Retired Col. Simcha Appelbaum died on Tuesday at the age of 99. A Holocaust survivor, he served as deputy commander of Armored Brigade 188 in the Yom Kippur War and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Netzer Sereni. His life, the article said, reflected both Jewish destruction in Europe and postwar revival in Israel.
Appelbaum was born in 1927 in the town of Malcz, in the Pruzhany district, now in Belarus, to a traditional Zionist family. In November 1941, he, his parents Jacob and Rachel, and his older sister Ella were deported to the Pruzhany ghetto. In May 1942 he joined a group of Jewish youths who fled to the forests to link up with Jewish partisans and Soviet forces. In November that year he risked his life by returning to the ghetto to get food and clothing, and later saw friends shot by Germans before escaping home. After the ghetto was liquidated in January 1943, his family was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where his parents and sister were murdered.
To survive selection, Appelbaum pretended to be older, was assigned forced labor, and received prisoner number 78524. He worked carrying bricks for crematoria and the Gypsy camp, survived death marches, and was transferred through Auschwitz I, a Siemens plant, and other camps, including Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen after capture by the Gestapo in Czechoslovakia. On May 3, 1945, American forces liberated the remnants of the march. During one of the death marches he vowed that if he survived he would come to Palestine, build a settlement in memory of his family, and join the defense forces of the Yishuv.
He fulfilled that pledge quickly. After the war he joined the Buchenwald Kibbutz in Germany, reached Palestine aboard the immigrant ship Tel-Hai in March 1946, trained at Kibbutz Afikim, and took a Haganah commanders’ course. He fought in the southern and Negev fronts in the War of Independence, and on June 20, 1948, during the first truce and before Operation Danny, he and 16 comrades founded what became Netzer Sereni at Havat Shepon near Beit Yitzhak. He later rose to battalion commander in the Negev Brigade, returned to his kibbutz in early 1950, worked in senior local roles and in the Manufacturers Association, and went on to serve in later wars.
In October 1973, when asked to address young soldiers heading into battle, he said, “I am fighting! I am fighting like crazy, so that what happened to my generation will not happen to your generation, to your children.” He also helped establish the Latrun memorial for Armored Brigade 188 and spent decades speaking to youth groups in Poland, schools, and IDF bases about the Holocaust. He is survived by his wife Naomi, three children and nine grandchildren, all of whom served or serve in combat units.
