The burial place of an IDF soldier killed during Israel’s War of Independence has been identified after 78 years, the military said Wednesday.
Private Dov (Duba) Premet, who was 17 when he was killed in 1948, had been listed as a fallen soldier whose burial site was unknown. Following an investigation by the IDF unit for locating missing soldiers, it was determined that he was buried in a mass grave at Maoz Haim alongside 16 other soldiers who died in the same war.
Premet served in Company A of the 11th Battalion in the Oded Brigade. On June 1, 1948, his unit was deployed to Malkia to replace a Palmach force that had captured the area days earlier.
On June 5, at around noon, heavy fighting broke out as the unit came under attack from a superior Lebanese infantry force supported by armored vehicles, approaching from three directions.
The company sustained heavy casualties. Under intense fire, parts of the force withdrew toward the village, where the command post was located, leaving behind several fallen soldiers.
According to the IDF, Premet was likely killed on a position known as “Tree Hill,” where his body remained near a defensive post as the unit retreated toward evening. A wounded soldier was evacuated, but others, including Premet, were left behind.
The IDF said that the remains were later buried in a shared grave, but his identity was only recently confirmed.
The bodies of several other soldiers from the same battle — Shmuel Bernstein, Yaakov Leibovitz, Shmuel Moldavsky, Yitzhak Glick and Shlomo Kron — have still not been located.