Joseph Volfovich Trumpeldor was born in 1880 in Pyatigorsk, Russia and grew up in an assimilated family. His father, Wulf Trumpledor, was conscripted by force as a child by the Russian army, where he enlisted for around 25 years. With a reputation as a bold and courageous fighter, Wulf was offered promotions and benefits should he convert to Russian Orthodoxy – offers he always refused. But since 1827, when the Tsar’s Cantonist Decree was enacted, tens of thousands of Jewish children converted to Christianity after being forcibly conscripted. Seemingly, Wulf Trumpledor resisted conversion thanks to his strong and loyal character, keeping his Jewish faith while also pledging his loyalty to the Tsar and his army.
The Trumpeldor family. Photo taken in 1888.
Josef is seated on the right
Joseph was an excellent student in school, but it was not enough to see him accepted into the government’s secondary school, known as the “Reali school”, where there were very few vacancies – and those were further limited for Jewish students. Having no other choice, Joseph studied dentistry, joining his brother in the profession. He was proud of his Judaism despite not knowing Yiddish and not observing the faith, and his supporters claimed he did not look like a Jew. His friend Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in his memoirs that if he’d have seen Trumpeldor in the street, he would have believed he was Scottish or Swedish. “He spoke Russian fluently, his Hebrew trickled in slowly, knowing only a few words although those he knew he spoke them meticulously. One time I heard him try to speak Yiddish – the Yiddish of the Caucus Mountains.” [Laskov pg. 92]. He also notes that his friend was devoid of a so-called “Jewish cleverness” – which he defines as a combination of “scepticism, suspicion, cheap cunning, the talent to curve every straight line until he swallowed his head with his tail.” [Laskov, page 92]. (On the other hand, Trumpledor had common sense and a talent for distinguishing between black and white and to pinpoint the real issue at hand).
Trumpledor was heavily influenced by the teachings of Tolstoy, becoming a vegetarian and a pacifist at the age of 14, and when word reached him about the first Zionist Congress – he also became a Zionist.
Joseph the Brave Soldier
Trumpledor felt conflicted when he received his draft order to enlist into the Russian army back in 1902. On the one hand, he was a pacifist and against all forms of violence. On the other, he considered the legacy of the military, values of heroism and loyalty to Mother Russia and the Tsar – allegiances and values instilled by his father. In the end, what persuaded him to enlist was so that “no-one could say that Jews are cowards.” At that time, tens of thousands of Jewish soldiers fought for the Tsar’s army and, out of those, nearly three thousand men were killed in battle. In her biography of Trumpeldor’s life, Shulamit Laskov writes that despite being a pacifist, and even though he experienced blatant anti-Semitism during his service, he was unable to relinquish these bonds.
“Although he believed that the taking up of arms must be a last resort, he was born to be a soldier – these traits would reveal themselves in all his dealings, whether connected to the army or far removed from military circumstance.” [Laskov p.19]. There was a debate among Jewish soldiers over whether they were obligated to fight for a country that persecutes and discriminates against them in all aspects of life, or whether they should prove their loyalty and sacrifice themselves for their homeland – and then demand that Russia take that into account and rectify their situation. Indeed, he made an extraordinary sacrifice of faith with the belief that his heroism -- and that of his fellow Jews -- would open the eyes of the gentiles to see the error of their ways.
The Tsar’s army very quickly realised that they were dealing with a very different kind of soldier: the majority were from educated classes and received significant benefits for it - such as not having to eat or shower with everyone else, and being excluded from hard labour. Joseph, too, was entitled to such benefits. But he refused, and – to the astonishment of all – he ate with everyone, and never evaded hard work.
Trumpledor was injured several times in the line of duty but insisted on returning to the battlefront as soon as he’d healed – even after he lost his left arm. His demand to return, claiming he is capable of fighting with just his right hand, won him unprecedented respect. He was promoted up the ranks and awarded medals for bravery that no Jew had ever received before – making him a legend across Russia
.
Captured in Japan
In Japanese captivity
When Russia lost the war, many soldiers were captured and held in captivity in Japan – including Trumpeldor. The attitude of the Japanese towards the prisoners, and especially the Jews among them, was relatively humane and very far removed from what is depicted in World War II films. Professor Ben Ami Shiloni details the sympathetic attitude of the Japanese: (2)
“After the Pogroms undertaken by the regime, Jewish hatred towards the Russian Tsars rose. For example, Jews of Atlanta ordered a warship to be delivered to Japan, to be called “Kishinev”, named after the riots. The German born Jewish banker Jacob Schiff, head of the banking system that later became part of the Lehman Brothers Bank, granted a bank guarantee for loans to the Japanese government to enable it to financially prepare for war. Following the end of the war, Schiff was the first foreigner to be awarded the Medal of the Rising Sun from the Japanese Emperor. Professor Shiloni explains that to this day he continues to encounter Japanese who express their gratitude to those Jews who helped defeat Russia in the war.
The Japanese victory over hated Russia in May 1905 aroused a wave of happiness that was witnessed across the Jewish world. In Warsaw, which was then under Russian occupation, Shalom Aleichem wrote a satire in Yiddish about a couple in which the husband takes revenge on his wife, who abused him for many years, which hinted to those in the know at relations between Russia and Japan. In New York, the writer Naftali Haretz Imbar wrote English, Yiddish and Hebrew songs of praise for the Japanese Emperor, whom he called ‘Barkai’, who would avenge the Jewish people. Nahum Sokolov wrote that he hopes to discover signs that prove the Japanese are descended from the Ten Tribes. Even Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) communities of Jews rejoiced in the defeat of the hated Russian Empire. A Jewish baby born in Alexandria at the time was named Togo, after the Japanese admiral who was victorious in battle against the Russians. Back then, there was even a film production company and studios in Egypt named ‘Togo Studios’ that exists to this day. The Japanese, who didn’t want to show any Russian elements in the defeated army in order to gain favour from the Jews of the United States, did everything they could to ease the lives of hundreds of Jewish prisoners of war.
Trumpledor was the leader of those Jewish captives: he organised a shared monetary fund, small workshops and classrooms that were divided into those suitable for the illiterate, and those with classes intended for those with higher education. Many non-Jews joined his initiative as either students or as teachers. When there weren’t enough textbooks, Trumpledor took the trouble to compose them himself – one of them is currently held the Labor Party archives. Even though he wasn’t religious, he made sure there were matzos on Passover and prayer shawls, and he founded a theatre, local newspaper and library. But he devoted most of his efforts to advancing the Zionist ideal via some 120 Jewish prisoners who defined themselves as Zionists and called themselves ‘Sons of Zion Imprisoned in Japan’. In the group’s newspaper, he began to develop his ideas for the establishment of communes in Palestine in the spirit of the writings of Tolstoy and other Utopists. Trumpledor decided, together with one of his ten friends, to establish a communist colony in Palestine after its liberation. In the city of Takayashi, at the Japanese internment camp where Trumpledor was held prisoner around 100 years ago, a permanent exhibition was created in tribute to the story of the prisoner’s camp. Part of the exhibition is devoted to the image of the one-armed hero whose memory is revered in Japan to this day.
Student in Saint Petersburg
Trumpeldor’s legendary status continued to grow even after his release from captivity. He met with the Tsar and Tsarina themselves, and the Tsarina personally gifted him a prosthetic hand. In Japan, too, he had a meeting with the Emperor who wanted to meet the person who had managed to organise the POWs so well. Legend has it that the Emperor also gave him a prosthetic hand made in Japan, although there’s no evidence to support this. His subordinates and his family pressed him to continue on with his military career. In his archives is a letter written in beautiful handwriting from a princess that was left in his room, offering her help to advance his military career. But Trumpledor was not impressed by all the commotion around him and was only interested in organizing for the establishment of a farming commune in Palestine.
In a letter to his brother he expressed his feelings: “As for the special honour of being made commander in the Russian Army – it’s not hard for me at all to pass up on that. My thoughts are all on the establishment of a colony and here, if a war erupts in the Land of Israel, they will certainly name me as commander there. That being said, I’m ready willing and able to be a simple soldier there too, just to be there. There, we will be at home, not in the home of strangers… It’s as though I’ve been knocking all my life on the doors of foreigners and there’s no one home. It’s for those who have been kicked and scorned and never praised or allowed to rest. And believe me: The day will come when I, sick and tired from hard work, I will look around happy and gay at the fields of my country. And no-one will say to me: “Leave, leave, wretched from here. You are a stranger to this land.” And when that man is found, and he will say as follows: by force and by sword I will arise and protect my fields, and my battles! Behind me my fields, and to my right and to my left -- my friends. If I will fall in battle, I will be fulfilled. I will know why I have fallen. (Laskov, pg. 32).
Dream and reality part ways: Ten of his eleven friends who swore to establish the commune in Palestine dispersed after the liberation of Israel, each in their own way, and abandoned the dream. Trumpledor did not concede, but surrounding circumstances forced him to postpone his immigration to the Land of Israel. He moved to St. Petersburg and began to study for an external matriculation certificate, because in his youth he was unable to enrol in the Reali School due to his Jewish identity. During this period, he distanced himself from a social life, immersing himself instead completely in his studies, managing to pass the matriculation exam after only one year in school.
On the weeknds he would go to a village set in Tolstoyan spirit, to work in the fields. He earned a living from his modest military pension and by tutoring privately. He lived with his friend from his army days, along with his sister and two of her friends who had moved to the big city to study in the university. One of the friends, Rachel Nesel, told Shulamit Laskov, the author of his biography, about his kind heartedness, and about the help he extended to them and to many others, without requesting anything in return.
