Emil Brig faced a Nazi firing squad and was rescued • He then fought in the ranks of the partisans and saw his father dead before his eyes.

• Photo by Getty Imagis, GPO, Wikipedia

During the Holocaust, he fought as a partisan against the Nazis, was taken prisoner and suffered severe torture. That did not stop Emil Brig from volunteering for a bridge blast mission that became entangled in the War of Independence, and only at the last moment was she able to prevent the flow of Jordanian Legion forces toward IDF forces.

Brig was born in 1924 in Poland. As early as World War II he was captured and led by the Nazis for execution, but fortunately when it was his turn to face the German armored weapons, it was decided to stop the killing campaign. He was taken by train to a concentration camp, but managed to hop off with his father and the two fled to the Carpathian Mountains, where they joined the partisans. In one of the actions he participated in, his father was killed in front of his eyes.

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In those years, young Emil sought his sister and in the course of his search he was saved from a Nazi attack on one of the houses he was hiding. Later, he joined the Zionist youth movement in Hungary, was caught and sentenced to death, from which he was saved at the last minute when the Red Army came to the area. His next stop was service in the Russian army, where he stayed until the end of World War II. He immigrated to Israel, joined the ranks of the defense and, with the establishment of the IDF, joined the Barak Battalion in the Golani Brigade.

Brig (right) // Photo: Government Press Bureau, Wikipedia

Near the day of the declaration, Brig's battalion was held in the area between Naharim and the Asher Bridge, which was the border between Israel, Syria and Jordan. The battalion was assigned to blast the bridges on the Jordan River to prevent enemy forces from advancing toward Israeli forces. When the battalion commander asked for a volunteer to join the battalion saboteur, Brig for the inferno and basket did not hesitate and rushed to volunteer

"We were instructed to prepare for blasting the bridges between Naharim and the bridge," he was quoted on the Combat Engineering Corps website, saying, "We went out to check the area. We arrived and immediately began working with hammers to search for the empty space that would 'store' the explosive. We tried to resume our work in the morning, this time overcoming the noise of the Kibbutz Gesher tractors, but the legion soldiers did not fall into the open fire in the direction of the economy. ".

As the action began to be delayed further and further, the young warrior was explicitly instructed: "The bridges must fly." At dusk, he went out with other fighters toward the three bridges and together they clamped down their explosives, returning to their positions waiting for enemy tanks. "The order was to activate the blast batteries only as soon as the tanks went up the bridge. The tanks approached and opened fire. An order came, I pressed the battery, an explosion sounded, and after the smoke faded, we saw that only the Roman bridge had crashed, the other two remained."

Brig did not flinch and took two strings with him and crawled toward the unexploded bridges. Although he encountered enemy fire, he continued without hesitation. "I lit one fuse, and the sparkle of the match exposed me to the enemy. A fire opened, but fortunately I had the chance to jump to the other bridge. I activated the second fuse, two blasts were heard, and the two bridges collapsed. I returned to the position without any injury - the mission was carried out." For his action he received the signal of the hero of Israel. When he learned that he was going to win a masterpiece and heroism for his conduct during the war, he retorted, saying: "I didn't think so heroically. Everyone else would do as I did."

After the war, when his memory is still scorched by the Holocaust, he took part in searches for Nazi war criminals across Europe. He later founded the box office ticket sales office "Castel" and even published a book on his resume called "Get Up and Fight." He died in 2002 at the age of 78.