Arieh Atzmoni

Arieh Atzmoni was born in 1926 in Uzhhorod

Atzmoni was born Leib Markowicz on 2 November 1926 in Uzhhorod, then part of Czechoslovakia. During World War II he left home at 13 and lived alone in Budapest. His mother and 2 younger sisters were murdered in the Holocaust.

He was sent to a labor camp in Yugoslavia and worked in a copper mine until local partisans freed him. He then fought the Germans with the partisans. In 1944 he immigrated to Palestine.

He joined the Jewish Settlement Police at Naharayim and later the Golani Brigade, where he served as a company sergeant in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In January 1949, under fire near Rafah, he moved a stalled car that blocked the artillery. For this he received the Medal of Valor.

After his discharge he settled in Haifa with his wife Lea, drove a cab and sold car parts. The couple ran the Haifa branch of Hertz and later their own car rental agency. In 1969 he returned for a year of voluntary service in the Artillery Corps.

Atzmoni died on 30 March 2005 and was buried in Haifa with a military ceremony. He had a son and a daughter.