After successfully passing his matriculation exams, Trumpeldor began studying at the university. Although he assisted his friends to study professions that would help them settle in the Land of Israel - for example, in agriculture, he eventually chose to study Law. He explained that it may come about that the land workers will need his legal knowledge, and that he intends to assist only during leisure hours after the end of the real work in agriculture. In 1911 he completed his legal studies, and from then devoted his time to promoting the dream of founding communes in the Land of Israel. At the same time, he began to exchange letters with Zvi (Grisha) Schatz, a native of the city of Romny. Schatz’s Zionism began earlier than Trumpledor’s by ten years and he viewed him as his teacher. In their extensive correspondence, they developed the ideas of the communists. Schatz was an innocent and enthusiastic young man, with a poetic character, who told his friends the real reason behind his immigration to Israel: he did not believe that the youth who grew up in assimilated homes far removed from Judaism and who absorbed Russian and Western culture, were prepared to be real Zionists. In his opinion, it was a lie that they told to themselves and to others. He aspired to the redemption of his soul and said that the of real motive for his immigration was “the beauty of idealism. Only beauty.” (Laskov, pg. 50) Schatz immigrated to the Land of Israel and was murdered in his home along with author Y. H. Brenner and others, about a year after the death of Trumpledor.
Tikkun Olam
With Jewish students in St. Petersburg. Photographed in 1912
The image of Trumpledor is connected to our consciousness of the myth of heroism and the sacrifice of countrymen for their homeland. There is can be no question of his heroism, but it his role in building the principle of cooperation in a fledgling new community must not be forgotten. Even in his letters with Zvi Schatz, Trumpledor was confessing that his dreams were grandeur, and that he would not be satisfied just with the Zionist dream but with dreams of a just and egalitarian society. The co-existence he believed in was different from the Marxist doctrine of a class war which disgusted him, in which he saw the source of unnecessary violence. Trumpledor was a humanist and his teachings consisted of anarchism, the views of Leo Tolstoy, and the revolutionary theses which were prevalent in his day.
His lover Liza Gashlin wrote to him that, in her opinion, he was more of a Communist than a Zionist, but Trumpeldor objected to this characterization. "Being a communist means to me that I am a human being.” And did you ever ask yourself, “What is more in me, my humanity or my Zionism?” (Laskov, pg. 58)
In August 1911 he held a conference in Romny, along with his friend Schatz who was visiting Russia from Palestine. The discussions and testimonies at this summit left such a mark on our history that it is easy to forget that only seven people participated. Schatz told his friends about the difficulties in the Land of Israel and did not attempt to beautify the cruel reality of life there, but said that he fell in love with Israel and the Zionist idea, and that in light of rising anti-Semitism, this is the only place and home for every Jew. At that conference, the vision of communism and cooperation in the Land of Israel was shaped.
Migdal Commune
Bella Kovner
Members of their small group wanted to make sure that everyone who joined them was aware of the difficulties of living in the country and was ready and willing to cope with them. In correspondence with potential candidates, they were asked hard questions, and many were rejected in the early stages. For example, one can see how Trumpledor relates to this in one of his letters about a rejected applicant: “Ida imagined to herself that our colony was a kind of paradise. The people in this commune were blooming from flower to flower. Actual butterflies, sucking drop by drop from the sacks of happiness. The nectar. If there is a commune that fits Ida, it is the most aristocratic of the aristocrats, that the dirty work (the physical labour) was being done by slaves.” (Laskov, pg. 63) Despite the strict selection process applied to the commune, there were still extreme social problems in utopia.
Trumpledor was a well-known public figure in Russia, in the U.S., and also in Israel they heard about his bravery. Nevertheless, Professor Ze’ev Tzahor said that no-one was waiting for his arrival to Israel. “He was very well known. Every-one knows him, but no-one is waiting for his complex personality that was too much for them. There were people talking about a “dunam here and a dunam there.” He was confusing them. He was talking big; about thousands of dunams here, and thousands of dunams there, not step by step.” (3).
There were days of hesitant attempts and false-starts to cooperative living – especially in Degania and in Rehavia, according to Professor Oppenheimer’s research. Trumpledor, unlike the settlers of Deganya, had an organized modus operandi. He discounted Degania’s because it was funded by the Zionist Labour Movement (Histadrut), which he saw as an incompetent bourgeois organization that came into force only in the first days of the cooperation. On Oppenheimer’s method, he said that it was restrictive to the initiatives of the workers.
Under his leadership, the small group founded a commune in the town of Migdal, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The beginning was full of promise, and the members were very happy with their new work and with the view of the Sea of Galilee that was reflected in the window of the room assigned to the girls.
At night they gathered in the barn, sitting with Trumpeldor and singing Russian songs. But Trumpeldor's strict and rigid character, combined with the harsh conditions of communal living, worsened the situation. When Grisha Shatz was discharged from the Russian army and came to Migdal with a kindergarten teacher, they left with the impression that the tension between community members was unbearable. The kindergarten teacher wrote: "Eight months after the commune was established I found before me two camps: almost all the members were on one side – and Trumpeldor on the other.” (Laskov p. 77). There were objective reasons for the failure, but Laskov determined that it was the uncompromising character of the soldier in Trumpeldor who demanded the impossible from himself and did not give up on his friends either. One young man committed suicide, and some accused Trumpeldor of deteriorating the man's mental state through his criticism. Bella Kovner, who was his girlfriend at the time, didn’t understand his rigidity. She and her friends were not accustomed to the harsh living conditions, the heat and the illnesses that befell them. He scolded them constantly and even complained that they were wasting salt. Her son, military man and peace activist Dov Yirmiya, recalled that his mother, who was a pharmacist and left Russia because of Trumpeldor’s influence, ‘discovered his true character’ and left him, connecting with his father, David Jeremiah, which led to a feeling of double betrayal for Trumpeldor (4).
Deganya Days
After the failure of the settlement in Migdal, Trumpledor travelled to the Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1913, and then on to his family in Russia where he was involved in Zionist activities. He returned to Israel and settled in Jaffa, determined to learn the Hebrew language fluently: “More than once I was made to blush (I am the Palestinian) when they turned to me in Vienna and also in Russia with questions in Hebrew that I was unable to answer.” (Laskov, pg. 83). But he did manage to dedicate his time to his studies because he heard about the murder of Jewish guards in the Galilee, and hurried to Degania to help the community there. The memoirs of Degania's people tell of their impression of his physical strength and power, which made him an outstanding worker in spite of his handicap, and talked of his extraordinary human qualities.
The young secondary school students, Dov Hoz and Eliyahu Golomb, who came to Degania from Tel Aviv, found a common language with him. Even though it was decided at Degania that members would only speak Hebrew, he was happy to talk to the young people in Russian. They admired him and listened with great interest to his doctrine regarding co-existence in settlements and the emerging economy. Trumpeldor believed in the development of tourism and recommended that they master several languages in order to become tour guides (in Degania back in 1914!). The two rejected the unusual proposal. The Zionist ethos regarded agriculture as the culmination of pioneering fulfilment; becoming tour guides did not seem to be a worthy enough substitute.
Trumpledor was a devout vegetarian and refused to sleep on a pillow filled with feathers. He replaced the leather belt with a canvas one, and only conceded to wear leather shoes because the wooden clogs hampered his work. Only on the Gallipoli battlefront was he forced to abandon his vegetarian diet.
Degania had two classes: the first, of the founding fathers that were members of the collective, and the second, the workers who earned a daily wage from which they deducted food and living expenses. Trumpledor belonged to the group of paid labourers, and this division conflicted with his entire world outlook. However, the fact that labourers couldn’t be leaders prevented friction arising from his rigidity, and his life in Degania appeared relatively calm and peaceful.
The First World War
The outbreak of the war interrupted the economic progress of the Yishuv in Palestine. The connection with the Diaspora was severed and the economic support of families abroad ceased. Foreign nationals no longer enjoyed the protection of being foreign ambassadors (Capitulations), and the eyes of the Ottoman authorities, many became citizens of enemy states. The debate about whether to support the Allied Powers (Britain, France and Russia) or the Ottoman regime and its German allies, tore up the Yishuv. Most of the Yishuv agreed with the authorities' decision to accept Ottoman citizenship and "swear allegiance," even though their gut feeling was to support the British. Those who supported this practice praised the good conditions for Jews in Germany against their inferior status in Russia, which was allied to the Allied Powers (Britain and France). The fear of revenge by the authorities mainly over the Armenian genocide was reason enough to accuse them, and therefore many Yishuv leaders and most of the inhabitants of Degania decided to assimilate.
Trumpeldor, unlike them, despised Germany, and viewed it as a militaristic bureaucratic rule unmatched in its evil, and held the position that "the enemy of mankind" must not win the war. He also believed with full certainty that the Allies would be victorious. Unlike his friends, he loved Russia despite its manifestations of anti-Semitism, and asked to enlist in the army of one of its allies. Laskov analyses the reasons why Trumpeldor sought to enlist: "The grey, mundane day-to-day activities did not suit Trumpeldor's character, his whole life attests to this, he was always drawn to the tension, to the danger, to the places where decisions were being made, to the new." (Laskov p.88).
