Sandler, Yehuda

Son of Chana and Moshe-Ya’akov. He was born on October 17, 1900 in Tebrig, Lithuania. In 1920 he joined the Hechalutz movement and was the first in his city to immigrate to Eretz Israel at the beginning of the Third Aliya. Upon his arrival in Israel he joined the “Gdud Ha’avoda” and was one of the founders of Tel Yosef. After he contracted fever, he was forced to leave the area and moved to the “Gdud Ha’avoda” in Jerusalem. Later he moved with his family – his wife and two sons – to Tel Aviv and in the 1929 riots he was sent by the Haganah to Hulda, where he served as deputy commander in charge of the defense. At the end of his term he moved to Rechovot and was active in the campaign to establish Hebrew labor. From Rechovot he would go out every morning in a cart, harnessed by a pair of mules, to Jaffa and Tel Aviv, to bring supplies from there to the settlement. His other stations were in Nahalat Yehuda near Rishon Letzion and Haifa Port. In 1938 he was one of the organizers of the cooperative moshav – a new form of agricultural settlement that sought to merge the principles of the moshav and the kibbutz. He established a work company in the port of Haifa and in Kiryat Binyamin, and in 1939 he organized the settlement of the lands of the Arab village of Liza in the Hula Valley, Moshav Beit Hillel, and moved there with his family. On the farm, he traveled from moshav to moshava, met with friends to choose candidates for the new settlement. At Beit Hillel he was assigned the guard duty in the fields. Since the Arab shepherds from the surrounding area used to raise their herds on the sowed fields of the moshav, Yehuda held talks with the dignitaries of the surrounding villages to prevent this. On 26 Tevet, January 25, 1941, he went to guard in the field and met with four Arabs who had grazed their flock in the moshav. He demanded that they leave but they refused to do so and then dismounted and went over to them. One of the Arabs hit Yehuda on the head and he fell dead to the ground. He left a wife and two sons. He was laid to rest in the center of Moshav Beit Hillel. At the time of his death, he was 41 years old.