Exactly 80 years passed between Tziporah Eliash’s burial in the Kfar Etzion cemetery, until her tombstone was rediscovered this past week.
Eliash was the first to be buried in the cemetery, where many fighters were later laid to rest in the lead-up to the establishment of the State of Israel, including the fighters of the Convoy of 35, as well as several from the Convoy of 10, and twelve fallen soldiers from the “Battle of the 25th of Nissan.”
This week, during cemetery restoration and renovation excavations carried out by the Kfar Etzion Field School, Eliash’s tombstone was found at last, covered in dirt and mud.
The Kfar Etzion Field School explains: “In the 1940s, kibbutz member Tziporah Eliash passed away while giving birth to her daughter. Her husband decided to bury her in Kfar Etzion but encountered an issue: the kibbutz had no cemetery yet. He approached the kibbutz secretary, Shlomo Haimovich, who opposed burying her in the kibbutz due to the harsh winter and the area being open to scavenging animals. Eliash’s husband insisted, and Haimovich went to find a suitable burial place, deciding on the terraces on the kibbutz’s western slope, above Wadi Abu Rish. Tziporah and her daughter were buried there, thus inaugurating Kfar Etzion’s cemetery.”
The plot where Tziporah was buried became, during the War of Independence, the burial ground for Gush Etzion fighters, including some who fell from the Convoy of 10, the Convoy of 35, and the twelve who fell in the battle of the 25th of Nissan, also known as the battle for the Russian Monastery. It was at this plot that the Gush Etzion commander Moshe Zilberschmidt spoke the immortal words, “What are we, what is our life?... Our answer is resolute - Jerusalem eternal.”
Later in the war, Gush Etzion fell to the Jordanian Legion, and its cemetery fell into Jordanian hands. As a result, in 1949, fifteen months after the fall of the Gush and as part of the armistice negotiations, Chief Military Rabbi Goren, along with David Ben David, a member of Kfar Etzion, conducted an operation to collect the remains of those buried in the Gush. The graves from the cemetery were then evacuated to Mount Herzl and reburied there.
After the Six-Day War, when the children returned to Kfar Etzion, a new cemetery was established in a different location. The location of the old cemetery was forgotten until, after extensive research led by Shimon Karniel (son of Shalom Karniel, who was murdered in the Convoy of Ten and was also buried in the cemetery), it was rediscovered.
Currently, under the leadership of the Kfar Etzion Field School and the Bnei Gush Etzion Association, restoration work is being carried out with the help of hundreds of teen volunteers to preserve the site. In a chilling coincidence, Tziporah and her daughter’s grave was discovered this very week during the work, with the assistance of archaeologist Rafi Lewis.
Amichai Noam, Deputy Director of the Kfar Etzion Field School, says that “the grave tells the story of the pioneers, and finding it on the anniversary of the day of Tziporah’s burial was very emotional for the school staff.”
Shimon Karniel: “We identified Tziporah Eliash’s grave; she was the first to be buried in the Kfar Etzion cemetery, a few days before the 10th of Tevet, 80 years ago. We saw that this is definitive proof that this was the old cemetery of the Jewish settlement in Kfar Etzion. It was quite moving; the discovery of this grave instantly took us back decades and revealed our roots here in this place.”
Unfortunately, the number of people buried in the Kfar Etzion cemetery has grown this past year, as seventeen casualties from the Iron Swords War were buried in its soil. Even today, 80 years later, the best of the Jewish people’s sons and daughters are laid to rest in the Kfar Etzion cemetery.