Can you help?
An Israeli organisation wants to contact families of Jewish community members who immigrated from South Africa and who lost family members fighting with the IDF.In a letter to the Australian community, the organisation, Telfed, states:
Telfed wishes to maintain contact with bereaved families in the Southern African community who have lost a son or daughter while serving in the IDF. At present Telfed knows of 83 families and is in the process of updating the information, in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
We currently have a dossier containing known details of each of the 83 fallen soldiers in Hebrew and we ask you, the families, to let us have additional material in English or Hebrew, such as letters from family and friends, photographs, newspaper cuttings etc. to complete our records. These records will be maintained in a section of Telfed’s library.
A memorial service is planned to be held at the South African fallen soldiers memorial in the JNF forest at the entrance to Kibbutz Lavi. The date has not yet been finalized, but we will attempt to hold it at a time that is convenient for the majority of those who wish to attend.
Gidon Katz, of Ashkelon Israel, is co-ordinating this project which is trying to find the missing families in Australia of four South Africans who died whilst serving in the IDF.
Gidon is working together with the Zionist Federation and the Israeli Ministry of Defense in trying to trace and reconnect with 83 South African families who have lost a son or daughter while serving in the IDF.
According to the files of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the families of the four, details below, are living in Australia: more than that they have no details.
This is no easy task as there is little chance that the parents are alive, so we are looking for the third generation, brothers, sisters or even cousins.
The list is:
Yechezkel Berelowitz 17. 4. 1918 / 12. 5. 1948
Oded Kaploun 19. 12. 1925 / 28. 4.1 948
Natan Mordekai Friedman 1. 6. 1929 / 29. 10. 1951
Zvi Harold Leibowitz 7. 10. 1946 / 1. 9. 1969
Please contact Gidon at [email protected] if you have any onformation.
Oded kaploun was my cousin. His sister lives in south africa and I am in touch with her.