70 years of stories

Lieutenant Meir (Mati) Silber

The son of Dvora-Esther & Avraham Silber, born in Levieva, Latvia 18.08.1927. His parents immigrated to South Africa when he was still an infant, eventually settling in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth in the Cape Province, where he grew-up and completed his High Schooling. As a youth he joined the Beitar Movement and by the time he left the city he was their local Commander. He began studying Engineering at the Johannesburg University but as he became infused with the hope of making Aliyah as a pioneer, he joined a training camp near the city. The evening of the voting by the Zionist Congress he left the training camp and returned to the city to devote all his time and effort to the voting propaganda. He became a Journalist and served the movement as such.

Meir came to Israel on 22.12.1947 to study at the Hebrew University and at the same time acting as a reporter in Israel for the Johannesburg Revisionist newspaper. In Jerusalem he joined the Etzel and was active in promoting its propaganda and completed a course for deputies. In the underground he went by the name of Hillel. In his last speech before leaving South Africa he said: “It’s better to die on Israeli ground than to live happily in the diaspora”. Meir was part of the Etzel reinforcements who went to assist in withstanding the heavy attacks on Ramat Rachel by the enemy. On 23.05.1948 more reinforcements arrived and the enemy was finally defeated. In this battle, on 25.05.1948 Meir was killed.
On 10.09.1950, he was again laid to rest, at the Military Cemetery at Mount Herzl, Jerusalem.