136 graves, five map fragments: how IDF found fallen soldier’s burial place after 78 years
Shlomo Haimson was killed by guards while trying to escape a British detention camp in Cyprus in 1948, just four days after his daughter was born; four years of archival detective work finally gave his family the answer they had waited decades for
A breakthrough in identifying the burial site of a fallen Israeli soldier after 78 years came from fragments of an old cemetery map, archival records and a sequence of names. The IDF's Missing Persons Branch, the Military Rabbinate and the Defense Ministry worked together for over four years to locate the grave of Shlomo Haimson, who died in 1948 while attempting to escape a detention camp in Cyprus.
The team initially discovered Haimson's name among 136 graves, most of which were unidentified. They obtained a fragmented map of the Margo cemetery in Cyprus, which had been relocated to Israel in 1970. The map was found in five separate pieces from different archives. Investigators had to piece together the map with inconsistent burial records from various rabbis who oversaw the cemetery.
By reconstructing the map, they found reference points such as the cemetery gate and surviving headstones' inscriptions to help orient the map. A major breakthrough occurred when they discovered a "golden sequence" of seven names consecutively recorded by a rabbi. Haimson's name was the seventh in the sequence. This helped investigators pinpoint his burial location.
After identifying the grave site, the Defense Ministry notified Haimson's family, and the IDF attaché in Brazil met with the relatives in a video call. The family expressed immense emotion upon learning of their father's final resting place. The investigators' work continues, hoping to locate all fallen soldiers with unknown burial sites.
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