When the deportations of foreign citizens began, Trumpeldor was handed over to the Ottoman authorities and was arrested there, set for deportation to Alexandria. Shmuel Dayan, the father of Moshe Dayan, recounted the separation from his friend in his memoirs: "From Tiberias he came to the train station as a prisoner. There in a carriage on a wintery day with an unpleasant eastern wind, I parted from him alone, offering him bread and oranges for his fateful journey. ‘There is nothing to Danchik, everything will be good, life here, life there, death here, death there ..." (Laskov p. 88.)
In his eulogy to Trumpeldor entitled "’tis nothing," his friend Ze'ev Jabotinsky spoke of his greatness: “He solved every obstacle with the following two words: “’tis nothing.” When he solved all the difficulties and hardships around him with those famous two words, ‘tis nothing’, Trumpledor was able to cope with any hardships that came his way. That’s how it was when he lost his hand in the Russo-Japanese war… The meaning of this approach gave him the capacity to see the bigger picture without being overshadowed by the small things.” (Laskov, p. 245.)
Trumpeldor was expelled by the Turks along with all foreign subjects, and those who refused to submit to the refugee camps in Alexandria. The English took care of the basic needs of thousands of exiles, and also of the Jewish community who mobilised for them. When the Russian ambassador learned that Trumpeldor was among the exiles, he took care of him as a former Russian officer.
Liza, Fira, Emma and all the others
Tvzi Shatz
Although Shulamit Laskov never met Trumpeldor, she interviewed dozens of his friends and those close to him. In an interview we conducted with her, she said: "I do not think he was made up of family connections. He loved women, like many young boys. He was a beautiful man, handsome even without a hand, and women loved him ... In my opinion he recoiled from having his own close family, because he was entirely devoted to public affairs" (5).
Trumpeldor served as a spiritual mentor for his young friend Grisha Schatz, and in the extensive correspondence between them they related not only to issues facing the Land of Israel and the communist settlements, but also to share their thoughts on women.
Here he wrote to him: “Why, out of so many women, does it seem that sometimes that there is only one girl we have to pine for, to whom we will bow down to, to pray at, and to pray for?” It is like a fierce storm attacked the soul, and you were amazed and you don’t know why. Even now I think it’s a question of sex, not the friendship that touched you. Is this the friendship that shakes you to the depths of your core as the storm rocks the boat in the sea?” (Laskov, pg. 38).
The first significant female figure mentioned in his letters was a very intelligent 16-year-old girl named Ida, who corresponded with Trumpeldor, then aged 26. The letters dealt with matters of the highest calibre, and he engaged with her respect and answered all her questions at length. There was no personal tone in their letters, but at the time of their correspondence, Trumpeldor wrote a novel called "Liuba" about a discharged officer who falls in love with a 12-year-old girl. Ida died of a serious illness in her prime.
Liza Gashlin
In 1908, when Trumpeldor attended St. Petersburg, he gave private tutoring for a living. One of his students was Lisa Gashlin, eight years younger than him, who had taken the external exams with the intention of being admitted to medical school. She was a Zionist of the city of Romny – the birthplace of Pinchas Rotenberg and Chaim Arlozorov. “Lisa was a passionate, romantic and proud girl, with green eyes, chestnut hair tied up around her head, and she beheld some kind of Oriental charm. She and Trumpledor had a friendship that soon became more intimate.” (Laskov, pg. 42).
Lisa was indeed a Zionist but was not at peace with the idea of immigrating to Israel. She began her medical studies, which were supposed to continue for many years, and the chasm between them regarding the question of immigration to Israel damaged their relationship. Trumpeldor wrote her a letter full of love and tenderness about a dream he had about her. In his dream he saw two countries: Palestine and Hohilandia - a symbolic name he gave Lisa in his dream. “And on the road to Palestine I passed through Hohilandia. When I came in, I stayed there for a while. While it was hard for me to say goodbye to her, I still continued on to Palestine. Then I knelt down on my knees and begged Hohilandia: 'Oh, my Hohilandia, together we will go to Palestine and we’ll live in hardship but happily pass our time together there.' And lo and behold. Hohilandia rises before me in all her beauty ... And her clear eyes caressed me, and something incomprehensible but very pleasant rumbled through my lips. Did I wake up without knowing what they whispered? ... What did your sweet lips whisper to me in my sleep, my beloved Jochlik? "(Laskov p. 42-3.)
But the gap between Liza / Hohilandia and Trumpeldor / the Land of Israel grew wider. Lisa would be the last one to get in between Trumpeldor’s commitment to society and ideals over his personal relationship. In a heartfelt letter she wrote: “Everything is erased with time, passing like a grey shadow. Every day I wake with a sharp pain… Oh Joseph… I must have become something in your distant memory… see that you devote a few moments in your day to the memory and continue in serenity.” (Laskov pg. 43). Joseph despised her friends, the cynical intellectuals who mocked the Zionist idea. He saw them as empty people and felt that their disgust had stuck to him too.
Her friends raised their doubts regarding her Zionism, and Trumpledor replied to her in a letter: “Who is the man that never has gnawing doubt sometimes? Even he is sometimes subjected to doubt. But when he sets out to do something, those doubts are completely dissolved. In times of action there must be no doubt, otherwise nothing will happen and all will be lost. Too much of my soul has absorbed the fear of the Caucus mountains, too much has been absorbed by the waves of the sea. It is not a lesson for him, or a border to cross, and I cannot allow myself to give in to this whispering, grumbling whisper, which is always ugly and weak-handed.” (Laskov, pg. 59).
When Lisa failed to keep up the connection, she left a note in his room: "You must not take it so hard ... You know what you are to me ... You cannot say that you don’t. You can’t say: 'Thank you for the beautiful moments'. When you did not find what you were looking for, you left and have already moved on. I saw for the first time the good that I’ve been searching for (I was looking not just for a man but a creative partner) and you smote me and passed me by ... it was peace Joseph. "(Laskov p. 43.)
Grisha Schatz, whose acquaintance with Trumpeldor began thanks to Lisa Gashlin, was also hurt by Trumpeldor's cold and alienated attitude. Grisha, who in his letters addressed Trumpeldor as his teacher, was struck by the cold, distant tone of his long and detailed letters, which he had made sure to address in the third person. In a letter Grisha wrote: “Why are people not as hard as rocks and as stormy as fire at the same time? Why, when a man comes across as hard as a rock, he is cold and still… and vice versa, when a man is as passionate as fire, he is unsteady and every breath of wind brings him back and forth… Why are there no civilised people, knowledgeable people, who will sometimes act in ‘great madness’? People are still as rocks, atoms… sharp, penetrating and cold. Also, stagnant, not soft and uncooperative to the whispers of others and always – lonely.” (Laskov pg. 48). Trumpledor also responded to this letter courteously, but continued to keep his distance, and recommended that his young friend not to open his heart to people because an honest heart will cause regret in the future. Trumpledor believed in man but was often disappointed by people. He also believed that it would be better for those who are looking to become leaders to guard themselves from people around them. Laskov notes in her book that despite the countless materials and letters Trumpledor left in his wake, he rarely spoke about himself. Even when asked to write private biographical details about himself, he made do with detailing his ideas. “It is often inconceivable that Trumpledor identified so strongly with his ideals and the work towards those ideals that there was almost nothing left outside of them.” (Laskov, pg. 49)
Hannah Katzenelson
Hannah Katznelson, the sister of Berl Katznelson, met Trumpledor when he was 17 years her senior in Degania. In her memoirs she recalled their meeting:
“Degania was beautiful. The boulevard that leads to Jordan and the lunar nights arouse a certain longing; a longing for love, for friendship. One of those evenings, Joseph suddenly appeared, Joseph Trumpeldor. When I first arrived at Degania he was absent from the commune, and they told me he had gone to organise his return to Russia. Nobody knew what his real intentions were. He says that he, as a Russian officer, must return to his homeland in times of trouble. Many mocked him in absentia. But I knew, that despite being cut off, he worked hard physically and was a diligent labourer… We travelled along the avenue to Jordan… I really wanted to get to know him, to get to know Joseph.. he was about to leave the next day and travel. Although he tried to explain, it was incomprehensible. A man, a labourer, a Jew, a traveller from the Land of Israel! And to where! To Russia, hated by all of us? And here I am walking with him alone… - and this eccentric man of whom I sought to know better and better – bends down and kisses me. Like he was a hoodlum. I left him and ran to my room. I didn’t want to see him anymore – and I was ashamed to tell Berl about the kiss.” (6).
Fira Rozov
With Fira Rozov and a child from her family
Trumpeldor's most significant and long-lasting relationship was with Fira (Esther) Rozov, who was his fiancée. Fira met Trumpeldor in Alexandria, where he had wandered at the outbreak of the First World War. Fira was the daughter of a wealthy orchard-owning family from Petah Tikvah. Her brother, Yisrael Rozov, was one of the leaders of Zionism in Russia and a follower of Ze’ev Jabotinksy. He has a street named after him in Ramat HaHayal.
Fira was deported to Alexandria as a foreign transfer, and lived there in a hotel, but spent much of her time in a refugee camp in Palestine and helped them as best she could. She was thirteen years younger than Trumpeldor when she met him when he asked her to give him private lessons in French. They became lovers but actually only spent a short time together. Trumpeldor enlisted -- as will be explained later -- and sent to the Gallipoli Peninsula. From the battlefield he wrote her long letters every day detailing everything he went through. Shulamit Laskov describes her character: “She was a conqueror; not necessarily because of her beauty, but in the great grace that surrounded her entire being. A man who courted her in those days told of how she had something so delicate and charming that she was fascinating from the moment people first met her, not only to men but to women too. She was very tall, very thin, with curly black hair, the skin of her face fair and smooth, with a blush blooming in her cheeks, and when she laughed, her eyes would crinkle and narrow as light shone from the cracks. (Laskov, pg. 111).
