After 73 years, the Israeli army flew to Prague for the remains of a fallen paratrooper
Davidovitch was born in Czestochowa, Poland, in 1927, and until the beginning of World War II he became involved in the Zionist youth organization Ha-Shomer ha-ca’ir.
During the war, however, he was sent by the Nazis to the Auschwitz concentration camp, then to Mauthausen.
Unlike much of the family, the Holocaust survived. In 1948, shortly after Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, declared the independence of the Jewish state, Davidovitch joined the so-called “Czech Brigade.”
It was created with the aim of training Czech Jews in the fight before their return to Israel.
Martin Davidovich, a Holocaust survivor who was named @IDF as #IsraelThe first fallen paratrooper will be buried in the country 73 years after his death in a training accident in Czechoslovakia in 1948.
May his memory be a blessing. 🕯️ pic.twitter.com/lRnUqh4prM
– StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 24, 2021
The brigade operated within the military base in Stráž pod Ralskem, which was established by the airborne division of the Nazi Luftwaffe Air Force.
However, he died at the age of only 21 years during a parachuting exercise, the purpose of which was to practice occupying a guard post. One of the Czech soldiers grabbed him and shot him in the head. He allegedly did not know that he was using a loaded weapon.
Israel posthumously recognized him as a fallen soldier
Despite the fact that Davidovitch never technically served in the army, the exercise took place under the auspices of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which identified it as the first fallen paratrooper in the service of the nation.
An Israeli army plane Boeing 707 arrived in Prague on Wednesday, picking up Davidovitch’s remains with the aim of burying them in Israel.
“The plane landed in the morning after ten o’clock, departed at 13:00,” Klára DivĂšková, a spokeswoman for Václav Havel Airport, confirmed to the News.