Uri Ilan

Mourners, including Israeli Military Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, far left, saluting, at the grave of Ilan (1955)

Ilan was born in 1935 in kibbutz Gan Shmuel. His mother was Fayge Ilanit, a member of the First Knesset.[4] He joined the Golani Brigade in 1953. He was the great-grandson of the famed Talmudic scholar Rabbi Shimon Shkop.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, he was captured by the Syrians on December 8, 1954, near a Syrian post in the Golan Heights along with four soldiers in his team.[5] The soldiers were taken into custody in Quneitra and sent to a Damascus prison for interrogation.

In the Syrian prison, they were sent to separate cells and tortured.[6][7] Believing his comrades to have been killed,[5] as falsely claimed by his captors in an attempt to weaken morale, Ilan hanged himself on 13 January 1955 in his prison cell, using a rope made from the fabric of the mattress cover. In his clothing, Ilan hid nine notes addressed to his homeland, Israel, and his family. The most famous is a scrap of paper on which he wrote the Hebrew words "לא בגדתי. התאבדתי" ("Lo bagadeti, hitabadeti") which means: "I did not betray. I committed suicide," that is to say, he chose to end his own life so as not to reveal military secrets under torture.[5] He was buried on 14 January 1955 in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel.

On 29 March 1956 the four Israeli soldiers who were captured along with Uri Ilan were returned to Israel in exchange for 40 Syrian soldiers.[8]

Ilan's suicide and the notes he left behind set off a great outpouring of grief in Israel, but also a sense of national pride.