Schlossberg, Avraham (Abreszka)
Son of Yehudit and Yehuda. He was born on 19.11.1913 in Tashkent, Russia. At the age of ten he moved with his parents to live in the city of Grodno, Poland, where he studied at the Gymnasium and at the age of twelve he joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. As a strong and vigorous youth, he participated in many sports and later became one of the founders of the local branch of Shomria, the sports association of Hashomer Hatzair movement in Poland. In 1936, after undergoing pioneering training, he immigrated to Eretz Israel and joined the nucleus of Kibbutz Shachana in Petach Tikva. He joined Hapo’el and participated in the 1937 Olympic Sports Olympiad in Antwerp. In 1938 he was with the first immigrants on the land of Kibbutz Eilon in the Western Galilee. After the outbreak of World War II, he was one of the first to join the British army fighting the Nazis. He boarded the ship “Arinapura” in Alexandria to sail from there to Malta. On the 27th of Nisan 5703 (May 1, 1943), the ship was sunk in the bombing of a German airplane, and with it fell to the depths of one hundred and forty soldiers of the transport company, Avraham among them. One of the survivors later told that he had seen Avraham running the machine gun in front of the enemy plane until the ship sank into the water. In the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, a ship-shaped monument was erected in memory of those who were missing, and next to it is a water pool with the names of the fallen engraved on the bottom.
