Shmerling, Yaakov

Son of-Rachel and Shneur-Zalman. He was born on May 2, 1922, in Hebron, where he studied in the “cheder” and when the family moved to Tel Aviv in 1925 he studied at the Tachkemoni School and later in the Geula high school in the city, And Gemara. Was a boy loved by all his relatives and friends. After completing his studies he worked in clerkship. When World War II broke out he enlisted despite his parents’ refusal to the British Army and was assigned to the 462 Company of the Transport Corps. He served in the Land of Israel and in Egypt. In March 1943 he was on vacation in Israel on the occasion of his father’s death, and when he returned he could no longer find his company. He pursued her to Alexandria and at the last minute managed to board the ship “Arinapura”, which set out for Malta to participate in the Allied invasion of Europe. On the 27th of Nissan, 5703 (1.5.1943), it was celebrated over the convoy of ships, which was headed by the “Aryanpura”, a German reconnaissance plane. The plane called the bombers, arrived in the evening and bombed the convoy off the Benghazi coast. Jacob’s ship suffered direct damage and drowning. One hundred forty of the company’s 462 men perished in the disaster. Jacob among them. Assumed mother, five sisters and three brothers. Yaakov’s memory was immortalized in the booklet “Soldier” in “The Book of Volunteerism” in the “Book of the Year of the Press” and in the Yizkor Book of the Jabotinsky Institute. At Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, a ship-shaped tomb was erected in memory of the missing, and next to it is a small water pool with the names of all the company’s missing soldiers engraved on the bottom. The solder is a maklan – a fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown