a year. He took it away from the doctors and was accepted into the army. Participated in operations around Jerusalem as an expert on the “Bren” machine gun. During Operation Nachshon, he was one of the defenders of the Castel, an outpost that had many attacks. On April 8, the Arabs carried out a heavy attack and under pressure from the enemy, the defenders were forced to retreat. In this battle he fell, as a machine gunner, on the 28th of Adar 5708 (1948). His last words were: “This is how our state will be established!” He was laid to rest at the military cemetery in Kiryat Anavim.