Chanan Hans Meyerheim, son of Beno (Baruch Mordechai), and Nanny (nee Gorzelinzick), was born on February 2, 1915 ( 2 Adar 5675 in the Hebrew calendar) in Berlin, Germany. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine on the ship “Galil” on August 3, 1935 and immediately began working the fields at Kibbutz Ein Harod. His friends from the kibbutz say that he was of healthy body, strong and determined to adjust to his work, to the society and to the way of life there. In spite of the poor conditions on the kibbutz and periods of loneliness, he created a calm and confident atmosphere around himself. He enlisted in the British Army on October 2, 1941 and was assigned to Unit 870 of the Royal Engineering Corp for the operation of mechanical equipment. In the army, he was known among his friends as a modest, very serious and introverted person who was always willing to help others. On January 8, 1944 (12 Tevet 5704 in the Hebrew calendar), while serving in Syria, he was killed in an automobile accident and buried in a military ceremony in the British Military Cemetery in the city of Aleppo. In his eulogy, one of his friends said of him, “I knew him as a modest and serious person who always took his work seriously. He was proud to be a Hebrew soldier and a member of the kibbutz. That is the person I knew for the past year. I was happy to see that he integrated well with the rest of us and earned our trust in him. And now he has been taken from us, young and vigorous, and we will never see him again.”
In the “Jerusalem Forest” in Jerusalem, one hundred trees were planted in his memory, and a booklet was published in his memory about him by Kibbutz Ein Harod.
The details of his life appear in part on the Yizkor website of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
The story of his life was completed in 2017 by the volunteers of “Giving a Face to the Fallen"