The bodies of 10 Jewish Palestinian volunteers who fought in the British Army in Europe during World War II will be brought to Israel for reburial from Poland where presumably they were killed after being taken prisoner by the Germans. The Polish authorities gave permission.
According to the Israeli news agency Itim, only one of the graves has been positively identified — that of Israel Abba Zasler, whose sister Hannah Houseman has spent the last 40 years trying to learn the whereabouts of his remains.
Zasler was captured by the Germans while serving in a British Army communications unit near Athens, Greece in April 1941. He was taken to a prison camp in Upper Silesia where he was forced to work as a miner. It has been established that in 1943 he was fatally shot by a German guard and buried in the camp grounds.
The graves of Zasler and the as yet unidentified other Jewish volunteers were discovered by a Belgian national who searched for them at Houseman’s request. Permission was obtained from the Polish authorities to exhume the remains and return them to Israel.
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