Samuel (Shmill) Golan

Samuel (Shmill) Golan was born in 1946 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

Golan was born on February 18, 1946, in the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. His mother Hava was a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and his father Moshe Goldberg had fought as a partisan. In 1951 the family moved to Israel and settled in a transit camp in Magdiel.

He studied at the Max Fein vocational high school in Tel Aviv and worked afternoons in a metal shop to help support his family. He was a member of the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed youth movement.

He joined the IDF in 1964 and served for 31 years, starting in the Nahal and moving to Golani after a parachuting injury. He was wounded 4 times, including at Tel Faher in 1967, in Jordan in 1968 and at Jebel Ataka in the Yom Kippur War. He later commanded the Arava Regional Brigade, helped form the South Lebanon Army and served as military attaché in Zaire from 1991 to 1994.

After leaving the army in 1995 he headed the central region of Emergency Economy, and later headed the whole body until he retired in 2013. He married Sara Toledano in 1969, and they had 2 daughters and a son. He lived in Kfar Saba from 1988 and died there on January 9, 2020.