The son of Aliza and Benno, Edgar Dreyfus was born in Germany in 1924. It is believed that he and his parents fled from the Nazis and reached France as refugees. His parents were subsequently deported and perished at the hands of the Nazis.
Edgar joined the Free French Army and served in the paratroopers as a lieutenant. After the war he worked as a model in the fashion trade in Paris. He wanted to participate in Israel’s War of Independence in order to help to establish a homeland for the Jewish nation, thus assuring the survival of his brethren in their own country.
He arrived in Israel as a volunteer with Machal in December 1948 and was mobilized into the Negev Brigade of the Palmach. During Operation “Horev,” the mission to remove the Egyptian army from all state lands, it fell to the French Commandos to take control of the road from Beersheba to Nitzana. The company succeeded in capturing the road, but the Egyptians re-formed and after a number of counterattacks managed to take it back. In this battle, Edgar Dreyfus fell near Faluja on 26th December 1948.
He was buried at the Kibbutz Revivim cemetery.
Source: Translated from the Yizkor website by Joe Woolf.