Trumpeldor wrote to her from Gallipoli: “I never read about flying carpets during my childhood. If I had one right now, only for ten minutes, I would want to fly to you, to Alexandria. To gaze into your eyes with your long eyelashes, which are either happy or sad, to say a few words to you and hear your voice… and mostly to caress you and have you touch me.” (Laskov, pg. 111-2). In his daily letters he taught her how to cope with difficult events and not to expose others to her pain. “If for example, they tell you that I was smashed to pieces by a shell, that you will never see me again… and if this knowledge will cause you to hurt to your very teeth, make sure that no strangers will come and participate in the pain of your soul.” (Laskov, pg. 114). The greatest complement that he gave her was that if he was wounded, mortally wounded, and he has his last thoughts before death, then alongside thoughts of the Land of Israel and the Jewish nation for whom he died for, he will also think of her – of Fira. During the years they were in contact, they were found together for short periods only. The correspondence between them was very intense, and Trumpeldor used Fira as a liaison officer for the families of soldiers who were living in Alexandria.
His inability to commit to women repeated itself consistently, and he wrote in his diary: “Once again I was at Fira’s, but it felt cold. Something bothered me, caused me to behave simply, frankly… by the way this happens to me with all women. The depths of my soul still have not yet been stirred. Once, in Galippoli, it appeared to me that Fira was starting to affect me deeply, but that’s just how it seemed at the time.” (Laskov, pg. 119-120). Fira’s letters were full of endless longing. She imagined their shared lives together, cared for his welfare without limits, and used in all its wealth a vocabulary of affection in Russian. From her letters, it appears that her longing and concern for his well-being hurt her, but on the other hand Trumpeldor’s letters became more and more informative and less personal. Even when he travelled to London and, after that to Russia, he didn’t agree that she accompany him.
Emma Tzipkin
With Fira Rozov
While Trumpeldor was in Russia he ran a training farm of the “Pioneer” movement in the Crimea, where he met Emma Tsipkin, a medical student from Kharkiv in her first year of study. She was younger than him by some twenty years. Emma was staying with her sister on vacation in Crimea, but because of the revolution she remained there. She had a Zionist background, and out of boredom she sought the company of Jewish youth and arrived at the training farm of the "Pioneer" movement where she met Trumpeldor. “And this is how Emma (Nehama) Tsipkin knew his shining aura, as a hero and saviour. A beautiful young girl aged 19.” (Laskov, pg. 177). After working hours, Emma and Joseph used to walk together for many hours, during which he told her about the land of Israel and sang her songs.
Shulamit Laskov interviewed her before her biography was published, and she wrote: “She adored him with a strong admiration. Even today, after fifty years or more, admiration still echoes in her words.” All his visions and actions awakened awe in her heart, and this admiration was intensified. She was very attached to him. ‘He was a strong man’ she explained. With pursed lips, and determined by his decisions, he had a very strong will and with that would not deceive her. He told her that he was connected to Fira Rozov, and she was his fiancée. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that he was attracted to this young woman, whose black eyes and heavy dark braids hung down her back and she was refreshing to him, pure and romantic. Their relationship did not deviate from the realm of their very close friendship, but the relationship between them had much more to it than what was revealed. (Laskov 178-9). About two months after her biography was published, Laskov met with Emma Tsipkin at the theatre, and she told us about it in an interview we conducted with her: “Her parents were friends with my parents and they were neighbours. When I interviewed her before writing the book, she spoke with great restraint. Only a few months after I published the book and met her at the theatre, then she said to me, ‘I want to tell you that my romance with Trumpeldor was a real affair and was extremely strong.’ Despite the years that have passed, it is still beautiful.” (5)
In 1919, he left Crimea, and after a stop in Constantinople he returned to Palestine. Here he met Fira who was waiting patiently for him for many days, and he informed her with no prior notice of his decision to leave her. Fira wasn’t prepared for such a blow, and collapsed mentally, and her brother sent her to the United States to recover. She later gave birth to a girl and dedicated her life to the public in refugee camps, to the school of Hana Meisel, and to the WIZO organisation. Jabotinsky wrote to a friend: “They say that he told Fira that he didn’t have any right [to be with her], because of his wanderings and things… in my opinion there will come a day where she will be grateful to him for this, but for now, she is very shocked.” (Laskov, pg. 188).
Zion Mule Corps
In December 1914 – Ze’ev Jabotinsky arrived in Alexandria as a correspondent for an important Russian newspaper. He was determined to advance his plan to establish Jewish battalions that would fight alongside Britain for the liberation of the Land of Israel from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Pinchas Rotenberg tried to promote the initiative in Italy at the time, but without success because Italy was still adhering to its neutrality. The Russian ambassador began a push to recruit Russian subjects amongst the refugees, and the Jews were horrified by the idea of enlisting in the hated Tzarist army. They asked the British to reject the decree, but the British, who ignored the demand of their ally Russia, explained to the exiles that they would never survive, and that so many young people would not be able to shirk recruitment for long. Jabotinsky recognized that an opportunity had been created, and worked vigorously to promote the idea of Jewish battalions. He contacted Trumpeldor -- the illustrious hero -- and laid out his plan. Trumpeldor listened to him with interest, and asked for a day to think about it, and the following day he said "yes". They held a founding assembly, signed volunteers and Trumpeldor wasted no time in starting to train them.
The British agreed to recruit the Jews, but only as supporters to combatants - mule drivers, to be sent to some Turkish front. The representatives, headed by Jabotinsky, were horrified at the humiliating suggestion that in their eyes had nothing to do with what they proposed to the occupiers of Palestine. Trumpeldor, who was the only member of the group with military experience, tried to explain that the source of their opposition to the proposed battalion was the Yiddish word for mule, which was a ridiculous term, and urged his friends to transcend such trivialities. In retrospect, Jabotinsky recognized that Trumpeldor, a veteran of war, was right, he who noted little difference between "service with a rifle" and a "transportation service". "All of them are soldiers, without transport soldiers it would all be impossible, and they will share the same dangers as the combat soldiers.” (7).
John Peterson 1917
The two friends, Trumpeldor and Jabotinsky, were born in 1880 to assimilated families but nevertheless both became Zionists. Jabotinsky called his friend the "Stubborn Saint", but this nickname also suited his own personality. Jabotinsky left Egypt and announced that he would return only if the British changed their minds, while Trumpeldor remained in Alexandria and began to form the "Zion Mule Corps." The rabbi of the community and General Peterson, who was appointed battalion commander, assisted him. There is a street in the neighbourhood of Yad Eliyahu named after Jonathan Peterson, an Irish military man, who loved education that was connected to the fate of Zionism. Professor Ben Zion Netanyahu, secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, named his son after him.
For the purpose of the British who helped establish a Jewish battalion, General Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the Gallipoli force, wrote: “"On my way to the port I visited the regiment of mule drivers comprised of Jewish refugees ... They may in fact serve as a pretext to awaken the enthusiasm of the Jewish journalists and bankers in favour of our affairs: The first will grant us an army and the last our funding. In any case, as far as the matter is concerned, I intend to give the Chosen People a chance.” (8).
In April 1915, about 650 people sailed north. The start was very hard - the fighters who believed they were being sent to conquer the Land of Israel were disappointed when they were sent to Greece and then to the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Gallipoli campaign marks the lowest point in the biography of Winston Churchill, which, because of a mistaken strategy he initiated, became the burial place of tens of thousands of soldiers, many of them Australians, New Zealanders, Senegalese, Nepalese and French. The bloody battle at Gallipoli was, however, the culmination of the military career of Kemal Ataturk, who, on the wings of his glory, became the father of the Turkish nation.
The impossible and cruel fighting (on the suffering of the Australians see the film ‘Gallipoli’), the anti-Semitism of the English commanders and the arguments among the Jews led to many soldiers to desert and return to Alexandria. Trumpledor was the undisputed leader, but his uncompromising nature caused friction. It was important for him to show the English that the Jews were not cowards, and therefore he organised training in open fields that were exposed to shelling and was angry at those that tried to hide.
General Peterson was a brave military man in the classic sense and was not thrilled by what he viewed as Trumpeldor’s exaggerated heroism, which many saw as unnecessary and harmful as a ‘death wish’. On his ‘romance’ with death, once can learn more from his letter to his fiancée Fira: “Like the fingernails on legendary witches, the arrows of the serpents stick in healthy, muscular bodies… something huge follows behind them, all at once frightening and not frightening. Death hung around like a bride searching for a groom. She will choose you, and kiss you with her kiss of death, and lay you in a cold bed: her cold bed as her cold arms of this eternal bride… and I have not been kissed and I have not lay down in her bed.” (Laskov, pg. 98). The British mocked him and his friends in the following poem:
The English like chocolate The French like wine Trumpeldor likes bombs.
(Laskov, pg. 101).
With the separation of the Zion Mule Corps, all the perceived evils of Jewish society that were still not yet disappeared from the world were reignited. Thus, for example, when a new battalion of volunteers arrived, most of whom were residents of Alexandria (members of the Eastern (Mizrahi) communities), the veterans asked for a separation between them. They argued that the newcomers were not "idealists" like them and asked for a separate kitchen. General Peterson wondered how the Jews would manage in Palestine if even these small groups could not live together. There were also revelations that were consistent with many of the well-known Jewish stereotypes, with some members of the battalion that was in charge of supplies engaging in smuggling and profiteering. Members of the Zion Mule Corps were bombarded with criticism from all sides: Ussishkin, for example, scoffed at those in the “donkey battalion” and there were constant disagreements with the British. However, despite the difficulties and criticism, the “Zion Mule Corps” was the first organisation since the exile of the Jewish people to create a separate Jewish military entity, with the Star of David as its symbol and military orders in the Hebrew language.
