The burial sites of two soldiers who were killed during the 1948 War of Independence have been located, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced on Friday.
The resting places of Palmah fighters Pvt. Binyamin Aryeh (York) Eisenberg and Pvt. Yitzhak Rubinstein were found on Kibbutz Nitzanim 74 years after their deaths.
A decade-long investigation was launched by the Eitan Unit for Detecting Missing Soldiers.The families were notified Friday of the discovery. In the coming weeks, a ceremony will be held when gravestones for the soldiers are placed at their grave sites.
Rubinstein and Eisenberg were taken captive during the evacuation of the wounded during the battle for Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. Eisenberg was injured and was being carried on a stretcher by Rubinstein and medic Livka Shafer when the three were captured by Egyptian forces. In 1952, they were declared killed in action.
Have other bodies been found of missing soldiers?
In 2018, the body of Shafer was found in a mass grave on Kibbutz Nitzanim, having been moved there in 1949. Rubinstein and Eisenberg’s remains were discovered by the investigators to have also been moved to that site.
Eisenberg was born in Poland in 1927 and immigrated to Israel in 1946. He enlisted in 1947 into the Palmah, the elite Hagana fighting force.
Rubinstein was born in Ukraine in 1913, and immigrated in 1938.
“Every Jewish mother should know that we will not cease until we return all the sons to Israeli graves and discover the burial locations of our soldiers of those whose grave sites are unknown,” said Maj.-Gen. Yaniv Asur, head of the IDF Human Resources Division.