Finkelstein, Meir

Son of Miriam and Joseph, was born on 28.8.1915 in one of the villages in Volhynia (then Russia, and between the two world wars – Poland) to a well-to-do family. While he was a boy he worked in all the farm jobs in the fields and in the cowshed When the family moved to the city he studied at a Hebrew school of “Tarbut”, he loved the Hebrew language and taught it during his youth to his fellow pioneers. When the financial situation of the family deteriorated and he was 14, he began working in a glass factory to help support the household. He held sway among anti-Semitic workers, although he suffered many of their injuries in his Jewish and human dignity. As a veteran laborer, he joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and went on to an urban training program in Lublin. Was a desirable worker on the employers and served as a pioneer in the conquest of jobs among Jews, who did not consider the pioneers most useful workers for their neighbors – and he convinced them in his work, that in practical terms it is worthwhile to employ pioneers. When he immigrated to Israel in August 1939, he had rheumatism, worked in his group in Netanya as a coachman. When he immigrated with his friends to settle in Yad Mordechai, he worked in the cowshed and in the workshops. He married a wife and was very devoted to his wife and tried to relieve her of the burden of labor, although he himself needed relief because of his health, and was deeply attached to his two children. During the War of Independence, when the danger to his kibbutz and family grew closer, he forgot his weaknesses and stood at the gate with a series of defenders. Meir was hit by an Egyptian shell when he was on duty at the entrance to Mordechai and fell on 10 May 1948. He was brought to eternal rest in the Yad Mordechai cemetery.