A Poem for a Holocaust Survivor, Nechemia Spiegel, Who Fell on Iyar 3, 5708 (May 12th 1948)

By: Yaakov Rosenfeld

“You Promised to Protect Me…”

From the waves of the sea, from the ship to the shore,

You held my hand, in an endless embrace.

An ember from fire, an orphan and the last in the family,

You carried me from the abyss to the blessing.

“You promised to protect me, Uncle Nechemia,”

The girl cried before the silent sky.

“You promised a home, you promised a life,”

But the iron cracked, the youth were torn apart.

On the way to Jerusalem, at the hour of freedom,

You have fallen so that we can pass.

My mother, your sister, in the depths, the sea is closed over her,

But my good uncle, your heart is not broken.

You have not forsaken me, with strength and toil,

You have guarded my fruit that was ripened in the darkness.

Until the fire from the furnace was quenched,

And your spirit, which was accustomed to the the storm, was consumed.

And now on high, in the Yeshiva Shel Maala (the Heavenly yeshiva),

In the eternal light, which passes into the night –

Your parents embrace you, receiving you,

Ihe last remnant that gave his life.

The hero of the generation, in the esteem of the Torah,

Ahines in the sky like a blazing light.

Nechemia Spiegel (from the Ministry of Defense website)

The son of Menachem and Louisa. Born in 1928 in Satmar, Hungary, he came from a devout family and studied in yeshiva. During the Nazi occupation, his parents were murdered by the Nazis in the Auschwitz camp, but he survived, and in 1944 he set out on the illegal immigration route to Israel on the Turkish ship “Bulbul.” His sister also sailed on another ship, but she did not arrive because the ship sank at sea, and Nechemia was left with his sister’s little girl and brought her to Israel.

Upon his arrival, he enlisted in the Jewish Brigade to fight the Nazis and served there until the end of the war. During the brief period of peace between the end of World War II and the War of Independence, he worked as a telephone technician.

With his first call to service, he joined the “Givati” Brigade. In January 1948, he took a course in Sarona for heavy machine gun operators, and then went to guard the security road to the south (…) On Passover that year, he participated as a machine gunner in Operation “Chametz” (leaven) to encircle Arab Jaffa. In early May 1948, he was transferred to the Latrun area to participate in the breakthrough to Jerusalem in Operation “Maccabi.” Before he went into action, a quarrel broke out between him and his friend, and both were ordered to remain in the camp, but Nechemia did not accept the punishment and demanded to be included with those going into battle.

His commander in action says that Nechemia was in an armored car that was traveling at the head, and when they encountered the enemy’s armored cars, a fierce battle broke out. He used his weapon continuously, with miraculous composure, until the enemy, who was equipped with cannons, hit the armored car and Nechemia fell with his comrades on Iyar 3, 5708 (May 12th, 1948).

On February 28th, 1950, he was laid to rest in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.