Geller, Gedalyahu

Son of Frieda and Aryeh. He was born in 1901 to a wealthy merchant family in Rohatyn, Galicia. As a boy, he was taken away from his mother and his father was in Russia among those exiled at the beginning of the First World War. He was educated at his grandfather’s home, where he received a traditional Jewish education and his mother’s brother absorbed the Zionist spirit. After graduating from elementary school, Gedaliah moved to his father’s home in Stanislawow where he joined the Gordonia youth movement and became prominent in its activities. He also served as secretary of the He – Chaluts movement in the Stanislawow district and wandered in the villages to find training places for members of the movement. In 1925, he immigrated to Eretz Israel on behalf of the He – Chaluts movement after he was assigned to establish a group of former Galicia members from Gordonia. However, the experiment did not succeed and Gedaliah returned to the Diaspora for family reasons. He did not stop dealing with the organization of the “Gordonia” group there, and after a while he was transferred by the movement to Poland, where he stayed on a mission for a year. Upon his return to Israel he took care of setting up an organization for the “Gordon” workers’ moshav and thus succeeded. The Gordonia group was established in the Shiva Valley in Petah Tikva. The period was a period of deprivation and despair and Gedaliah encouraged the spirit of his friends in his cheerful mood and the ease of overcoming those days of starvation. After the outbreak of the bloody riots of 1936 he worked for the Hehalutz movement in Romania and then returned immediately to Eretz Israel, where he served as secretary of the workers’ council in Pardes Hannah and later served as secretary of the Galilee workers. (March 14, 1937), on his way from Beit Gan to Yavne’el with his two friends Moshe Zalman son of Sasson and Yehuda Elovitz, the three were shot from ambush and killed. Gedalyahu was laid to rest in the cemetery of Yavne’el. On the thirtieth day of their murder, the base was laid for a workers’ moshav in their name – Mishmar Hashlosha, which later joined Yavne’el. His name was immortalized in the books “The 1936 Riots,” “The Settlement in the Lower Galilee,” “The Book of the Sons” in memory of the victims of Kfar Saba, and “This Valley and These Boys.”