[Cz-L] Eduard Samuel TAMLER

Hello all,

I am writing this message after reading Anny Matar's story, in which she mentions Betar, on the slight chance that somebody might have known / heard about my grandfather's younger brother. The family was not directly from Czernowitz - rather from Zastavna - but all children went to school in Czernowitz and the person I am enquiring about here was also enroled at university for a short period of time.

Eduard (Edi) Samuel TAMLER was born on August 25, 1919 in Zastavna as the third of four children to Dr. Abraham Ber and Sabina TAMLER. He went to the L1 in Czernowitz (I only know that because one of the few surviving pictures of him shows him as a schoolboy with a cap labelled "L1"; it was taken in 1936 and I am assuming it must have been intended for his school diploma). During his time in Czernowitz, he stayed at the family of Dr. DIAMANT, together with his younger sister, Edith (Medi). [Medi told me that Dr. Diamant was a lawyer and he had two children: Kurt and Beatrice]

Edi wanted to study law and enroled at the university in Czernowitz; his sister Medi told me that he was outraged at the way Jewish students were treated (e.g. made to stand during lectures, etc.) and I am assuming that he must have joined Betar around that time. He left home in 1938 and it is unclear what he did until summer 1939, when he immigrated to Palestine on the ship "Parita", which had been organized by the Irgun. Family lore has it that on his way to Palestine he passed through Bucharest, where his older brother, Ernst TAMLER (my grandfather) was living at the time - asking Ernst, who was an engineer and had a very good hand for drawing, to write up some false documents for him.

After arriving in Palestine, Edi went on to become a senior commander of the Irgun; he used various pseudonyms - Eliyahu / George Sand, Gundar Yehoshua. He was arrested in 1946 by the British, who fortunately did not realize who he was (as he was "wanted" and would have been executed on the spot), and was imprisoned in the Central Prison of Jerusalem - from where he escaped with a few other Irgun fighters by digging a tunnel (which I am told one can visit today). He then took over command for the Tel-Aviv / Jaffa region. He was killed by a British shell on April 29, 1948, only two weeks before what he had been fighting for became reality.

His younger sister, Medi, was the only one of the family deported to Transnistria who survived. She was blocked in Czernowitz after the war. In 1989 she was invited to Israel by people who had known and been close to Edi - and was allowed to go (thanks to Glasnost). She had to travel via Bucharest, where she received her visa, and visited me and my father both on her way to and back from Israel - this is how I know all these details. Medi came back from Israel totally overwhelmed by the way she had been received by the people who had known Edi (including a meeting with Menachem Begin) and all these stories she had been told about him - we had not known any of this before. To this day I do not know if my grandfather had known all this - after all, he had been in Israel at least once during the early 1970s - I find it hard to believe that he didn't - however, if he did, he never said a word about it to my mother - and I was only 9 when he died so never got a chance to ask. Medi has also passed away.

If there is anybody out there who knew or heard about Edi even remotely, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Dana Dimitriu

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Dana Dimitriu
Wiesbaden, DE
Email   dana.dimitriu_at_web.de
Fax     +49-3212-3262367
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Researching: BRECHMAN, BOLCHOVER, FISCHMAN(N), HALPERN, MIZRACH, NEUMAN(N), RABINOVICI, SCHERZ, TAMLER 
in: Ataki, Gan Yavne, Husiatyn, Kopyczynce, Kozmin, New York, Prague, Putila, Rhode Island, Salvador de Bahia, Sereth, Tel-Aviv/Jaffa, Vienna, Zastavna
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