Schwartz, Reuven

Son of Sarah and Chaim Dov, a pioneer in the settlement of Zichron Yaacov and its founders. He was born in 1885 in Zichron Yaakov, studied at the local school and later studied in commerce, bookkeeping and in English and French. He worked for several years in commercial administration in England and Egypt and came to Israel from time to time. He married Leah, the daughter of Alter Albert of Zichron Yaakov. For his livelihood, he worked at the experimental station in Atlit. During the First World War, he joined his comrades, Sarah and Aaron Aaronsohn, in the Nili underground, which aimed to liberate Eretz Israel from the Turkish rule. On the first day of Succoth, the Turks besieged the settlement to capture the Nili. Reuven obeyed the order of Sarah Aharonson, one of the leaders of the underground, who avoided the settlement and hid in the surrounding mountains. When the Turks did not find him, they took his father-in-law as a hostage and tortured him. From his hiding place, Reuven heard the cries of his father-in-law’s pain, and returned to the Turks. For four days his tormentors rained his flesh in an torture room in Zichron Yaakov and then about two weeks later in a convent in Nazareth that turned him into a prison. The head of his tormentors, the cruel Hassan Bech, beat him with all his might and even used a torture instrument to extract information from Reuven, but in vain. On the morning of 7 Cheshvan, 23.10.1917, Reuven was found hanging in the window frame of a prison cell in Nazareth. The Turks claimed he had lost his mind, but according to his friends, they killed him. Reuven was buried near Afula. He left behind two sons: Emmanuel and Asael. At the initiative of his family and members of Nili, his bones were transferred in 1925 to the cemetery in Zichron Ya’akov. His memory was immortalized in the book “Lexicon of the Personalities of the Land of Israel” and “Encyclopedia of Pioneers and Builders of the Yishuv”.