Meliniak, Dov

Son of Hanna Esther and Michael. Born in 1908 in Warsaw, Poland, he studied in a “cheder” and later in a Jewish school, and in the summer of 1934 he went with his twin brothers to the “Hechalutz Hamizrachi”. They were transported to Palestine on a bicycle, passing through Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Yugoslavia, and after a journey of about 5,500 kilometers reached Trieste, Italy. From there Dov traveled to Israel on an Italian ship that brought immigrants to Israel, as a worker in the kosher kitchen. In the Haifa port he managed to sneak into the beach. After the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the British Army and served at the Bat Galim base near Haifa. He was transferred to the Corps of Engineers, served in the Western Desert and was later transferred with his unit. On 26 Nisan, April 23, 1941, the ship was bombed by the Germans and sunk in the port. Dov was declared missing.