Perlberg, Isaac

Son of Devorah and Avraham. He was born on August 23, 1908, in Lodz, Poland to a traditional family, a faith in both Jewish and Western European culture. He graduated from the Gymnasium in his city and in 1924 joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement. Then he went to France to expand his education and complete his studies. He studied chemistry and journalism and also worked as a farmer to prepare himself for life in the Land of Israel. In 1930 he joined the Poalei Zion Left party in Paris, where his Zionist views were shaped. Both then and afterward he had the strong feeling that as a Jew he was always persecuted by the anti-Semitic environment and wrote in one of his notes: “I have been persecuted all my life, all my life I have been on the run.” In July 1939 he immigrated to Eretz Israel and joined his friends in Kibbutz Ein Shemer. In December 1940, a few months after the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered to defend the country’s shores as part of an artillery unit of the British Army stationed at the Hayat beach near Haifa. As a turbulent and sensitive soul about the vicissitudes of society, the kibbutz, the country, and the entire world, he could not withstand the inner turmoil and the constant agitation of his life, and when he was thirty-four, he ended his life. He died on 15 Tevet, January 4, 1942, and was brought to rest in the cemetery of Kibbutz Ein Shemer. He left a wife. His kibbutz published a pamphlet in his memory, with the words of friends about his character and many of his writings.