On his horse in the regiment
At the end of 1915, they notified the British army to their defeat in Gallipoli and organized the retreat. A few dozen members of the battalion who had left with Trumpeldor went on to Alexandria, where he unsuccessfully tried to prevent the dispersal of the battalion, which was formally disbanded in May of 1916.
The defeat of the Allied Powers at Galipolli was resonant, but there is much to be said about the heroism of the Jews. The good name of the Zion Mule Corps was instrumental in the subsequent establishment and organisation of Jewish forces in the Land of Israel, mainly seen within the framework of the Haganah and, later, in the Israel Defense Forces.
In London
In October 1916 Trumpeldor sailed to London, in order to support Jabotinksy in his attempts to establish a fighting Hebrew battalion that would take part in the conquest of the Land of Israel. Jabotinksy and Trumpledor tried to pitch the idea of the Jewish Legion but received a hostile reception on the Jewish street in London, and meetings they tried to organise were blown up with violence. For those refugees from Tsarist Russia, the idea of enlisting in the army in general was loathsome, let alone an army allied with the hated Russia.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor sent a memorandum to the prime minister warning the British that their Russian allies were conducting peace talks with the German enemy. They noted that among those seeking to exclude Russia from the alliance with France and Great Britain were certain "Jewish elements." As a counter medicine, they offer to appeal to Jewish public opinion by establishing large-scale Hebrew battalions to participate in the conquest of the country.
They worked towards this cooperative effort, meeting with government officials, to convince Jewish leaders, and Jabotinsky used his contacts with the press to advance the idea of the Jewish Legion.
In the end, their dream came true and a Jewish battalion was formed – the “38th Battalion” under Peterson’s command, to which 120 graduates of the Zion Mule Corps, including the soldier Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotoinsky, were recruited. Most of the recruits were Jews from the Weitchefel district, most of whom worked in textiles, and Jabotinksy – affectionately but ridiculously labelled the soldiers ‘the tailors’. The battalion numbered around 800 people, and when they marched through the streets of London, the Jews received them with great enthusiasm.
Return to Mother Russia
After the success of the regiment’s formation, on the 17th of July 1917 Trumpeldor sailed to Russia. He dreamed of founding a Jewish battalion of one hundred thousand men in Russia, that would fight in the Caucus and continue on their way south towards Palestine. The fighter and commander Yitzhak Sadeh, then called Landoberg, met with Trumpeldor at the time. In his memoirs, he related how he had been caught up in Trumpeldor's enthusiasm - although his strategy seemed a little absurd. Trumpeldor wrote: “Awaken, people, past the mountains of Armenia, we’ll top Barrat, we’ll walk with our feet through Little Asia, we’ll cut through the land of infinite snow and with our swords we will conquer the Land of Israel for our people, the people of Israel.” (9)
The vision was not as utopic as it sounded. The new, temporary government that released the Jews from all restrictions, including those preventing them from leaving the settlements, and moved to agree to the idea of a Jewish army. Trumpeldor was full of enthusiasm, but his joy was premature. The struggle against the Bolsheviks preoccupied the agenda of the current Kerensky administration, and the Bolshevik victory in October 1917, who sought to form an alliance with the Germans and entirely opposed the Zionist idea, put an end to the initiative.
In the twilight days, Trumpeldor managed to organise veteran Jewish soldiers in a kind of small battalion that focused on self defense. In Russia, domestic turbulence and pogroms always came hand in hand, and Trumpeldor was fuming at the defeatist Jewish leadership that prevented organising a general self-defense organisation.
Trumpeldor worked to varying degrees on this self-defense group until he was arrested for a few days by the Bolsheviks. After he was released he decided to promote the ‘Pioneer Movement’ (a youth movement who called to immigrate to the Eretz Israel), and was appointed to be one of its leaders and organisers. He did not fundamentally change his ideological line that combined socialism with anarchism.
In the days of the seven-member Romanian conference, he requested to advance agricultural training abroad ahead of the immigration process, but his request was delayed by Schatz and his friends who wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel. This time though his vision was realized and the Pioneer movement, which numbered in the tens of thousands, organized training farms on a serious scale.
Trumpeldor moved south to Crimea where he ran a local training farm. The rule of Crimea passed from hand to hand – between the Reds and the Whites, and he got on with the Reds because of his socialist beliefs, and got on with the Whites because of his glorious past in the Czar’s army. In the days of the settlement of Migdal, he quarrelled with all his friends in the commune, but this time he was older than his trainees by some 20 years, and they admired him and obeyed him. In Crimea he met with Yitzhak Sadeh for a second time, and he became his right-hand man.
Trumpeldor Returns to the Land of Israel
In August 1919 Trumpeldor left island of Crimea for Eretz Israel, and there let Yitzhak Sadeh take his place as the “responsible adult” in the training farm.
In the land of Israel there was constant tension between those who sought to settle the country without delay and take the mission by storm with no restrictions on immigration, and those who sought to prepare local jobs and adjust the immigration quota according to their absorption capacity. There was great sorrow in the yishuv after hundreds of members of the “American battalion” returned to the Diaspora due to lack of jobs, in spite of the fact that many of them sought to settle in the country.
Trumpeldor forced his students who had gathered in Constantinople to await his instructions after he had prepared the ground for their absorption. It appears that he tried with all his might not to repeat the same mistakes of the previous immigrations and of the failed commune of Migdal, and to prevent a situation in which they would have to return to Russia in frustration and would slander the evil land of Israel.
Trumpeldor made supreme efforts in order to organise local workplaces for his pupils, who were waiting impatiently in Constantinople, and also fought to prevent the disbanding of the Jewish battalions. He suggested to General Allenby to create a body of 10,000 fighters, but Allenby did not pay any attention to the initiative.
The situation for Russian Jews, suffering from murders, torture and rapes, and begging to immigrate to Israel, while the Development and Absorption Organization proceeded with laziness and indifference, angered him greatly. Trumpeldor did not understand why the three Zionist workers’ parties – the Young Workers, the Zionist Workers and the nonpartisan parties, were engaged in internal wars instead of concentrating their forces in absorbing the tens of thousands of ‘Pioneer’ youth. In the same year, 1919, two of the three parties united and formed the Labour Union, but instead of uniting the forces, the two remaining parties formed labour unions, health funds, and other, separate institutions, quarrelling among one another over every immigrant. The split caused a waste of resources and caused damage to the immigration absorption.
Trumpeldor, who had just come back from Russia and knew how grave the circumstances were, published a personal plea in both the “Young Workers” and in the “Labour Movement” pamphlets. He simply pleaded with party leaders who were engaged in endless quarrels to unite forces for their brethren. He told them that even if they could not manage to unite the parties, they could at least unite the separate institutions as a health fund and a labour bureau for one general organization of workers (Histadrut) in order not to waste unnecessary energy due to the spit. He voiced a call for the establishment of a workers union for the party to co-ordinate the preparation of infrastructure for immigrant absorption. The ‘Pioneer’ movement also transcended party lines and disputes in order to organise immigration to Palestine.
Almost twenty years before Hitler even came to power, he felt the urgency to create a refuge for the masses. "Every moment is precious. Anyone who enters the country will be saved from certain death or a punished life. Every moment of delay – will count as a sin for us. "(Laskov p. 198). "If the gates do not open, the masses will have no choice but to accept their situation and surrender themselves to the tortures of hell." (Laskov p. 197). The writer Yosef Haim Brenner also raised the need to unite forces in order to organize the absorption of immigrants. After the publication of Trumpeldor’s call to action, everyone agreed that Trumpeldor was right and the organisations should unite. Nonetheless, they continued to fight. Trumpeldor wrote to his friend that at one meeting of the two railway workers' organizations, they came to blows and threw chairs at each other. "Such is the friendship between the parties." (Laskov p. 201).
Tel Hai
Tel Hai Courtyard - Photo by Rudi Kleiner
In the midst of the struggle to advance the absorption of immigrants in Palestine, Israel Shochat, one of the leaders of ‘The Guards’ (HaShomer), asked Trumpeldor to move to the Galilee region. The area was a no-man's-land locked in by bloody clashes caused by the ramifications of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was signed in the midst of World War I, in which France and Britain divided and shared the spoils of the dismembered Ottoman Empire. The border between the French-controlled zone and that of the British was supposed to cross the line between Rosh HaNikra and Ayelet HaShahar, but most of the Arab residents there opposed French control. They preferred the rule of Sharif Faisal in Syria, which was supported by the British, and awakened pan-Arab nationalism. They organized themselves in gangs that attacked the French and their allies from the Christian villages, while the British secretly
encouraged them. There were confrontations between Bedouins, Shiites, Druze, Circassia’s and Maronite’s, and the few Jews tried their best to maintain neutrality. Altogether, only 250 people lived in all the settlements of Metula, Kfar Giladi, Tel Hai and a moshav named Hamara. Trumpeldor moved up to Tel Hai in December 1919 to organize the defense of the yishuv, and help pressure the yishuv institutions to persuade them to send reinforcements.
The French, who were supposed to control the area, emerged from time to time and then disappeared. Many of their soldiers were Muslims from North Africa who secretly supported Sharif’s people. The Jewish settlers wondered about their fate with their meagre weapons, when the French army, with their sophisticated weaponry that included machine guns and aircraft, would retreat from the battlefield?
Trumpeldor assessed in his diary about the psychological effect of this information on the extent of the heroism of the young people in Tel Hai, and divided them into the soft hearted, and to those who were courageous either from birth or from necessity. Among the brave, he appointed young Yehudit, who laughed as bullets flew over her head, and a young man full of fear – but was stubborn in his bravery to overcome his fears -- despite the fact that he was convinced that, under the cover of darkness, there would be masses of Arabs crawling towards him. He also analysed the seemingly brave people who, at testing times, would flee. As opposed to his days in Gallipoli, in which he forced the soldiers to carry out senseless acts of heroism, this time he was appeased and recognised the very bravery it took to survive for such few people in an isolated community surrounded by a sea of enemies. In his diary he wrote: “If the Gogol’s and the Dostoevsky’s and the rest of the Russian authors would have seen the brave and fearless boys on our front, the Jewish characters in their books would have been totally different.” (Laskov, pg. 208).
The youth admired Trumpeldor, then aged 39, who used every moment he could to train them; how to venture out into an unprotected area, how to hide, to shoot, and to take cover. They loved him too, because of the quality that had characterized him all his life – that he was not only handsome, but also dedicated. He often kept up two shifts in succession; working and ploughing with one hand and sharing with them the frugal, simple and minimalist Spartan lifestyle on the other. (Note 1). Hartzfeld exaplains that when he arrived in Tel Hai, he was shocked by the mess and disorder. Everyone slept on the few beds while on duty, and despite his exhaustion, he could not overcome his disgust with the beds – and gave up on sleep.
Among the people of Tel Hai and the people of Kfar Giladi – the organisation “The Guards” (HaShomer) saw a lot of hidden tension. With due respect to Trumpeldor and his reputation, members felt that they knew the area, and especially their Arab neighbours, better than him. The mentality of the organisation was different to that of a regular army, and the confrontation is reminiscent of the tension between the Palmach fighters – considered to be “partisans” to the brigade fighters – graduates of the British army. Members of HaShomer (the Guards), headed by Israel Shochat and Trumpeldor, put pressure on the yishuv institutions to persuade them to send reinforcements of hundreds of people. But there was a fierce and deeply polarised debate within the yishuv whether to reinforce the settlements or evacuate them entirely.
The Haganah was in its infancy, and at a meeting held in Kfar Giladi on January 8th, 1920, they pushed for reinforcements. Alexander Zeid said that it was forbidden to leave the settlements because the Arabs would see it as weakness, and the retreat would not stop at the Upper Galilee.
On January 20th, the press office for the ‘Committee of Delegates’ published a statement that the French General Giro said that the refugees of Kfar Giladi and Tel Hai could return to their homes. Beryl Katznelson mocked the committee that had a press office as if it was “a really respectable government body”, but did not know that the people of Tel Hai and Kfar Giladi had in fact not abandoned their posts at all. Berl and his friends visited the institutions that had abandoned dozens of fighters. Trumpeldor wrote bitterly in his diary: “It is as though there is a sealed wall… behind which is always the metallic voice of Ussishkin sounding out… there is no money.” (Laskov, pg. 212). They considered holding demonstrations and smashing the windows of the committee of delegates’ offices. On February 6th 1920, Aharon Sher was murdered. He had come to help the fighters from the Sea of Galilee, and had previously written in the “Ahdut Ha’Avoda” pamphlet that no one was leaving the area because they refused to give up. (Note 2).
The situation continued to worsen, and after 800 French troops left Metula, reports emerged of a large-scale organised attack. From time to time, the neighbouring Arabs would demand to fly the Sharif’s flag, but the Jews objected, saying it would damage the neutrality. The Arabs also claimed that the French were shooting at them from the Jewish settlements, demanding to enter inside and check if they were hiding French soldiers there. Ten residents of Tel Hai decided to leave the isolated spot at this point.
On February 14th, a memorial assembly was held in Tel Aviv in memory of Aharon Sher. The atmosphere was tense, and Alexander said that if there would be even one soul in danger– it was worth everything. He requested to consider evacuating the settlements, but Ben Gurion and his friends were set on their opinion, and were opposed to any kind of withdrawal.
On February 20th, Ze'ev Jabotinsky published an article in ‘Ha’aretz’ stating that there was no point in keeping people in a place that could not be defended. "If, on the other hand, the goal appears to be being achieved, there is something to that, Even though the names of the holy ones (martyrs) aren’t as impressive today as they used to be… But if the goal is standing in the North, then the volunteers must be aware of this, to know where and what they are going there for.” (Laskov, pg. 219).
Berl Katznelson expressed “Ahudat HaAvoda’s” position which strongly opposed evacuating the settlements, therein finding an opportunity to get rid of Jabotinsky, who was supposed to oppose the perceived cowardice of the Diaspora, but instead saw “glory only in the modesty of foreign armies.” (Laskov, pg. 220). Jabotinsky would later write that he had called on the workers' leaders to return the fighters to the centre of the country immediately, but that they rejected his request. He said he was sure they rejected his request because they had managed to organize serious reinforcements. Although he found the evacuation of settlements a very grave matter, he felt that it was forbidden to abandon fighters that were not offered help. In a letter to the leader of the Revisionists in Italy, he wrote that the real murderers were not those that rejected his demands to return from the settlements to the centre of the country, but those who failed to send any help. In practice, a real effort was made to help the settlers, but there was not enough money to acquire arms. Although there were volunteers, it was decided that people should not be sent to the front without weapons because they would only burden the fighters.
The temporary committee debated the issue of the Galilee fighters on the 24th February. The indecision was genuine and difficult: In the period after the end of the first world war, British involvement was not a given; there was concern that clashes between Jews and Arabs would deter them from realizing the Mandate.
The leaders of the yishuv asked that the British to apply their mandate and not be deterred from their mission, so they decided to send 60 fighters from the former Jewish Legion, to what was then defined as “field work.” Ussishkin laid out the facts as follows: he said that he asked the British for help, and they refused. He appealed to the French and Arab leadership to understand that this is not our war, and while they both agreed with his words, they did not keep their promises.He estimated that at least 1,000 armed fighters were needed to protect the settlements.
All the representatives of the “Workers”, including Ben-Gurion and Tabenkin, unequivocally opposed evacuating the settlements. The representatives of Hapoel Hatzair (The Young Workers) also aligned themselves with the militant line of Ahdut Ha'avoda. Among the civil public – that came to later be known as the “right wing” there was considerable deliberation on the issue, and various proposals were offered. The director of the Herzliya Gymnasium, Dr. Mosinson, was angry with the "Workers" who, in their opposition to the evacuation of the settlements, violated the instructions of the elected institutions and initiated the recruitment of volunteers. According to him, 16-year-olds were leaving the Gymnasium to enlist to come to the aid of the Galilee settlements. At the end of the day Ussishkin banged on the table and decided he didn’t know how to go about this, how to strengthen the settlements.They appointed a committee of six people, including Eliyahu Golomb, who would travel north to see how they could help, but because of the escalation, the commission did not manage to carry out their investigation.
On the 28th February some twenty volunteers, headed by Avraham Hertzfeld, travelled north. While in Rosh Pina they met another group, who sought to join them, but they had no weapons to give. Hertzfeld therefore rejected their offer so they would not become a burden. Only two people were insistent: A friend of Trumpeldor who claimed to be a trained soldier, and Sarah Chizik. They walked in the dark of night with their weapons and their heavy load. On the way, they met an Arab who had followed them. They took him with them and released him only when they reached Kfar Giladi. Trumpeldor welcomed the group and divided them up between the settlements. Dr. Jerry of the American Battalion and Sister Sonia were sent to Metula to set up a clinic.
March 1st, 1920, the eleventh day of Adar, began as a bright and beautiful day in the midst of a cold and snowy winter. Trumpeldor was in Kfar Giladi busy organizing the Hagana, when suddenly the surroundings of Tel Hai neighbourhood began to take on an extraordinary hue, and the shepherd ushered his herd into the courtyard. Hundreds of Shi’ite Arabs had begun to surround the commune --- some of them in uniform, armed with rifles and grenades and demanding to enter the courtyard to search the premises for French soldiers, who they believed had taken refuge with the Jews. They were led by Kamal Hussein, the chief of a large clan whose headquarters were in a village known as Khalisa, which is now known as Kiryat Shmona. Kamal, a sheriff, had relatively good neighbourly relations with the Jews. But the number of versions of events of that bitter and fateful morning, the 11th of Adar, is almost equal to the amount of people that were present. One of the controversies among historians is why -- and who -- gave Kamal Hussein, who was accompanied by several fighters, access into the closed compound, and how the gun battle suddenly erupted. (Note 3).encouraged them. There were confrontations between Bedouins, Shiites, Druze, Circassia’s and Maronite’s, and the few Jews tried their best to maintain neutrality. Altogether, only 250 people lived in all the settlements of Metula, Kfar Giladi, Tel Hai and a moshav named Hamara. Trumpeldor moved up to Tel Hai in December 1919 to organize the defense of the yishuv, and help pressure the yishuv institutions to persuade them to send reinforcements.
The French, who were supposed to control the area, emerged from time to time and then disappeared. Many of their soldiers were Muslims from North Africa who secretly supported Sharif’s people. The Jewish settlers wondered about their fate with their meagre weapons, when the French army, with their sophisticated weaponry that included machine guns and aircraft, would retreat from the battlefield?
Trumpeldor assessed in his diary about the psychological effect of this information on the extent of the heroism of the young people in Tel Hai, and divided them into the soft hearted, and to those who were courageous either from birth or from necessity. Among the brave, he appointed young Yehudit, who laughed as bullets flew over her head, and a young man full of fear – but was stubborn in his bravery to overcome his fears -- despite the fact that he was convinced that, under the cover of darkness, there would be masses of Arabs crawling towards him. He also analysed the seemingly brave people who, at testing times, would flee. As opposed to his days in Gallipoli, in which he forced the soldiers to carry out senseless acts of heroism, this time he was appeased and recognised the very bravery it took to survive for such few people in an isolated community surrounded by a sea of enemies. In his diary he wrote: “If the Gogol’s and the Dostoevsky’s and the rest of the Russian authors would have seen the brave and fearless boys on our front, the Jewish characters in their books would have been totally different.” (Laskov, pg. 208).
The youth admired Trumpeldor, then aged 39, who used every moment he could to train them; how to venture out into an unprotected area, how to hide, to shoot, and to take cover. They loved him too, because of the quality that had characterized him all his life – that he was not only handsome, but also dedicated. He often kept up two shifts in succession; working and ploughing with one hand and sharing with them the frugal, simple and minimalist Spartan lifestyle on the other. (Note 1). Hartzfeld exaplains that when he arrived in Tel Hai, he was shocked by the mess and disorder. Everyone slept on the few beds while on duty, and despite his exhaustion, he could not overcome his disgust with the beds – and gave up on sleep.
Among the people of Tel Hai and the people of Kfar Giladi – the organisation “The Guards” (HaShomer) saw a lot of hidden tension. With due respect to Trumpeldor and his reputation, members felt that they knew the area, and especially their Arab neighbours, better than him. The mentality of the organisation was different to that of a regular army, and the confrontation is reminiscent of the tension between the Palmach fighters – considered to be “partisans” to the brigade fighters – graduates of the British army. Members of HaShomer (the Guards), headed by Israel Shochat and Trumpeldor, put pressure on the yishuv institutions to persuade them to send reinforcements of hundreds of people. But there was a fierce and deeply polarised debate within the yishuv whether to reinforce the settlements or evacuate them entirely.
The Haganah was in its infancy, and at a meeting held in Kfar Giladi on January 8th, 1920, they pushed for reinforcements. Alexander Zeid said that it was forbidden to leave the settlements because the Arabs would see it as weakness, and the retreat would not stop at the Upper Galilee.
On January 20th, the press office for the ‘Committee of Delegates’ published a statement that the French General Giro said that the refugees of Kfar Giladi and Tel Hai could return to their homes. Beryl Katznelson mocked the committee that had a press office as if it was “a really respectable government body”, but did not know that the people of Tel Hai and Kfar Giladi had in fact not abandoned their posts at all. Berl and his friends visited the institutions that had abandoned dozens of fighters. Trumpeldor wrote bitterly in his diary: “It is as though there is a sealed wall… behind which is always the metallic voice of Ussishkin sounding out… there is no money.” (Laskov, pg. 212). They considered holding demonstrations and smashing the windows of the committee of delegates’ offices. On February 6th 1920, Aharon Sher was murdered. He had come to help the fighters from the Sea of Galilee, and had previously written in the “Ahdut Ha’Avoda” pamphlet that no one was leaving the area because they refused to give up. (Note 2).
The situation continued to worsen, and after 800 French troops left Metula, reports emerged of a large-scale organised attack. From time to time, the neighbouring Arabs would demand to fly the Sharif’s flag, but the Jews objected, saying it would damage the neutrality. The Arabs also claimed that the French were shooting at them from the Jewish settlements, demanding to enter inside and check if they were hiding French soldiers there. Ten residents of Tel Hai decided to leave the isolated spot at this point.
On February 14th, a memorial assembly was held in Tel Aviv in memory of Aharon Sher. The atmosphere was tense, and Alexander said that if there would be even one soul in danger– it was worth everything. He requested to consider evacuating the settlements, but Ben Gurion and his friends were set on their opinion, and were opposed to any kind of withdrawal.
On February 20th, Ze'ev Jabotinsky published an article in ‘Ha’aretz’ stating that there was no point in keeping people in a place that could not be defended. "If, on the other hand, the goal appears to be being achieved, there is something to that, Even though the names of the holy ones (martyrs) aren’t as impressive today as they used to be… But if the goal is standing in the North, then the volunteers must be aware of this, to know where and what they are going there for.” (Laskov, pg. 219).
Berl Katznelson expressed “Ahudat HaAvoda’s” position which strongly opposed evacuating the settlements, therein finding an opportunity to get rid of Jabotinsky, who was supposed to oppose the perceived cowardice of the Diaspora, but instead saw “glory only in the modesty of foreign armies.” (Laskov, pg. 220). Jabotinsky would later write that he had called on the workers' leaders to return the fighters to the centre of the country immediately, but that they rejected his request. He said he was sure they rejected his request because they had managed to organize serious reinforcements. Although he found the evacuation of settlements a very grave matter, he felt that it was forbidden to abandon fighters that were not offered help. In a letter to the leader of the Revisionists in Italy, he wrote that the real murderers were not those that rejected his demands to return from the settlements to the centre of the country, but those who failed to send any help. In practice, a real effort was made to help the settlers, but there was not enough money to acquire arms. Although there were volunteers, it was decided that people should not be sent to the front without weapons because they would only burden the fighters.
The temporary committee debated the issue of the Galilee fighters on the 24th February. The indecision was genuine and difficult: In the period after the end of the first world war, British involvement was not a given; there was concern that clashes between Jews and Arabs would deter them from realizing the Mandate.
The leaders of the yishuv asked that the British to apply their mandate and not be deterred from their mission, so they decided to send 60 fighters from the former Jewish Legion, to what was then defined as “field work.” Ussishkin laid out the facts as follows: he said that he asked the British for help, and they refused. He appealed to the French and Arab leadership to understand that this is not our war, and while they both agreed with his words, they did not keep their promises.He estimated that at least 1,000 armed fighters were needed to protect the settlements.
All the representatives of the “Workers”, including Ben-Gurion and Tabenkin, unequivocally opposed evacuating the settlements. The representatives of Hapoel Hatzair (The Young Workers) also aligned themselves with the militant line of Ahdut Ha'avoda. Among the civil public – that came to later be known as the “right wing” there was considerable deliberation on the issue, and various proposals were offered. The director of the Herzliya Gymnasium, Dr. Mosinson, was angry with the "Workers" who, in their opposition to the evacuation of the settlements, violated the instructions of the elected institutions and initiated the recruitment of volunteers. According to him, 16-year-olds were leaving the Gymnasium to enlist to come to the aid of the Galilee settlements. At the end of the day Ussishkin banged on the table and decided he didn’t know how to go about this, how to strengthen the settlements.They appointed a committee of six people, including Eliyahu Golomb, who would travel north to see how they could help, but because of the escalation, the commission did not manage to carry out their investigation.
On the 28th February some twenty volunteers, headed by Avraham Hertzfeld, travelled north. While in Rosh Pina they met another group, who sought to join them, but they had no weapons to give. Hertzfeld therefore rejected their offer so they would not become a burden. Only two people were insistent: A friend of Trumpeldor who claimed to be a trained soldier, and Sarah Chizik. They walked in the dark of night with their weapons and their heavy load. On the way, they met an Arab who had followed them. They took him with them and released him only when they reached Kfar Giladi. Trumpeldor welcomed the group and divided them up between the settlements. Dr. Jerry of the American Battalion and Sister Sonia were sent to Metula to set up a clinic.
Dvora Drechler
March 1st, 1920, the eleventh day of Adar, began as a bright and beautiful day in the midst of a cold and snowy winter. Trumpeldor was in Kfar Giladi busy organizing the Hagana, when suddenly the surroundings of Tel Hai neighbourhood began to take on an extraordinary hue, and the shepherd ushered his herd into the courtyard. Hundreds of Shi’ite Arabs had begun to surround the commune --- some of them in uniform, armed with rifles and grenades and demanding to enter the courtyard to search the premises for French soldiers, who they believed had taken refuge with the Jews. They were led by Kamal Hussein, the chief of a large clan whose headquarters were in a village known as Khalisa, which is now known as Kiryat Shmona. Kamal, a sheriff, had relatively good neighbourly relations with the Jews. But the number of versions of events of that bitter and fateful morning, the 11th of Adar, is almost equal to the amount of people that were present. One of the controversies among historians is why -- and who -- gave Kamal Hussein, who was accompanied by several fighters, access into the closed compound, and how the gun battle suddenly erupted. (Note 3).
After Dvora Drechler shouted that they were trying to take her weapon, a gunfight ensued in the attic and a grenade was thrown. All the preparations and training had prepared for a battle with fighters besieging the courtyard from outside – but now, the battle was taking place inside the courtyard itself. In the midst of the shooting, Trumpeldor was hit by a bullet and injured in the stomach. His intestines were protruding and with his last strength asked to have them put back inside, so terrible the sight, apparently so that it would not deter their fighting. There was no coordination and the fighters did not hear their orders. The Arabs, trapped inside, sought to leave and Schnirson, who took command from Trumpeldor, agreed, after some deliberation. He ordered a cease fire, but his compatriots did not head him and continued to fire at them. The battle lasted for hours, all the while Trumpeldor lay there injured, critically quiet, from time to time speaking up to ask what was happening and to encourage his friends.
In the 1970s, Israel’s Channel 1 filmed a documentary about the battle of Tel Hai. At that time, many of the fighters were still alive. Aharon Shemi and Oded Kapliuk tried to give a snapshot of what they witnessed and they told the reporter at Ha’aretz about the vast emotional difficulty of retelling what they saw. They coordinated their testimony between themselves and the production team felt that the fighters were hiding a terrible secret. The secret that they hid was that there was probably some kind of surrender, after one of the fighters took off his white shirt and waved it. They felt that the burden of the myth of the battle of Tel Hai was greater than the reality of a succession of misunderstandings and a failed battle. (10)
The battle ended at sunset and the attackers left. Three of the members of the commune crawled in the dark to Kfar Giladi to bring a doctor to treat Trumpeldor and the rest of the wounded fighters.Dr. Jerry, Hartzfeld and several other fighters hurried to Tel Hai. When the doctor arrived he recognised immediately that Trumpeldor’s wounds were fatal, and in his and Hartzfeld's testimony they recorded Trumpeldor’s famous words last words immortalized in Israeli history: "Never mind, it is worth dying for our country.”They did not have stretchers and the wounded were in gravely serious conditions. It’s possible to portray the terrible suffering Trumpeldor went through that he died on the way.
In Kfar Giladi consultations were held on whether or not to leave the settlement. After Trumpeldor’s death the people of Tel Hai were left without their leader, and one of the fighters said: “With you we were all a pride of lions, without you we are as sheep without a shepherd.” (Laskov, pg. 239). The people of Kfar Giladi were left without supplies or ammunition, but then came an emissary on behalf of As'ad Baq, the leader of the Shi'ites (from the nearby village of Taybeh) who were loyal friends of the fighters of ‘The Guards’ (HaShomer) organization. The Shi’ite leader warned them that many forces, which were in fact formed into a kind of regular army, were approaching Kfar Giladi in order to conquer it, and invited the residents to stay in his village. The residents of Kfar Giladi responded to the invitation and called on everyone who was in Metula to leave immediately and join them. The Shi’ites hosted the fighters, a total of about 60 people, who later slipped away to Ayelet HaShahar. (Note 4).
As for the question as to whether Trumpeldor would have accepted the withdrawal, had he survived, there is, of course, no answer. In the weeks leading up to the battle of Tel Hai, he spoke of the possibility of a withdrawal, but the intention was to withdraw during the battle. While in Russia in 1913, he used to audit the lectures of historian Simon Dubnow, who stated that the Great Revolt was a mistake, because it was clear that the rebels would lose. Trumpeldor disagreed and held that people such as Rabbi Johanan ben Zakai, who are willing to surrender for peace, cause harm to the nation.
Soul Searching
When the catastrophe became known, it fell on the yishuv heavily. In ‘Conters’ – the journal of “Ahudat HaAvoda”, they called to establish a monument to Trumpeldor in honour of his call to establish the Histadrut (labour movement). Indeed, the Histadrut was established several months after his death. Shulamit Laskov went over the protocols, and found out that Trumpeldor’s name was not mentioned (except by two) included as someone who conceived and pushed the idea of establishing the Histadrut. (Laskov, pg. 247).
At the time of Trumpeldor’s death, Yitzhak Sadeh, who did not define himself as a Zionist, was training a group of pioneers in the Crimea. After the death of his friend he immigrated to Eretz Yisrael as the leader of a group of youth named the “Krimitzkim” after the island of Crimea in the framework of the “third Aliyah” (third round of immigration.) The Labour Battalion was named the "Joseph Trumpeldor" Labor Battalion and was named after the "Tel Yosef" kibbutz in the Galilee, where there is a museum that contains, among other things, his prosthetic hand and a silver spoon he gave to Bella Kovner. (Note 5).
The death of the leader removed Sadeh's doubts about Zionism. In his diary he wrote: “I came to Israel not like my friends from the 18-17 pioneers. They were fully aware that they were returning to their homeland… and even I travelled to Eretz Yisrael, to a land that I didn’t know, for reasons that are not sufficiently clear even to myself. Mainly, because my friend Joseph Trumpeldor had fallen in battle defending this country, and his followers, a group of nearly 200 people, turned to me as the closest friend of their leader.” (11).
The Myth
The battle of Tel Hai was an operation failure that resulted from a series of misunderstandings, that ended in a retreat. The leadership abandoned the few fighters and deprived them of adequate reinforcements. Even the mantra that there would be no abandoned settlements was broken because all the settlements in the Galilee were abandoned. Nakdimon Rogel, who studied the events of Tel Hai, wrote that the whole area was devoid of Jews for seven whole months. Therefore, the question remains: how did the story of Tel Hai's become one of the greatest myths in the history of Zionism? The eleventh day of Adar is the only day of remembrance for the fallen soldiers, except for the official Memorial Day for fallen soldiers in Israel. The constitutive text written by Berl Katznelson in memory of the fighters of Tel Hai: “The nation of Israel will remember the pure souls of their faithful and courageous sons and daughter, people of labour and of peace,” has accompanied the changes and adaptations to the reality of the state for decades already. Countless poems have been written about the heroism of Tel Hai and about a great hero larger than life. After the events of Tel Hai, the word "homeland" in Zionist terminology was replaced by the expression "land of the fathers" - holding a religious context. Trumpeldor is the only role model deemed acceptable to both the Right and the Left. Jabotinsky called the Beitar youth moment “Beitar Yosef Trumpeldor”, even though Trumpeldor was a socialist, in contrast to the "Had-Nes" approach (the only national flag). (Note 6).
Historian Yigal Elam has ruled on various occasions: "If I were asked to name one person, a real hero, one of the highest in all our Zionist and Yishuv history, I would not hesitate - Trumpeldor. (12).
Professor Ze’ev Tzahor talks about the need to build a new, updated myth, and his take: “There were exceptional myths in the Yishuv and within Zionism. The Zionist movement was created and controlled by those who, in our day, we would call “media people.” Who was greater than Herzl, who was no longer alive but had left Sokolow and Jabotinsky behind? They knew how to write… these people were in need of heroism and heroes… they invented Masada and Bar Kokhba and now they were in need of someone from here. Trumpeldor answered their expectations.” (13).
The myth was also built on the heroic sentence that it is “good to die for our country.” Engaging in the question of whether he said or did not say that is petty and low, but hard to avoid. Shulamit Laskov said in an interview: “There is a plethora of Trumpeldor’s written material and letters. They have been translated into Hebrew. Brenner, among others every once in a while, come back to the idea that he is fighting to the death. He repeated similar sentences many times. There are testimonies from people who heard it from his mouth. Among others, this includes Hartzfeld and Dr. Jerry, who came from Kfar Giladi to take care of him when he was injured. One is quoted as saying Trumpeldor said it is 'good to die' and the other says he said it is 'worth dying'. So what?” (5). (Note 7).
The writer Yosef Haim Brenner eulogised the fallen, and asked the question that is being asked every time anew when the country is facing the terrible price of war: “Are we the living deserving of those who died for us? We, those who still have the impurity of life and emptiness and nothingness around us and within us – are we even entitled to look at these brave and pure people?”The writer Yosef Haim Brenner eulogised the fallen, and asked the question that is being asked every time anew when the country is facing the terrible price of war: “Are we the living deserving of those who died for us? We, those who still have the impurity of life and emptiness and nothingness around us and within us – are we even entitled to look at these brave and pure people?”
3. Prof. Ze’ev Tzahor in an interview with Eran Savag's "Life of Others" on Israel’s Army Radio
1.3.2011
(Starting at 17 minutes).
http://others.co.il/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A3%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7% 9C% D7% 93% D7% 95% D7% A8-2 LINK DOESN’T WORK YEAR?
4. In Nadav Man's article on the Ynet website, dated October 12, 2012, "Russian-style pioneering: From revolutionaries to Zionists." https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4290115,00.html
5. Interview conducted in May WHICH YEAR? at Shulamit Laskov's home in Ramat Aviv, when she was around 98 years old - and has a wonderful memory (and is a heavy smoker).
6. Hannah Katznelson Nesher "Brother and Sister - Memories", ‘Am Oved’ Publishing, 1978, p. 68.
10. Nir Menz, ‘Haaretz’, 25 February 2010: "What really happened in the battle of Tel Hai on the 11th of Adar? The Battle of Tel Hai, Israeli Television Version, 1970.” http://www.haaretz.com/misc/1.1191674
Dr. Mordechai Naor responded to the contents of this article in a recorded interview, dated October 6, 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olzXmo6kms4
11. Zvika Dror "Commander Without Power - The Life Story of Yitzhak Sade", Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1994. Page 56.
12. Page 4 http://noal.org.il/static/files/uploads/u-209/11300305644.doc
13. Prof. Ze’ev Tzahor in an interview with Eran Savag's "The Life of Others" on Army Radio from 1.3.2011 (22 minutes in) http://others.co.il/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A3-%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%9
3%D7%95%D7%A8-2/
Notes
Note 1. Trumpeldor's asceticism was well known. When he set sail from Gallipoli to recruit new fighters for the regiment, he deserved, as befits a British officer, a vacation break from the hard life on the front. "I lie clean in my bed and the ventilator sends fresh air waves to me, I pressed the button, it became very hot, and again I pressed the button and it was cool ... wonderful human actions and tricks." (Laskov, pp. 110-1).
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