Drechler, Deborah
Daughter of Ita and Zalman Hirsch. Born in 1896 in Zevulaya, Russia, her family was the only Jewish family in the village. One day, when she was only 17 years old, she informed her parents that she was planning to immigrate to Israel and arrived on her shores about a year before the outbreak of World War I. She joined her sister in Tel Adash. After the occupation of the land by the British, she spent a short time in Jerusalem, from where she moved to the Kinneret group. When she was in Tel Hai on the morning of the eleventh of Adar (1920), the members of Tel Hai sent the animals to the field as they did each day. Suddenly Arabs approached them in uniform. The guard gave a signal and the beasts were returned to the yard. Kamel Effendi Mehlisa (later renamed Halisa to Kiryat Shmona after the eight killed in Tel Hai) accompanied by his men, asked Yosef Trumpeldor, the person in charge of the defense system, to enter the courtyard of Tel Hai, knowing that French soldiers were hiding there. Trumpeldor offered them a search for themselves and they went in and searched the cowsheds and underground rooms and then went up to the top floor. When they saw Deborah standing opposite them with a pistol they took it from her hands and when she resisted she was shot. She announced it with a shout to Trumpeldor below and he immediately ordered the shooting. Deborah was brought to rest, together with the rest of the fallen, in Tel Hai.
